what was the economy like when you were young?

Question

this is for my homework so i would appreciate any answers, and its supposed to be targeted at older people

Answer 1

I'm in my early 40's and I grew up in the 70's in Canada. I remember inflation. We use to ask dad for a nickle to buy candy at the store. A couple years later it was a dime, then a quarter. Within a decade that meant candy bars first doubled in price then were 5 times the price and the bars got smaller too. The excuse was rising price of sugar. We use to get a $1 a week allowance and would go to the movies. That got us in and a pop and popcorn. Then in and pop or popcorn - not both, then it just got us in. So 4 times the price on the price of a theater ticket. Not all inflation was this high, you can see how it was higher for us kids.

I remember OPEC and oil prices increasing. We watched on TV as Americans lined up at the gas pumps, pushing their HUGE boat sized American made cars to get there and there was no gas. We had no supply problems with gas in Canada - just high gas prices.

I graduated in the early 80's from high school. There was no jobs so I went to University and majored in Economics. It was a good choice. Graduating in the late 80's jobs took awhile to find but with a degree were quality jobs with good pay.

Answer 2

Young is a subjective term. I'm 35 y/o. I don't remember the 70's (or I just can't relate to it). The 80's I remember pretty well... the interest rates and inflation were really high in the early 80's but they got better. The stock market and the GDP did really well doing the 80's. It's supposedly called the decade of greed. Watch the movie "Wall Street" or "Barbarians at the gate". The 80's saw significant tax cuts which prompted the growth in the economy. We also saw the Federal debt grow from "high" deficits due to the US trying to outspend Russia so that we'd break them. We did and that started the end of the Cold War. The early 90's went into a recession as oil prices spiked and tax rates were increased in order to pay down the deficits. The early to mid-90's saw good things happening again as did with most of the mid to late 80's. More people where investing in the stock market, more people started buying homes and unemployment dipped to a major low. Most of that ended in April 2000 and really got bad in September 2001. 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003 where one of the worst times in the American stock market but it wasn't the worst times in the economy. Unemployment did go up during those times but nothing like the late 70's or not even close to the 1930's. The 1929 stock market crash and the four years of the Great Depression changed the behaviors of a whole generation for the rest of their lives (my grandparents). The last 3 to 6 months of this year has had a slow down but we still have economic growth. We've had some good growth since the bottom in 2003. The oil prices have hurt us but I believe we'll overcome this better than we did in the oil crisis of the late 1970's. From late 1997 to 2000 was the illrational exhuberance of the Internet bubble. That money may have moved to real estate where there is potentally another bubble about to pop and it's not in the stock market but in the housing market. If you had to compare my answer to those much older than me, I'd say we are living in some very good times... spoiled almost. We've got a huge challenge in 30 years from now so for those that only have a foggy idea of the early 2000's, they're the ones that will have to work harder to solve the economic problems we'll have with an aging workforce and a growing federal debt (in comparison to the total GDP).

Answer 3

G'day tp3reloaded,

Thank you for your question.

It was during the 1970's. We had a phenomenon called stagflation combining high inflation and a stagnating economy with rising unemployment. Depending on where you are, the economy is much better now.

I have attached sources for your reference.

Seasons greetings

Answer 4

That was back in the 70's. Energy prices were high! Inflation was high! Interest rates were high! Morale was low. Unemployment was much higher. It was no barrel of monkeys.

Answer 5

home work in my days was so hard that it made the economy suck and I'm still working on it.