People were talking about it during Reagan's Presidency.
There were giant homeless encampments in all major cities throughout the 1980s.
Read Hunter Thompson's book "Hell's Angels." There's a chapter that talks about the economics of being a biker/hippie/artist circa 1970. A part time waitress in New York could afford to support herself and her musician boyfreind. A biker could put in six months as a Union stevedore and make enough to hit the road for two years of carousing.
And the idea that Obama caused the melt down of 2008 is pretty hilarious.
This is 100% the result of Reagan's trickle down economics, a policy his own Vice President called 'voo-doo economics.*'
In 1980, 'middle class' was still seen as one income supporting a family of four. By the time Bush Sr. was through, 'middle class' meaning two jobs was established as the norm.
*Bush used the phrase before Reagan offered him the Number 2 job; suddenly he was fine with it.
"The Flight Of The Phoenix" is a great old-style Hollywood movie. A plane crashes in the African desert and the crew and passengers have to find a way to get home. Exactly the kind of movie Roddenberry would have been thinking of when he pitched TOS.
It's up top the people involved. Yes, there are folks who will try to take advantage of you and coerce you into covering for them. There are also people who actually share interests with you. I've been to a few coworkers homes, and hung out together on off days. There have been other coworkers I wouldn't say 'hi' to on my off days.
Something I’ve noticed. If you watch movies/TV from the 1970s and earlier, the characters will often use exact figures in dialog. Jim Rockford made $200 a day, plus expenses. By the 1980s, inflation was getting bad, so they didn’t do it as much, as something that was wildly expensive in the past was now reasonable. Remember the $5.00 milkshake from Pulp Fiction?
I wasn’t trying to present Ford as a hero of the working man. I was trying to show that Ford understood that workers are a resource, not a burden.
You’re right about him not wanting workers drinking. Two stories I’ve heard. The first is that he helped create Prohibition because he thought banning liquor would stop people from drinking. The other is that he helped start a lot of small banks. Workers were taking their paychecks to bars and getting them cashed there. When the bars closed, the workers needed a new place to get their money,
Back in Lincoln’s day, the Republicans really were about ‘trickle up’ economics. Henry Ford paid people enough to buy his cars. Now it’s “I can pay half the working class to kill the other half.”
There’s a chapter about the economics of being a biker/artist/hippie circa 1970. A biker could work six months as a union stevedore and earn enough to spend two years on the road, and a part time waitress could earn enough to support herself and her musician boyfriend.