We need to do better than just going back to the 1950's, 1960's economy.

Interesting article from Strong Towns:

Dangerous Nostalgia: Why Romanticizing the 1950s and 1960s Won't Get Us Anywhere

I'll add that so many people, including a lot of Democrats an Republicans, romanticize about the prosperity of the 1950's and 60's. A time when suburban sprawl, single family neighborhoods and automobile dependency really revved up.

US was pretty much the undisputed industrial leader after World War II, it was also a historic anomaly not likely to be repeated. A pattern of life that's unsustainable emerged. What replaces it could actually be better. Strong Towns has a lot of good ideas for better planning.

I still support the Democrats, more than the Republicans, but there are big changes in planning and living that mainstream politics, on both sides, tends to ignore. I see more talk about these needed changes in local, rather than national, political discussions. Local politicians have to deal with traffic gridlock and so forth.

A better world, in my opinion, would include things like more walk able neighborhoods. This, encouraging healthier, less costly lifestyles.

While the 1950's brought a surge of prosperity, all was not happy. Ask gay people. A lot of minorities were left out. Pedestrians were relegated to the status of second class citizens.

Much of our lives, today, are rooted in the patterns of the 1950's and 1960's. At that time, the patterns seemed beneficial to a lot of people. Comfortable lives, a growing middle class. In a lot of ways, we could do better in the future, but it will be different. It would need to be something more healthy and environmentally sustainable.

I remember the song from the 1960's about little boxes on the hillside made of ticky tacky. People were critical of things, back then. The boxes were houses in Daily City California, so I remember.

Today, those little boxes command very high prices. There is a high price which indicates a strong demand for going back to the way things were before, but back then, there were less people in America. Global warming was hardly an issue. We could get by with it. Today, it's price is very high, but there are people willing to pay for it. Really? Can't we find something better?

On the left, some people say the 1960's American Dream can come back with liberal spending policies, taxing the wealthy and putting more money in the hands of ordinary Americans. Raising minimum wages and so forth to help small business have more customers. Bringing back unions. To some extent, this may be true, but I think the whole dream has to be modified. I think we need new definitions of prosperity. That's why I prefer talk about sustainable development to a lot of the traditional left wing talking points.