I was just taliking with my wife about how good it would have been if we would have born in the 40's:

- War is over, no cannons, invasions, killings, persecutions
- Golden 1950's as a child
- Listen to your father play Miles Davis
- Young and hippie in the 60's/70s
- Affordable education
- A growing sense (and actual) of entitlement (financed by government debts)
- Growing fortunes in the 80's with a West that overcomes the USSR in the late 80's. Triumphalism everywhere (and finally with Japan too). A current account surplus makes you believe that even the government now makes good money.
- No signs of Muslim terror anywhere.
- Ok, you get the nasty news of the Twin Towers. You are grown up, you think, shit, poor young people in a new World.
- Things seem fixed, but they are not.
- Shit hits the fan, but hey, you are retired.
- Best of all, you didn't had kids, so its not your kids financing your Ponzi pension plan scheme. The ones financing it are the kids from other people.
- Thanks to science, you'll live long at the expense of fewer kids that will have to retire at 80, not 65.

Fckn great life, isn't it?

That's why, when I see a scmbag aged 65-70, I think "this mthrfckr is taking from me and frm my kids".

Bonus mthrfkr: 65-70 ... southern Europe

War over in 1940?

There are some threads you can only walk away from with a heavy heart.

You forgot to mention the Korean and Vietnam wars, Kennedy Assasination, Cold War, Cuban missile crisis, the energy crisis during the Carter admin., nuclear arms race with the USSR, savings and loan fiasco, but yes in general it was a good time. Especially if you were a kid and what happened in your backyard was far more significant than what was happening globally. But that's also true if you are a kid today.

My sincerest condolences to your wife. Morbid curiosity will bring me back to this thread to see what other epically offensive remarks you can come up with .

My parents were born in the 40s and some of the (re-writing of) history you've come up with rings true.

However, unlike most kids today born in similar circumstances (not into poverty, in "the West" etc.) they had to struggle initially. When my parents moved to London, and I was around 4 years old, we lived in an apartment where the toilet was outside in the landing and shared. I don't recall, but my Dad always went first to ask the druggies to move before he then took me.

People didn't have their own homes and cars and even heating when they first left home and started work.

Now, most kids leave University and complain if they can't immediately get a car, buy a house and go on an expensive holiday within the first 12 months.

So OP ... you are just looking at what those people in the 40s are doing now, totally ignoring (ignorance? blinkers?) how they got there.

It's like saying "oh wow, he's on top of Everst, lucky bastard just appearing there to take photos" without realising the life or death climb he took to get there.

...you forgot to add 'because you grew up in a time and place benefiting from the turmoil, exploitation and destitution everywhere else'. Seems to me that 'our' (ie USA/NW Europe) current 'issues' are a direct result of 50 years global inequality.

My parents were born in 1941 and 1945. I can guarantee that their experience and perception of the world, both past and present, isn't as you painted it.

My dad was born in the 40s..he asked me what this new thing "google" is.

(I'm very glad I was born a couple of decades after)

OK, but you would be virtually dead now!

I was born in the 40s (just) and I often wonder how life is different today. (It's the kind of thing people born in the 1940s do.)

The biggest difference is that terrorism, pollution, declining economic growth, global warming, allergies, political correctness and many more burdens we carry round with us today were unknown. It was an optimistic era of ever increasing growth and consumption.

Smoking was 'in' - even in the cinema. We had no idea where oil even came from before 1973 and even less idea how dependent we were on its supply.

And with a bit of luck we even might get a pension out of it all...

PS. I am not dead, virtually or otherwise.

& let's not forget that in the 40s & 50s (and beyond) parts of Europe didn't have electricity, there was lots of poverty & subsistence farming (mass emigration), the fear of nuclear holocaust, dictators (did we forget Franco & his incompetent cousin Salazar), never mind the dictators & coups that were rampant in Latin America.

I was born at the beginning of the 40s - I wonder what planet I grew up on. My life certainly didn't resemble the one depicted in the first post.

Just out of curiosity, do you and your wife have the same native language?

I certainly would never have quoted the above, but as olygirl conveniently did so - I can only say that the OP can thank his lucky starts he wasn't born in the forties. Had he used that sort of language he would have had his mouth washed out with soap.

and the birch or the belt.

You're welcome.

Or if he attended UK private schooling, something stuck up his a**e!

Whatever happened to solidarity? Seems to be sadly missing nowadays amongst those born in the late 70's, 80's and 90's. It's all me, me, me.

Maybe time lends enchantment but, as someone born in the early 50's, I seem to remember much more solidarity during the hippy era and up to the early 1980s. Something seems to have gone wrong along the way (or maybe it's the beginning of dementia).

Anyway, try not to forget that one day you will also be 65-70 years old and some young thing will be complaining about having to pay YOUR pension

These were problems for the USA, not anyone living in the UK...