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).
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.
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.
I’m more convinced the human race is gonna die off the way futurama predicted it. The one named “I Dated a Robot”
The two are related. Oil money supports both the suburban Ponzi scheme and also Reaganite deregulation.
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.
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.
He’s not? There’s literally an episode about how Homer is so lucky in life that he drives a man insane.
Uhhhh… Homer has three kids, surely?
According to the available tax information he has nine kids, one of which is a Vietnam veteran.
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.
