To tell you the truth, PB, most everyone who lived before the middle 20th century (except the folks like Rockefeller's, Post's, Vanderbilt's, etc) had incomes very low by todays' standards. The folks of the 20th century had fought WWI, went though the Depression of 1929 through the 1930's when my parents were growing up, then had to fight for our very lives in WWII. After that, and the massive building boom, the economy started to hum...
Don't think my folks ever knew anyone that was subsidized by the Government...It just "wasn't done." Of course, after Johnson's Guns and Butter, more and more people decided that maybe letting others take care of them was a good thing. And many of those are the ones we hear about getting into trouble with the law today, are the descendants of those folks, because they don't want to direct their lives into a channel that requires gainful employment on their part, so they have a lot of extra time on their hands. |
