Perhaps this graph will make the concept more concrete for you:
In case you're having trouble discerning the year when that peak of excellence occurred, the text pinpoints it at 1976. Perhaps you remember. It was 50 years ago. The Bicentennial. Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford. Karen Ann Quinlan was disconnected from her ventilator. A school bus full of children was buried in the ground but the kids dug themselves free, in 16 hours. Jenner won the Decathlon. Apple and Microsoft sprang into being. How could you not feel that happy days were here again?
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90 comments:
The problems started with polling.
What the hell happened in ~1975?
Could we have a working definition of the American Dream? Based on what I see, the dream for a lot of my countrymen is to live in a technocracy run out of the Beltway; they may not say it that way, but operationally that's what they want. My dream differs.
"Living paycheque to paycheque" - Nice British publication claiming the American dream is dead. At least spell paycheck the American way if your still going to colour us as miserable.
Look what Britain has done to itself. Talk about a dead dream. Dead empire.
Other charts in the article are interesting. Democrats and women think the dream is more dead than men and Republicans.
Isn't an exhausting career and college debt what liberal women wanted? It's much more rewarding than motherhood.
WE NEED democrat communists to save us. They never do - and they all get rich. but the idiots on team D, still worship Bernie Sanders and AOC frauds.
So there was accurate polling on how Americans "rate life" in the 1700's and 1800's? What a load of crap.
The American dream is dead and harder to achieve for young people scammed into massive debt by the ridiculous cost of college and its low rate of return. Generation Z has it TOUGH.
On the flip side, the American Dream is alive and kicking for the overpaid college administrators who run these kids into massive debt and refuse any type of sacrifice to control costs.
What the hell happened in ~1975?
Watergate and the loss of the Vietnam War. It's often pointed to as the moment Americans became more dissatisfied.
A lot of the feeling was artificially generated to aid the progressive movement, but not all of it.
"What the hell happened in ~1975?"
I added some material to the post because I had the same question.
tommyesq said...
So there was accurate polling on how Americans "rate life" in the 1700's and 1800's? What a load of crap. - Strange there wasn't a massive, positive spike once indoor plumbing became a norm.
Notable that Americans were most likely to think life was Excellent in the period the Left assures us was Hell in America -- right before ascension of progressives to cultural dominance.
Two of the most significant changes in U.S. history took hold then: immigration/demographic change and the shift from two-parent to one-parent households.
So the decline started as the Class of ‘68 started to accrue political power? Weird….
In 1976 - Only 33% of married couples with children under 18 had both parents working. And Bruce Jenner still dressed like a dude.
One problem is the media found more ratings come from being negative than being positive. Almost all of our media and art and social barrage is about how bad things and people and everything is. Life was crazy harder in the past for most everyone into the late 20th century and then we got told how terrible things are and how we should hate ourselves and each other and our history and our future, with our only hope being paying an increasing amount of hucksters indulgences to alleviate our national guilt.
The wide intervals between samples obscures the fact that 1967, with the appearance of Star Trek, was actually the peak of American civilization.
Even after having been reminded, I can only muster the vaguest of recollections about the school bus. Going to have to look that up today as we drive toward St. George.
Of course, I was 10; maybe my parents were shielding me and my siblings.
Well, the federal Homestead Act was officially repealed in 1976. I wonder how that ending of a fundamental expression of make it on your own freedom changed a sense of possibility.
Also, I was born in 1974 so don't know regular life before that, but it seems that the news became particularly negative and anti-American in a way after Vietnam and Nixon that it wasn't before. Loss of land and being perpetually told a different story of who we are and what we could be shaped a sense of self.
I'd like to also throw a lot of blame at baby boomers, but can't narrow down anything specific, just a general baby boomish selfishness.
Jenner won the Decathlon.
I see what you did there.
Clarifying: This is a modern poll on how life was in America at independence and at 50 year increments. It is not a continuation of a poll from 1776, 1826, 1876, 1926, and 1976 of how life currently was. So the 1976 aberration is just rose-colored glasses.
Oh, for fuck's sake- what an absolutely ridiculous poll.
I can remember people in the 70s moaning about how bad everything was. Remember Stagflation and double digit interest rates?
When was the USA at its best? For the average person probably the 60s and 70s. The 90s weren't bad either.
Its the sunday times, now this was some time after enoch powells 'rivers of blood' speech thatcher staved off some of the rot, but blair sped it along
The media and liberal historians always give us skewed idea of what were "The Good times". For example, if you had a job and were making money the 30s were actually a pretty good time in the USA. Things were horrible for about 25 percent of the USA but for everyone else, not bad.
Meanwhile WW 2 is always talked about "It brought it out of the Depression" and we get blather about "Rah, rah, the greatest generation ever". In fact, you couldn't buy a new car, new housing was cut by 75 percent, and taxes went way up. And after ww2 - you had inflation.
As for serving in WW2 - lots of men hated "The service", they got stuck in boring/dirty jobs and were just praying for the war to end so they could get back home. Most of the books and films focus on the people who liked the war. Or were motivated to fight. Which wasn't most men.
No doubt it was quite exciting to be a fighter pilot, or in command of ship, but if you stuck washing dishes or fixing the airplane 12 hours a day much less so.
Next thing you know Muslim immigrants with the help of police will be turning hundreds of American small town girls into sex slaves. /s
It’s rich, isn’t it? Britain is in the crapper and the L.T. Mediaswine are polling about the American Dream. Well, the Democrats haven’t quite killed the Dream with their corruption and incompetence. If they take Congress or the WH in the next 10 years, they will finish the job.
There was significant deindustrializatiioj financialization and debt acrual in both countries
But airship one is sinking firsr
"I'd like to also throw a lot of blame at baby boomers, but can't narrow down anything specific, just a general baby boomish selfishness."
Yeah, those boomers are the worst. I don't really know why, but- well... you know.
But if there could have been a poll in 1776, what would the percentages be? I don't think you'd get a majority for independence, especially if the question included the idea of fighting a war for independence. I'm sure I would have been against the war. Can't we work this out peacefully? Let's not start killing each other over this.The blood and noble spirit of the British runs in our veins.
About a third for a third royalist a third indifferent
I think things are pretty incredible right now, and they will be unimaginably good in 20 more years. People just love to bitch and moan.
There is much that is positive wages lowered crime rate but that doesnt sell papers
I would've been against the war - at the start. But once the Brits started "ravaging our coasts", supporting savage indian attacks, and bringing in Hessians to fight us, I'd have said "Enough is enough. We have to separate".
Of course, that doesn't mean I would've joined the Contential Army. things were brutal for an average soldier back then. But I would've cheered them on with a glass of port in my hand.
I wasn't aware that the polling was so accurate in 1825.
Just colonial propaganda how would you know
Did they break into your house impress your family
Kind of amazing that there wasn't even a blip one way or the other during THE CIVIL WAR. I guess everything was just peachy then.
Yeah i say nee to that poll
"I would've been against the war - at the start. But once the Brits started "ravaging our coasts", supporting savage indian attacks, and bringing in Hessians to fight us, I'd have said "Enough is enough. We have to separate"."
I agree. The standard response is to support your side in a war once it's in motion. The people who support the other side, at that point... there are words for people like that.
Ann said
Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford. Karen Ann Quinlan
Jenner won the Decathlon.
Jeepers, creepers, Ann. It never stops with you, does it. Whatever wierdness he is into now, it was BRUCE Jenner who won the olympics. But I guess you just want to set him apart as "special", having no first name.
Fuck this woke bullshit.
John Henry
What I find interesting is the increased polarization. The early polls add up to 55%. The latest jumps to 87%. So far less undecided/ middle ground.
Ok, that should be 77%. Still a big increase
I have been researching my ancestry for the past 20 years or so, and I have identified just about all of my fifth-great-grandfathers. Those present in the colonies at the time of the Revolution fought in the war. Most of them were not in the Continental Army, but in state militias (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) attached to the army. It appears that just about every able-bodied man did so on a rotating basis, serving for a month or two in the militia and then returning to their normal profession, farmer, blacksmith, etc. My family may be an anomaly, but I doubt it.
The article has no explanation for the historical data that I can see. There's nothing up on YouGov's site.
Also, if I were a dirty, stinkin', lowlife Democrat I would put a lot of work into infiltrating the online panels that YouGov uses.
"The standard response is to support your side in a war once it's in motion. The people who support the other side, at that point... there are words for people like that."
Democrats.
“What happened in 1975?” Belaire. “Hey, ho, Western Civ had to go!”
I got married in 1973; the rest of the decade was a miserable time for us. Stagflation and a lousy job market made it a dark time. We couldn't even dream of owning a house. The Bicentennial was a damp squib, mostly. It wasn't until Reagan got in office that people started cheering up.
So the decline started with Carter
RJ nails it. For anyone alive then 1976 was pretty meh at best. It wasn't until almost a decade later that it would be Morning In America
Well they are german saxe coburg
On the flip side, the American Dream is alive and kicking for the overpaid college administrators who run these kids into massive debt and refuse any type of sacrifice to control costs.
D0-nothing sinecures in government and cushy overpaid jobs in NGO's are also working out well for a lot of worthless leftists with toilet-paper degrees.
1973/1974: The final vestiges of the gold standard are removed, and the U.S. dollar becomes a fully floating fiat currency.
“What the hell happened in ~1975?”
The BeeGees started their comeback with “J-J-J-Jive Talkin’ “ !
https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/2049146944769991106
Confusing chart. At first I wondered who was polling whom in 1800 or 1850. Then I thought that it's understandable that anyone who remembers would rate the 1980s and 1990s as good, but golly, weren't the 1860s and the 1930s pretty bad too?
I see now that the poll only asked about 25 year increments since independence. What would be the point of such a poll? What does it tell us about anything? The really important events happened in between. In any case, things were pretty bleak in 1776.
I will note that while the country was inspired and heartened by the 1826 ceremonies, and the Philadelphia World's Fair in 1876 was another great moment (though darkened by Custer's Last Stand), Philly's 1926 attempt at a commemorative fair was a major bust. In 1976, they didn't even try. The country had fun in 1976 though. There was more fun and much more interest in the anniversary than we're having now. Maybe we were still a nation then, in contrast to what we are now.
It appears that just about every able-bodied man did so on a rotating basis, serving for a month or two in the militia and then returning to their normal profession, farmer, blacksmith, etc. My family may be an anomaly, but I doubt it.
We found a similar pattern in our family's ancestors, 15 of whom served in the Revolution in some capacity, and none of whom were filthy Tory loyalists who tucked tail and ran off to Canada. One of my 6th great-grandfathers was over 70 years old when he turned out at Lexington with his musket in 1775. He was subsequently excused from militia service, but is also recorded as driving supply wagons to the front a couple of years later.
We have some modern-day "loyalists" to the globalist Left, whose backsides I hope someday to see fleeing to Canada just steps ahead of the Patriot militia. I hope I'm still fit enough to follow the example of my ancestor and take part in the effort despite my age.
1976 was big moment for Late Boomers who missed out on the Sixties. Boomers still dominate the culture, so it's not surprising that they and the rest of the country think well of 1976 however bad the 70s were.
John Ʌ Konrad? Whoever he is, he deserves a Rod Dreyer or Mark Judge award for self-promotion.
Actually mark judge is pretty low profile considering how they tried to destroy him
Its a ridiculous poll
"Jenner won the Decathlon."
What a woman!
Talk to any young person, about buying a home, raising a family, etc. Oh, I am sure everyone here has kids who are buying homes and raising children with no problems, but I mean real people.
It’s the drugs your team of psychologists prescribe for you…
I wonder how patriotism in the UK was doing in 1976?
Anarchy in the UK
God Save the Queen
This sound is way better
God Save the Queen
Well johnny lydon has learned some hard lessons
No points on the plot for much of the key period. Both measures seem to be returning to trend. Big whoop.
The dollar has declined in value compared to gold by a factor of 40 over that time.
The share of total household wealth owned by the top 10% in the United States has increased significantly over the last 50 years, rising from approximately 23% to 35% in 1976 to roughly 67% to 70% in 2026.
IRS (.gov)
IRS (.gov)
+4
1976: Historical Context
In 1976, wealth inequality in the U.S. was at or near its 20th-century minimum following decades of relative stability after the Great Depression and World War II.
The University of Chicago Press: Journals
The University of Chicago Press: Journals
+3
Wealth Share: The top 10% owned roughly 23% to 35% of the nation's net worth, depending on the specific measurement methodology used (e.g., IRS tax data vs. survey-based estimates).
Comparison: For context, the top 1% alone held about 23.9% of total wealth during this period.
Econometrics Laboratory
Econometrics Laboratory
+4
2026: Recent Data and Projections
By early 2026, wealth concentration has reached record levels, driven by surging stock prices, real estate values, and disproportionate gains for the ultra-wealthy.
CBS News
CBS News
+3
Wealth Share: Recent data from the Federal Reserve and independent reports indicate the top 10% now hold approximately 67% to 70% of all household wealth in the U.S..
Concentration at the Peak: Within this group, the top 1% accounts for nearly half of the group's total, holding roughly 31% to 39% of the nation's total wealth.
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
+4
Yeah, it's a big fucking mystery
We need to throw the money changers out of the country
Bear markets correct those extremes, Howard.
Utter BS. The notion of polling and social data analysis began with Francis Galton (cousin of Charles Darwin) in the late 1800s. Any thought of polling prior to that date was known as "voting" and "elections."
This reports retrospective generalizations and is likely a simple rating bias / scaling bias / median response tendency. When people can choose on a 1-5 or 1-7 scale, they tend to cluster near 4 but resist 1 and 7 unless prompted, prodded, or have clear opinions.
Americans today (1) lack detailed knowledge of history, (2) paint all generations older than 40 to 50 as "Boomers" despite conflating three generations -- Gen X often hates Boomers too, and (3) follows from media decade images ("1950s" or "1960s") or positive partisan icons such as FDR, JFK, and Reagan (and conversely LBJ/Nixon).
Yes this is bellesiles wishcasting
Belllesiles made up imaginary gun statistics
St Croix: "I wonder how patriotism in the UK was doing in 1976?"
The Rest is History guys are doing a good series right now on Britain in the 70s. As always, balanced and funny. They include pop culture: not just the Pistols but also Bowie's fascist phase. CC, JSM
You need more than the useless things taught in schools or, especially, pushed in the media to make a good assessment of the US
For instance, where we started.
If the physical task which lay before the American people had advanced but a short way toward completion, little more change could be seen in the economical conditions of American life. The man who in the year 1800 ventured to hope for a new era in the coming century, could lay his hand on no statistics that silenced doubt. The machinery of production showed no radical difference from that familiar to ages long past. The Saxon farmer of the eighth century enjoyed most of the comforts known to Saxon farmers in the eighteenth. The eorls and ceorls of Offa and Ecgbert could not read or write, and did not receive a weekly newspaper with such information as newspapers in that age could supply; yet neither their houses, their clothing, their food and drink, their agricultural tools and methods, their stock, nor their habits were so greatly altered or improved by time that they would have found much difficulty in accommodating their lives to that of their descendants in the eighteenth century. In this respect America was backward. Fifty or a hundred miles inland more than half the houses were log-cabins, which might or might not enjoy the luxury of a glass window. Throughout the South and West houses showed little attempt at luxury; but even in New England the ordinary farmhouse was hardly so well built, so spacious, or so warm as that of a well-to-do contemporary of Charlemagne. The cloth which the farmer's family wore was still homespun
---History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson. by Henry Adams
The First Administration of Thomas Jefferson, Part I, Chapter 1 (1889)
And most were born after the America transformed itself in the first half of the 20th century
The increasingly successful war against infectious diseases had brought about during the nineteen-forties a great increase in the number of old people, a new interest in pension plans, and—since the tendency of business concerns to lay off employees at sixty-five or even sixty was still gaining headway—an acute question whether pensions beyond that age would not constitute a burden too heavy for most companies to carry. Meanwhile the jump in the birth rate was beginning by 1950 to swamp an already overcrowded elementary school system, and threatened to do so increasingly for many years to come. So it was that as the nineteen-fifties began, Americans in their wage-earning years were faced with the prospect of having to support, in one way or another, more human creatures senior and junior to themselves than ever before in recent history.
Allen, Frederick Lewis. The Big Change: America Transforms Itself, 1900–1950 (1952)
But we've grown up in the adaptation to the failures of the socialism of the New Deal and the regulatory state, it's pushback in the 1980/90s and the rise again the 21st century.
I was 11, and swam 200 laps in my family swimming pool, counting off the years ("1776...1777...1778") as I went. (I had to use the bathroom in 1912.)
I remember 1976
It was the Bicentennial, and kill joy Carter wasn't elected until the end of it.
You know, the point when things started going down
But when's that crossover point? It looks like it's in the middle of the Depression, which makes me not trust anything they say
Yeah it should be a jagged line
What this plot shows is that the excellent to poor feelings ratio is converging to one, and there was one highly extreme outlier year in 1975. About a 10 sigma event, so we should:
1. Question the data.
2. Consider conditions in 1975 to be completely different in nature from any other period in US history.
So what happened in 1975 is gone and we are back on fhe normal historical trend. The attitude of 1975 no longer exists, it was caused by factors that no longer relevant to modern psychology.
I would say, having lived through it, it was a result of the affluence and abundance caused by expanding post war manufacturing and the use of natural resources and energy that made life superior to hard drudge labor like washing your clothes in a creek with two rocks and only eating meat once a week.
The common man had things that the kings of 1820 did not have. Humans are relative creatures, what they have does not matter but whether they have more than their neighbor. So as time went on, no one remembered how bad they had it in the old days, and thought life sucked because they had to work 40 hrs per week.
I suspect the pre-1950 parallel lines and negative bias follows from academic "anti-colonial" and "pre civil rights era" views of the late 20th century. It could also follow from assumptions that it sucked to live without modern technology and medicine. (Just don't look at suicide rate increases and life satisfaction trend downward.)
I suspect this reveals DEI-influenced people saying that "Old time USA was segregated and racist and women and gays didn't have freedom." This is an insane way to think about the USA citizens of each era -- the white European Manifest Destiny immigrants became very wealthy relative to life in old Europe. That migration pattern continued until around WW2, and following the 1960s, anti-USA internal ideologies became far more common.
This type of work is layered with a thousand assumptions and it makes little sense to even attempt it.
If you'd talked to Americans in 1950 they would've complained about the Korean war, the theat of nuclear war with the USSR, and the fact that all that sacrifice hadn't ushered in a peaceful world but seemed to have gotten us into forever war.
We'd gone from "giants" like FDR/Hoover to pygmies like Truman. We had commie spies in DC and Government debt was enormous. Not to mention racial unrest and inflation.
And those crazy young people - with no respect for anyone and anything.
Oh for those wonderful days of the 1920s.
1950s were a pretty content period here in the uk the rabble rousers like dennis potter and john osborne
Were trying to cause trouble
The likes of ginsberg thought it was madness (but he was a psycho)
England vs USA, race to the bottom of western civilization. England is leading in the decline, but USA not far behind. I remember 1975, and here I am today, thinking it's really been a long slow decline for my generation of last-arriving baby boomers. I am sad for our children.
Narciso, my ethical and courageous husband was assigned to Bellesiles as a graduate researcher with knowledge of estate law and historical wills, and he smelled a rat, but in his position nobody wanted to know what he suspected, and he was done with Graduate School and DEI and was transitioning to law school and DEI. Often, historical wills were the simple distribution of bits and pieces -- my best bed, my coins, this or that part of a weapon, or items just weren't listed. He tried to make Bellisles hear, but that ideologue was hellbent on misrepresenting the truth. My husband was clerking for a federal judge, and I was making the awful drive from SE Georgia to Birmingham every other week to share care of my little brother in hospital, near death, as Bellesiles' story unravelled, complete with the claim that a flood had destroyed his notes. My husband was ordered back to Emory to testify, at his own expense, and while he, ethically, would not discuss it with me, he was enraged by the way they treated him. Here he was, a brilliant lawyer in the making with the honor of being a federal clerk (on merit, neither school nor connections), and these lazy tenured academic scum who had covered for Bellesiles treated him like garbage, although he was more intellectually accomplished than virtually all of them, and he was right, and they couldn't harm him anymore, and they finally had to listen to him. I have no doubt his testimony won the tribunal.
I don't know how he puts up with me.
I'm a hothead. I initiated bringing down a Mafia mob once in Federal Court -- they were a company racket all over the South -- ILGPNWU -- but I was very young, pissed as hell, and also trying and failing to keep the serial killer I had survived in prison -- in yet another state. I did spend months patiently filing all the preliminary NLRB charges and finding plaintiffs in others states, while cooking and cleaning in a restaurant after being blacklisted from a good building job I loved, but I flipped out in the RICO court under questioning because I was furious with their lies. We still won. DiPaola went to prison for life; the mob scattered; scores of laborers like me in several states stopped having money stolen from our paychecks, and I was most likely deemed just too stupid to kill, though they effed up my car, threatened me, and lost me a very happy job I loved.
That's what I want engraved on my urn: "Too Stupid To Kill." My calm husband deserves better. It's a blessing to admire your spouse. So maybe "Lucky" too.
I remember the later Seventies as a child. There was more unity and national pride; more patriotism, and more of an effort and ethic to get along. We thought the despicable radicals were fading in the rearview mirror. Too bad we were wrong. We should have Terminexed the entire country while we still had time.
The democrat party becoming communist has destroyed that half of our country.
@Tina Trent: He tried to make Bellisles hear, but that ideologue was hellbent on misrepresenting the truth.
The unified left of that era demanded that he be correct and treated it as greatest gun control breakthrough of all time. PBS slid from left-of-center to left advocacy with this book -- I saw a News Hour commentator positively gushing about his so-called discoveries. Never mind that it won the phony Bancroft Prize too.
The left didn't learn anything about its failed logic in 2000 to 2001, and stayed on the same ideology-first road.
My take is that things are so bad in Britain they are forced to make us look hopeless too.
Now that Trump is in office America is hopeful again.
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