I mean, this is how far our standard of living has fallen in the US.
Like, back in the 80’s and 90’s it was pretty normal for a family to subsist on a single income, in a reasonably nice house, with all of their necessities taken care of. It was so normal that even a brainless loser like Homer could do it.
Also because back then, kinda fat = automatic loser
Frank Grimes pointed out the insanity/luck of his living situation and your last part is true today “bumbling oaf” is still an archetype
Ah, good ol’ Grimey (as he liked to be called).
To be fair a nuclear operator can typically afford to support a family of 5 even today.
This. The show routinely makes fun of the fact that Homer is completely unqualified for his job and seems to keep it because he amuses Burns. They had a whole episode recently about how Homer got a new job over a nuclear engineering PhD because he Cyrano’d the interview via Fink. Meaning his job title likely commands well over $200k, though it is implied that Burns pays him somewhat less than that.
That said, suburbia was built on borrowed money from the future , and the reason why most cities are broke.
It has nothing to do with suburbia.
It has everything to do with the politics of Thatcher and Reagan. Their policies of annihilating unions, human rights and creating tax cuts for the rich by passing on the taxes to the working and the poor created this dystopian reality we now have.
If we cut out the rich and restore what we used to have for rights and protections, we can try to save ourselves from extinction.
The two are related. Oil money supports both the suburban Ponzi scheme and also Reaganite deregulation.
My point is, for a city, every square foot of street has an operational cost, and on top of that infrastructure needs to be rebuilt every x years (I think around 20 ~ 25).
While the upfront cost of said infrastructure tends to come from subventions when building a new development, the city needs to cover the costs for both operations and rebuilding once it’s needed.Why does this matter? Well, detached single-family houses provide lower revenue per square foot of street than middle housing or mid-rises, eventually creating a hole in the city’s pockets.
I’m not explaining it very well, but I’ll suggest taking a look at this:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/6/21/whats-the-sweet-spot-for-building-housing-inexpensively
Climate Town - The suburbs are bleeding America DryIf cities had money, they could build public housing or promote affordable options.
The suburbs are just another part of tax cuts for the rich. They’re subsidized by the tax money from more dense parts of the city, which tend to be more poor (and usually filled with ethnicities other than white people - hence the term White Flight).
Singke family homes with big grassy lawns and McDonald’s parking lots bring in less tax revenue and cost more money in city services per square foot of land than apartment buildings, being a net drain on the budget. So, there are higher taxes on the poor so that the wealthy suburbanites don’t have to see them.
I’m more convinced the human race is gonna die off the way futurama predicted it. The one named “I Dated a Robot”
The show quit caring about money because it’s not interesting. The early seasons have money as a constant issue. It’s just not that interesting to she them constantly needing money, so they just stopped.
Except that idea was completely undone by Malcolm in the Middle… The Simpsons just didn’t do it right.
Simpsons did it just fine for years, Malcolm was only 7 seasons, Simpsons is on season 35.
back in the '80s* and '90s*
It wasn’t normal
Up until Reaganomics hit, ‘Middle Class’ was defined as one Union job supporting a family of four. In 1980, $1 million was still considered a vast fortune. By the time Bush Sr. left office, middle class was two jobs to keep the house going, and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
Uhhhh… Homer has three kids, surely?
Why can’t I have no kids and three money??
According to the available tax information he has nine kids, one of which is a Vietnam veteran.
Uhhhh… Homer has three kids, surely?
Only two of them, along with his wife, love him.
He’s not? There’s literally an episode about how Homer is so lucky in life that he drives a man insane.
OP lives above a bowling alley and bellow another bowling alley.
I’m fifty one years old and just kinda wanna break down what I’ve seen in my life:
My grandparents generation: Was able to buy housing, get healthcare, receive retirement. Note: They lived through the great depression, and categorically never spent any money that wasn’t necessary, even when they had several boatloads of it.
My parents generation: Housing was achievable but not given (I remember a whole lot of single wides, apartments, and duplexes among the adults of my childhood). Healthcare was affordable. Retirement was promised but not delivered.
My generation: Housing was achievable if you moved to the sticks and loved you some Jesus at the local Baptist Church, but not in the cities. We got a taste of healthcare twenty five years ago, but then yeah no. Retirement? Hahahahaha! We got 401(k)s forced in us, and they never materialized into dick. Many flatout vaporized when our marriages fizzled out.
My kid’s generation. Seriously, just die in the street. You’ll get absolute fuck all nothing, and you’ll like it as the older generations blame you for our fuckups.
My great contribution is that I’ll be able to leave my house free and clear of mortgage to my spawn when I check out. She can live in it, sell it, rent it, burn it to the ground. Whatever she wants, but damnit, I’m giving her the opportunity to do it, which most of her peers will never have.
Hedonism and Wealth should not be your metric for evaluating people, anon.
Homer sleeps at his job, is a habitual drinker, and is willfully ignorant.
But he did also win a nuclear power plant design contest.
Because he’s a little overweight, and in 1989, that was reason enough to laugh at someone.
Plus, all of those were commonplace thirty years ago.
The show was also conceived with Bart as the main character, with the world being from Bart’s perspective. As a kid Bart’s age of course your dad is dumb. Homer is the irl name of Matt Groenig’s dad.
As the show progressed the writers ended up latching onto Homer more and he gradually became the core of the show. Also the characters “Flanderized” (literally!) more and more as time went on and he became more ridiculous. The Frank Grimes episode is pretty genius for capturing all this in a funny way.
Isn’t Homer meant to be an illustration of privilege? Like, he’s pretty useless, but still gets essentially everything he wants.
Nah, it’s supposed to be funny and relatable. Times changed, not the cartoon.
I watched an interview and they were talking about some song that gets sang where Bart can be anything he wants to be.
I think the gist was they listed this litany of jobs that he could have when he grew up and twenty years later none of them were really viable anymore, kind of emphasizing how long the show has been on.
Things have changed.
