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657wio | What is credit score and how does it work | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Its a quick one-number metric used by lenders to judge how able you are or will be able to pay back your debts. 300 is bad. Noone will lend you anything. 900 is perfect. You could walk into a bank and ask for a $500k mortgage and you should have no problem. How they're calculated is a closely guarded secret. But generally: - the more you pay off your debts (credit cards, line of credit) = good - pay off big % of your debts every month (good) vs. just paying the minimum (bad) - do you have just a few big debts like a mortgage and a line of credit that you make regular payments on? good. Or do you have lots of small debts like 3 credit cards, and 4 store credit cards that all carry balances? - more outstanding debt = bad. Of course this is one side of things. If you have a bad score but just got a massive raise, then your chances improve. Or a lender could also say \"pay off some of this debt first, then we'll talk about a loan.\"",
"It's a score that let's a bank know how responsible you are with your money, and how risky it is for them to lend to you. In other words, it's used to gauge how likely you are to pay off loans every month for long as it takes to pay the loan off completely. Essentially, a credit score is a **responsibility score** -- it won't *just* apply to loans. We'll talk about that later. Several factors are used to come up with your credit score. * **35% of your credit score comes from you payment history.** Basically they'll look at it all the loans and credit cards you've ever had, as well as stuff like insurance payments and rent, and see how often you make a late payment. So if the monthly payment on your auto loan is due on the 15th of every month, and you frequently pay it on the 25th, that will lower your credit score. *This means that paying stuff on time is really, really, important.* * **30% of your credit score comes from your credit utilization rate.** Your credit utilization rate is how much of your available credit you actually use. This is simpler than it sounds; take the amount you spend on a credit card, and divide it by your credit limit. Example 1: You have a credit card with a $1000 credit limit. You put about $200 on your credit card every month. Now divide $200 by $1000. The answer is 0.20. So your credit utilization rate is 20%. Example 2: You have a credit limit of $11000. You put about $9500 on your credit card each month. Divide $9500 by $11000. The answer is 0.86, so your credit utilization rate is 86%. Now, it's important to note here that a credit utilization rate of 20% or less is *good*. It means you're using credit to buy things, but not a crazy amount. This, along with a good payment history, makes you look great. BUT if your credit utilization rate is way higher, like, 86%, that makes you look very, very, bad. That tells bank that *most* of the money you spend is borrowed (credit is essentially borrowed money. Pay with your credit card now, then pay back the bank later). So let's say I'm the bank and you're asking me for an auto loan. If your credit utilization rate is 90%, I definitely don't want to give you that loan. If so much of the money you spend is borrowed, how can you possibly have enough money to make payments on the auto loan? Onward, financially savvy steed. * **15% of your credit score comes from how long you've been using credit.** Basically, this is just how long you've had credit cards, auto loans, etc. If you're 18, it won't be much. If you're 30, it'll be a lot higher. But remember, just like credit utilization rate, a long credit history doesn't help you if you have late payments; it actually hurts you. * **10% of your credit score comes from your mix of credit.** Really simple -- do you have one credit card and that's it? Or do you have a credit card, a mortgage, two auto loans, and a personal loan? Much, much better. Having different kinds of credit to your name looks good. That doesn't mean run to the bank and start opening different types of accounts to get a good mix, though. You'll eventually probably end up with a good mix of credit without even trying to. Essentially, this is just a grownup thing. A really young person doesn't really need a mortgage and an auto loan. But a 50 year old probably does. * **The last 10% of your credit score comes from new accounts.** What you don't want to do here is open a whole lot of new accounts (like credit cards) in a short amount of time. If I open five credit cards in three months, that tells the bank that I'm opening a credit card, finding out I can't pay for it, then opening another one just to pay for the first one. And a third credit card to pay for the second... You get the idea. And that's what a credit score is. But where does it come from? Who gives it to you? Credit bureaus. There are three credit bureaus. Equifax, Transunion, and Experian. So here's how it works. You get a $3000 personal loan from the bank. You and the bank agree that you will pay them back $83.33 per month for three years. You pay the $83.33 every single month for three years, just like you said you would. Every single month, your bank will report to one of these three credit bureaus to let them know whether you're paying them on time or not. That information will go on your credit report and be used to come up with your score. OR let's say you're renting an apartment for $600 a month. You pay your rent late about eight months out of the year. Every single month, your landlord tells the credit bureau whether you were on time or late. Those eight late payments will make your score lower. (Not every landlord reports to the credit bureaus, btw.) So one of those credit bureaus will use all that stuff that got sent to them by banks, landlords, etc, and use the above breakdown to spit out your score. Two really important takeaways here. One is to **live within your means**. Cannot be stressed enough. Just because you *can* buy a 2016 Camarro does not mean you *should.* Yes, you might be able to get the loan from the bank, but can you pay that loan back? You might not have $1000 laying around, but if you really, really want to go ahead and buy that stupid really big TV, a credit card will do the trick. That doesn't make it a good idea. Remember, credit is *borrowed* money. Not *fake* money. Whatever you borrow, you have to pay back, with *interest*. And the other takeaway is that **the worse your credit score is, the more expensive life is.** See, you can have a bad credit score and still get that auto loan. The difference is, if your score is bad, you might have an interest rate something like 18%. That's really, really, high. Like, stupid high. If you have an interest rate that high, you will end up paying many thousands of dollars more than the actual price of the car. Or, you'll have to pay the bank back *more* then you put on your credit card. See how a low credit score costs you money? Let's say you're applying for a job, and the employer looks at your credit (this is really common with government jobs). Remember waaaay up top where we called your credit score a **responsibility score**? If your score is low, that employer will think you're irresponsible, and they won't give you a job. So again, your low score cost you money. A lot of landlords will even look at your credit. Having a low credit score can actually make it harder for you to find a place to live. Your credit score is really, really, important. Having a higher one makes life much easier, financially. Don't just spend money and hope for the best. Use that breakdown above and maximize your credit score. Live within your means, be smart, and think about what you're buying. Thirty year old you will thank you."
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658fha | Why is calling someone "retarded" unacceptable, but calling someone "autistic" totally fine? | I see and hear people call others autistic all the time (see: autistic screeching), but the moment the word retard is spoken or written, people go crazy. Why? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Both are equally offensive when used as to describe something in a negative way. I think retarded is used more frequently and that is why it seems less acceptable.",
"Autistic is a simple description. You'll find a lot of people in the world who are quite proud of being autistic. The r-word started off as a simple description of a person with learning difficulties, but seeing as how people immediately adopted it as an insult, now it serves purely as a reminder to learning disabled people that apparently the world thinks very little of them.",
"It's subjective. Taking offense is different for different people. So when people get on ELI5 and ask \"Why is X bad while Y is okay?\" you have to answer the questions \"who is saying X is bad, and who is saying Y is okay?\" If they're the same people, that's where you explore. But if they're different people, the two have no correlation. Why does dad think hard R action films are okay for the kids, but mom thinks romantic comedies are not? Well, because they're two different people who have different lines in the sand on their own opinions about two totally different things.",
"Evolution of language. \"Retarded\" used to be an acceptable term to refer to someone with learning difficulties. As others have said it was applied as an insult both to people who really were retarded and those who were not. Someday \"autistic\" will probably also be considered offensive and the official term will be something else. \"Learning disabled\" and \"special needs\" were in there too."
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658j13 | Why is Anime stigmatized in Western society? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'd say it's because the vocal minority of weeaboos make the community at large look bad, or at least less approachable. The waifu pillows, the child-like voice work of female characters in sexualized scenarios, or sexualized clothing. The vibe doesn't coalesce with many in the west. Add to that the sheer scale of some animes and you have a hard time pulling in fans. Personally, it's the sameness of them. The cookie cutter formula many popular anime's utilize doesn't engage me. Action movies from the 80s and 90s lead to a fatigue for that genre because there were no new stories, just new cast members. That's my issue, at least.",
"Look at r/anime to get an idea. It's a vocal minority of super fans that take it to a level of well... weirdness. Every post on r/anime is about \"best girl\" or some fan art with panties or other super sexualized weird shit. Meanwhile tons of people, myself included, love anime while hating the ecchi fan service nonsense that attracts the weirdos but we don't like to say it too often because people would associate us with the fringe weirdos.",
"Is it stigmatized? Maybe 20 years ago but anime has been vastly popular for a while in the US. Even in the 90's we had Dragon Ball Z playing on the cartoon channels.",
"Don't think anyone has mentioned this but when Anime first started to arrive to the west in the 80s, it was mostly the kind of sexy anime aimed at teenage boys that is full of boobies, and those importing the anime marketed it like that. Obviously there are whole genres of anime, but because these kinds were the west's first contact thats what they became known for, and it takes a long time to undo those cultural connotations. Its that reason that you will probably find a lot of people who watch studio ghibli but wouldn't consider themselves \"anime fans\", as anime to them is anime from the 80s, i.e. boobies"
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658ln6 | Why do some people find a reason to complain about everything? | It seems like some people go out of their way to find something wrong with every person, place, or thing they interact with. What drives someone to nitpick their way through life, expecting a level of perfection that is unattainable? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It could be a way to distract themselves from deeper, less trivial problems in their lives. I'd imagine there's more than one reason someone might be like that though.",
"Some people are just never happy. They have a low-level sense of dissatisfaction at all times because they can't stop comparing things around them to a perfect version they can imagine."
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659jtl | At what point did the term "White" become a popular identity term? | Why would people put aside ages of ethnic identity for such a strange identity term? Imagine telling a proper Roman that they were the same "race" as the Marcomanni or even telling Nazis that they were the same race as Slavs. It makes no damn sense at all why these terms exist. It is the same story with "Black" and "Asian" how did this crap all start? Is it just laziness? Loss of cultural identity? Pseudo-science? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I don't know, but that's a very interesting question that you might consider posing on /r/AskHistorians ... this is more up their alley I think.",
"One of the earliest recorded examples of the phrase \"white people\" comes in the Oxford English Dictionary in the 1600s when Europeans became heavily involved in trading African slaves. The difference in color made it easier to justify claiming biological differences between the people that were associated with a hierarchy of races, making it ok in some people's minds to enslave others. However, even before this, around the medieval times, The King of Tars describes the Muslim sultan as black, compared to the white Christians. However, this does not tie exactly with the skin color since, when the sultan converts, he is said to become white. Even before this, around the 6th century BCE, Lucian's Hermomitus describes there being 3 types of people: λευκόί (~white), ξανθοί (~blond), and μέλανες (~melanes) (translations by Google). λευκόί likely referred to Greek people, who did not really consider themself white-skinned and actually considered white-skinned people more feminine as they must spend 24 hours indoors. ξανθοί likely represented the nordics and μέλανες darker skinned people. There may have been differences between different nordic people and different dark people, but as far as Greeks were concerned, people were either Greek or some barbarian so we'll just lump them together."
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659k8g | Where does the term "cop" come from when referring to a police officer? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the 19th century, the verb \"cop\" was used regularly to refer to the arrest of criminals by police officers. Eventually, the police officers were called \"coppers,\" and, later, that was shortened to \"cops.\" Other suggestions for the origins of the term \"cop\" have little support. For example, \"cop\" is not an abbreviation for \"constable on patrol.\" It is also not a reference to large copper badges worn by some police officers of the late 19th century........(Cut copy and paste it from URL_0 )",
"The term copper is originally used in Britain to mean \"someone who captures\". (In British English the term Cop is recorded (Shorter Oxford Dictionary) in the sense of 'To Capture' from 1704, derived from the Latin 'Capere' via the Old French 'Caper'. Wikipedia URL_0",
"Like most terms like this there is not not an exact origin point that can be confirmed. But most theories/legends point to it being from the copper/brass badges worn by police in NYC during the 1800s. These officers were called \"coppers\" and that was eventually shortened to \"cops\"."
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659zk9 | Why is violence, murder and death so widely accepted in movies/TV/Video games, while sex and nudity is considered taboo? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That's mainly in puritan societies that are heavily influenced by religious entities. In many European movies nudity is not such a taboo. Violence is a reflection of a society that's focused on war and guns, where physical strength is important to subdue \"enemies\". Since the US has a huge influence over global entertainment you end up with a skewed view. Go check French movies and Brazilian TV. Nudity is not a big deal there.",
"I'm not saying this is an acceptable or reasonable argument, but in general it seems to be based around the fear of imitation. While some violence can be imitated, most of what we see in films really can't. Your kid isn't gonna be able to fire off a missile or get in a sword fight or fire off a machine gun or stuff like that unless you're a **really** bad parent. But a kid with some free time and a friend of the opposite (or same in some cases) sex and some curiosity? That can go places. Combine this with a heavily lobbied focus on abstinence-only sex education (the argument generally being that teaching them how to be safe during sex \"encourages\" it) means that there's a paranoid fear of sex among more heavily conservative parents, which means they don't want their kids exposed to it at all under fear of them doing it. And that fear can tie back into the heavily puritan roots of the founding of the USA, which focuses a lot on the \"original sin\" of man being sex.",
"Because we know that violent depictions do not necessarily encourage actual violence,but that sexual depictions actually stimulate sexual activity. For young people this is a concern, but not as much for adults.",
"This is because of a deep rooted mentality in America of Sex being Taboo or something not to be talked about. This first cane out of Puritan ideology during early America and rose again during the late 1800s and 1900s. This conservative nature can be seen in portrayal of the Gibson girl vs the \"Flapper\" where freedom of expression (of ones body) was shunned and so on... We've became more liberal as a society as time goes on but sexuality and nudity still is a big NO because of this old way of thinking. It's funny because this wave of puritan Ideology with began England long ago never really rose back up like it did in America. Moreover, Europeans have a great understanding of Nudity used in Art as they have been subject to it in their history and culture unlike Americans. Just look at the statues and paintings around old Europe and then look at the younger but still older American paintings... you will see a variation in the amount of clothing.",
"It depends on where you live. It's quite the opposite in places like France and Australia. The US has a ridiculously prudish culture in many ways. Where else in the first world do you see shit like abstinence only education and no sex until marriage pledges?",
"To simplify, violence is fictional while nudity is real. Not that I agree but that's the line of thinking.",
"Odd thought. Have you noticed how little violence is created on YouTube. It is strange how when you leave it up to people the number one thing they want to share is knowledge or laughs. To me that is encouraging.",
"thats actually mostly western cultrue. In japan, for instance, its actually more of the opposite."
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65advm | Stalinism vs Maoism vs Trotsykism | I see these varieties of communism referenced but I don't understand the difference. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Stalinism doesn't exist. It's basically a slur for anyone who loves Stalin. But usually it references the tendency of Marxist-Leninism. Before showing what the difference between Marxist-Leninism, Trotskyists, and Maoism (short for Marxist-Leninist-Maoism) you must know what Marxism is. Marxism is a body of analysis and critique of capitalism. It forms the basis of the worldview of communists and it is the utter rejection of liberalism. Marxism is considered by communists to be a science in that it is a constantly developing theory shaped by a cycle of making theory, practicing it (applying it to the real world), and then changing the theory to accommodate for what works and what doesn't. Marxism also assumes the world to be ever changing so it develops as the world evolves. Marxist-Leninism is considered to be a major scientific advancement of Marxism and also differs from Marxism in that it isn't solely analysis and critique, but also a description of how revolution should occur, how we organize the workers, how society should look like, and how to continue combating capitalism and liberal ideology after revolution. Some of the major advancements include: -**Analysis of imperialism**, how rich Western countries maintain overall high living standards, wealth, and decadence by exploiting the Global South (what some people today would call world systems theory, neoliberalism, or 'globalism'). -**The vanguard party**, posits that the revolution must be organized in order to be successful. The most devoted workers form what is called a vanguard party which acts as the central leadership in revolution, and after revolution becomes the government. -Indepth analysis of the state and how it can be a tool of oppression depending on which class controls it. -Posits and proves that revolution is more likely and more successful in developing and more exploited Global South countries. -**The Peasantry is Revolutionary**, it is recognized that the peasantry is also an oppressed class with similar interests to industrial workers. In agrarian societies like Tsarist Russia, uniting the proletariat and peasantry is necessary for successful revolution. -Creates the idea of **Left wing nationalism** as a nationalism for oppressed people/nations that is compatible with communist internationalism. -**Socialism In One Country**, the strategy of a socialist state after revolution should be to rebuild and fortify itself against possible counter revolution or invasion/coup/embargo by the West, rather than take an immediate active stance in exporting revolution to other countries. Trotskyism is in opposition to Marxist-Leninism. Leon Trotsky, Bolshevik revolutionary, believed the Soviet Union was abandoning internationalism and was also losing touch with its workers, so he created a new theory that is based on Marxism, is similar to Marxist-Leninism, but rejects some of the advancements and contributes new analysis of its own. Some of these things were: -Rejection of Socialism In One Country for **Permanent Revolution**, a socialist state after revolution must immediately devote as many military and economic resources as possible to exporting revolution to the entire world, so as to subvert capitalism as fast as possible. -Posits the **Degenerated Worker's state theory** which says that the USSR was becoming 'degenerated' or slowly giving way to a new bureaucratic class with interests of its own to the detriment of the workers. -**United Front and Antifa**, Trotsky was the first person to recognize that fascism was not only worse than liberalism but the greatest threat to communism ever faced. He believed that communists should do whatever it takes to combat fascism, including fighting on the streets AND temporarily siding with liberals (United Front). This is also Trotsky's most important contribution, so important that all tendencies of communism from anarchism to Maoism have accepted it and implemented it. Maoism, short for Marxist-Leninist-Maoism, is a scientific advancement of Marxist-Leninism as the name suggests. Currently it is the most popular communist tendency in the world, especially in the Global South. Maoism is not as a big jump from Marxist-Leninism as Marxist-Leninism was from Marxism. Here are a list of some of its advancements: -**Protracted Peoples War**, strategy for revolution which says that the best way to win is to use guerilla warfare and make the war last as long as possible so as to outlast the state and bleed out Western support. -**The Mass Line**, the best keep the Communist party in tune with the people by taking the unorganized ideas and aspirations of the people and forge policy out of it. -**Theory of Social Imperialism**, in many ways this is similar to Trotsky's Degenerated Workers State theory but Social Imperialism theory is considered more accurate, developed, and comprehensive. It posits that the USSR succumbed to revisionism (which is the unscientific rewriting of Marxism) and started engaging in imperialism, an act previously thought to be exclusive to capitalism. Many also conclude from this theory that the USSR was no longer socialist after Khrushchev took power. -**Cultural Revolution**, Mao recognized that a threat to communism would not just come from the outside but also from the inside in the form of revisionism, and if nothing was done to stop it then it would slowly deteriorate and destroy socialism. Cultural Revolution is a method of stopping revisionism by actively finding and removing members of the party and the state who pretend to be communist and do not believe or care about workers liberation, and to continue the fire of revolutionary fervor in the population by having the people take an active effort in fighting dated or oppressive cultural traditions, and destroying positive symbols of the capitalist past. -**\"Class struggle only intensifies under socialism\"**, a new understanding of socialism that reinforces the importance of taking defense very seriously and actively. It is said that class struggle intensifies under socialism because instead of strikes, riots, and insurrection, there is now proxy wars, coups, spies, covert warfare, and more. The capitalist class will do whatever it takes to hold power, and so will the workers, resulting in intensified struggle on a global scale.",
"There's probably a lot of tedious differences that the nice folks at /r/socialism will be happy to explain to you in way too much detail but the main differences are these: Trotskyism: Trotsky believed that the only way to achieve long-lasting communist utopia was to ignite a \"global revolution\" where capitalism worldwide is overthrown and replaced with a single communist society. This is contrasted with... Stalinism: which believes in \"socialism in one country\", i.e. the USSR could survive as a single communist entity and still compete with the capitalist world. Stalinism is also what you think of when you think of the stereotypical USSR: purging political dissidents, rapid, centrally-planned industrialization, and collectivized resources. Maoism: Maoism was Mao's take on socialist revolution as applied to the socio-political climate of china at the time. Mao believed that the peasant class, as opposed to the worker class in Russia, was the key class of a socialist revolution in China, and his policies were mainly geared towards (in theory) improving the lives of peasants through policies like teaching all of the peasants how to forge iron and having them keep small-scale forges on their property or teaching them to exterminate pests to increase their crop yields. These policies would turn out to massively backfire but that's neither here nor there.",
"Stalin and Trotsky were both proletariat communists. Mao was an agrarian communist. In more simple words Stalin and Trotsky believed in the workers struggle (more in line with Marx though Marx thought it would happen in industrial nations). Mao believed in the farmers struggle. Stalin believed in communism in the nation. Stalin wanted to strengthen the USSR rather than expand the revolution. I also believe Stalin wanted to get rid of the SFSR Russia and SSRs in the USSR. Rather than a federal nation have a one nation policy similar to the former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Stalin was more to the right (in the bolsheviks so still very far to the left). Trotsky was a military commander and wanted a global revolution, the USSR should invade the other Bourgeois nations and make them good SSRs. His view on this is similar to the French President and Emperor Napoleon I. Trotsky was to the left in the Bolsheviks. Trotsky was also the legitimate successor to Lenin as leader but a conspiracy led by Stalin robbed him of this. Mao didn't believe in the workers struggle but the farmers and focused his revolution on this. If you look at a GDP chart in china you can see the industrial revolution comes much later than the communist revolution."
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65aihn | Why do people use 'peoples' and 'people' when referring to people as plural? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"'People' is the plural of 'person'. If there is one person in a room, and 4 more come in, the room has 5 people. 'People' can also refer to a national or ethnic group, for example 'the American people'. In this case, 'people' is singular, referring to the group as a whole. 'Peoples' is the plural of this singular use of 'people', and refers to multiple distinct groups of people. For example, 'America contains many different peoples'. If my explanation wasn't clear, try here: URL_0"
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65bzbk | Why was the Roman Army so effective/unbeatable? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They were well-organized, well-disciplined and well-equipped, but far from unbeatable. They sufferred defeats from both the northern 'barbarians' and the more civilized nations around the Mediterranean. By the time the bar of entry to the military was lowered to a 'head count' (prior to some reforms military service was a duty to free, land-owning men who had to supply their own equipment etc) the Roman state was wealthy enough to field permanent, professional armies who could march, drill and practice all-year round. Much of their fighting style was formation based, and since the strength of a formation requires it to be intact they benefited greatly from having disciplined men who wouldn't crack under the pressure of a heated battle. The Romans also made good use of auxiliary troops from the nations they conquered/extracted tribute from, so if they were fighting one Gallic tribe chances were they had e.g Gallic cavalry support from another and so on. The extensiveness of the Roman roads (all roads lead to Rome, remember?) and trade made it a logistical possibility for their armies to be supported even in remote regions where others might've struggled to feed and maintain the equipment of thousands of men. **In essence, they had a big manpower pool to draw recruits from, they could afford to equip them and train them extensively and their infrastructure allowed them to deploy them across vast distances.**",
"In short they were professional soldiers. You really can't compare farmers that fight one season who have poor equipment to roman soldiers trained 24/7 with (at the time) the best gear. By being trained they could execute complex maneuvers, even basic stuff like feign retreat is not possible for a peasant army , not crack when the lines are broken, and most importantly not be discouraged by numerical disadvantage. Most battles the Romans fought they were outnumbered 2/1 even 3/1 and still they won. Caesar is famous for what he could achieve with just one legion(he had a lot of luck as well)",
"The Romans fielded legions that were well trained, well disciplined, and well provisioned; but isn't what made them great. They were unbeatable because they had the full weight of the Unified Roman state behind them. Rome could afford to lose a legion. It could build another. It's opponents might put an army in the field that could crush a Roman legion, but it couldn't be sustained. The Romans could afford to lose and lose and lose, but their opponents would be ground to a nub by attrition, and lose on the long arc.",
"One thing that people aren't mentioning is that the Roman Army was conditioned to kill through repetition and training. So where you have a barbarian/peasant with a pitchfork that will swing it wildly at your face Roman solders were conditioned to carefully and mechanically parry a strike with their shield and stab the enemy through the heart, under the ribcage and move on to the next enemy without a second thought. After a few minutes of fighting the front line soldier would rotate out back to the rear of the line and have a good 30 minute break before they had to fight again. If a soldier died the soldier behind him would take his place and their nerve was hard to break because of how regularly trained and conditioned they were.",
"As many people have pointed out, they were very well trained - actual soldiers vs civilians. If you've seen the film, think of 300, the part where leonidas says 'Spartans, what is your proffession?'. The roman army was something of a real world analogy. There is one super simple element that contributed hugely to their success though. Stabbing vs slashing. Most ancestral warfare was over relatively quickly, with relatively low degrees of casualties. It's hard to convince humans to kill other humans, and harder still when its hand to hand combat. In contrast to most of their enemies (barbarians), the romans used a well planned style of combat - they used their gladius's, and simply stabbed. A hack wound with a knife/sword/axe is actually relatively easy to survive, even with ye olde style medicine. It also deflects very easily off armour, shields, helmets, and everything else. A small, basic, 5cm deep stab wound is almost always fatal. It could go straight through basic leather armour without difficulty, and could be done without breaking formation. Stabbing vs slashing was a huge component of the roman armys success in beating minimally well armoured opponents (such as barbarian hordes)"
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65c6pu | How does Jesus's death allow all humans who worship Jesus to be forgiven from their sins? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the Jewish tradition, animals were sacrificed for sins but only temporarily. Every year they were supposed to go to the temple in Jerusalem and do this. They were waiting (and still are) for a messiah to come to take their sins away permanently. They don't believe Jesus was the messiah for lots of reasons but two big ones were that he died and he didn't overthrow the romans. Christians believe he is the messiah and that his death replaced the need for animal sacrifices and that he is the bridge to God (his father). Because he had the power to call angels down he could have easily gotten away from dying on the cross and several times Jewish leaders tried to capture him or stone him and was able to miraculously get away.",
"God offers people to forgive their sins, he doesn't force them. God promises eternal life to those who believe that his son died for their own, personal sins. Every human is free to believe it or not. > **John 3:16** > For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. As to why God does it: He is forgiving. Humans have commited crimes and sins since ages ago. God is holy and cannot accept any people with sins in front of him. In the time before Jesus, this was solved by letting sacrifices die as a compensation. After Jesus died, this changed. As to your second question, how Jesus could control the way of his death: Jesus *is* God (John 10:30). He can literally control the universe. So he could also choose the way he died. However, death by cross was determined long before Jesus came into this world (have to look up references, sorry). Since Jesus and God are one, one cannot contradict the other. So, Jesus was more or less just fulfilling prophecies. As to why God does all this - God loves us (the same way a mother loves her child). Just we humans aren't very good at listening. Worshipping God is just a result of being thankful for Jesus dying for me, granted, I am not very good at that. Hope that helps.",
"Nietzsche said it was Jesus enslaving us in guilt for all eternity. He did something we didn't ask for so that we would be beholden to him forever.",
"I think you're asking logical questions of a faith based system and you're going to be disappointed."
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65cq5i | Why do movie studios spend so much money trying to win an Oscar. | Why is winning an Oscar important. By the time that the oscars come around the movie has already been around long enough that it wouldn't impact sales of the movie? Why incur the additional expense? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Actually an Oscar means greater sales in secondary markets (international, DVD, streaming) plus the studio, producers director, cast and crew are more distinguished in their careers, which can increase interest in later projects. How many times have you seen: \"from Oscar winning director bkah blah ... \"",
"The Academy Awards are the biggest film award in the world. Look at all the press it receives. They also announce the winners the next day and if you have that title of \"best ______\" in your film people will watch your movie just because of that accolade. Essentially people will watch your movie more because of this and make you more money on DVD sales streams etc."
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65cxwx | How do people make those videos where everything is going backwards, but the person's mouth is saying all of the words forwards? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Generally, practice. You can practice speaking backwards - not as hard as it sounds, but takes time and patience. Record yourself speaking normally, reverse it and learn how to mimic the sound you got. Bam, speaking backwards. Then just film it, reverse it and you get the video you asked for."
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65cz60 | Why does movie studios rename movies to another english title when the movie is launched in foreign countries? | One example would be the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales", which is translated to "Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge" when the movie is launched in Sweden. In Sweden, were Swedish is spoken, it would be logical to translate the title into Swedish, but why translate the title to **another English title**? Pirates of the Caribbean is not the only example. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It was renamed in other countries too, including much of Europe. Likely it has to do with trademarks. For example, *Zootopia* was renamed *Zootropolis* in a couple of countries because there was already trademarks out there for the first name.",
"Some of it has to do with the studio's perception of how the people will relate to the title. \"Dead men tell no tails\" is a pretty widely recognized line in the US, especially among those who have been on the Disney ride. Maybe it is not so well known in Sweden, or the Swedes aren't as fond of snarky lines about the dead. And maybe the studio was just worrying too much. This happens with books as well. The first Harry Potter book was renamed in the US because the publisher thought no one would know what a Philosopher's Stone was."
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65dmf9 | Why does gentrification affect cities more than rural areas? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For gentrification to occur, many upper/upper-middle class people have to move to an area. Rural areas are very spread out and the people that live their have often been there for generations. So there isn't much change going on."
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65e1jt | What happens to people who were previously charged with illegal possession of marijuana after a new law legalizes it? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It depends on the exact nature of the new law. All else being equal, they may still be convicted, or if already convicted may still be imprisoned, because they broke the law *as it stood at the time*. However, recognising that this is kind of silly where a law is introduced that basically says \"welp, we shouldn't have had that other law in the first place\", legislatures may put provisions in the law that cause pending prosecutions to be dropped, and may even automatically commute the sentences of people already convicted. This, though, is by no means guaranteed. All of that actually applies to *anything* that becomes legal after having previously been legal, not just possession of cannabis.",
"They are still guilty of that crime, unless there is a law or executive action that provides clemency for those people.",
"If I get it ticket for driving the wrong way on a one-way street, and they change it to a two-way street the next day, I still broke the law, and the ticket is still valid. The same is true with marijuana laws. Many states are *choosing* to drop pending cases, and are offering those convicted early release. But they are under no legal obligation to do so."
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65fwtm | How did the business suit become standard fashion for men in a diverse number of cultures around the world? | I saw a picture recently of the leader of an Asian country wearing a business suit, and I found myself wondering how western fashion made its way to Eastern cultures and cultures all over the world. How did this happen? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The fact that Europe colonised almost the entire world about 150 years ago and spread their culture all over their colonies made it happen.",
"Follow up ELI5: Why isn't there a summer version of a man's suit?",
"Other cultures didn't see it as \"copying the West.\" They saw it as \"This is how rich people in rich countries dress.\" It's like how the preppiest preppies started popping their collars in the '80s, so it spread because anyone who wanted to consider themselves a preppie started popping their collars, too. Except on a global scale.",
"The original purpose of a business suit was to set management and ownership apart from labor. A suit says, \"I can wear expensive, delicate, hard to clean fabrics because I am so important I don't have to get dirty and sweaty anymore.\" About the same time, industrialization was in full swing and European colonization was at its peak. Even in countries that resisted colonization, like Japan, were trying to imitate Europe so they wouldn't fall further behind. This lead to European style business practices being spread around the globe. In those places, the message was even stronger, the suit said you were part of the future.",
"I see a lot of different answers with different aspects of this but none that really line up to the perspective that I read about when I studied historical fashion! The suit became fashionable at the fall of the aristocracy and the rise of the bourgeoisie. When people, men, started gaining power and influence because of their accomplishments, which is tied to the industrial revolution, and it was no longer something that was strictly inherited the philosophy and society changed and the view of the nobility was that they were lazy, gaudish, extravagant, decadent, wasteful and just terrible overall. So the old power fashion with extravagant and overdone clothing became the symbol for something bad. Like this: URL_0 Also, look at the legs, and heels on the shoes. Those kind of things became very feminine and the anti-thesis of men. Men where supposed to be rational and strict and those kind of expressions where for women who are more emotional etc. The view on sexuality also changed a lot at the same time, especially female sexuality. Sexuality was seen as something irrational and the purity of women and romance of love became more prevalent as well. So the suit became the fashion for men with power. But how do you differentiate a bad suit from a good suit from a great suit? You really need to understand the details to actually tell the difference and that played into the idea of your own accomplishments etc. In many ways the fashion became so much more elitist. With the old fashion it was pretty much bigger was better, the one with the biggest and most extravagant clothing had the most power. Everyone could tell, from the poorest farmer to the king himself. But with the new fashion of the suit only the people in the know could tell. A poor farmer could impossibly tell the difference from what was considered a great suit from a simply good suit. So by simply knowing that it gave someone power. My favorite example of this is the male fashion of watches that is still big today, unless you actually know you can't tell the difference from a superexpensive watch and a regular watch. Most of what makes the expensive watch so expensive is on the inside, it is the engineering and craftmanship that makes the watch special more than its gold and diamonds etc. This also plays into the ideal of men as being rational and logical, there is a certain worth in craftmanship, jewelery is just pretty and doesn't have an inherent worth. Things that are just pretty are for women to appreciate, men appreciate things with absolute worth, or that is the idea anyway. And you can see this ideal and philosophy in a lot of things, it plays into why men care so much about sports, because it is seen as having an absolute worth, it is something you can measure. So it is seen as more important than other things. And of course, Europe where this all started have been the powercenter of the world and been seen as the ideal for most of the world in many ways so other cultures adopted this as they were dealing with Europe in different ways. Or you know, the whole imperialism as well where we pushed our ideals on other cultures.",
"You should ask this question over on /r/AskHistorians if you want an answer that isn't pulled out of someone's ass.",
"Everyone is grouping up China and Japan into the same \"Eastern wears Western\" status, but the way western suits are worn in Japan and China are entirely different. In Japan it is a very formal symbol of being a Business person. But in China only businesses which are partly foreign owned and make most of their money dealing with foreign clients require this. Most regular business (at least in Beijing) dress smart casual to the office and the formal places would just require a dress shirt and dress pants. Actually it is a joke in China that if you wear a suit, people will think you are an apartment rental agent (real estate) because that is the only job that really requires all their workers to wear suits. You will be surprised to know that Chinese people don't wear suits to formal occasions - if you go watch an opera or to an orchestra performance or go to a nice club you will rarely see any guy in a western suit. Most regular middle class Chinese men don't have a formal suit in their closet. Edit: Also why is no one talking about Thailand. They have their own business suit that is pretty common.",
"Ha, in Oman the standard (for Omani guys only) is a white Dishdasha, a long white robe and head covered with Kuma or turban if you work in government position. It's very cute actually. Every Omani wears it at work. And it absolutely has to be white. After work you can wear whatever color you. Want, and I have seen some very colorful Dishdashas in my life. I lived in Muscat for 7 years, only just moved back to Europe this month and do miss the look of Omanis in their spotless, crisp white Dishdashas. They are very noble. [Check out this blog post]( URL_0 )",
"The most apparent answer is the history of British colonialism, and the rise of English global domination (USA and UK as amongst economic powerhouses, leading to a spread of Western culture, language (English), and standards). You may argue otherwise, but the colonial effects are still alive in many regions, such as Southeast Asia, where I am from. Even beauty standard still pathetically look up to Western one; there are many skin bleaching products for example, marketed not only to women but even to men, as dark skins in this region are deemed 'lower class'/'inferior'/'not beautiful'. It's a hard truth to swallow, but a truth nonetheless. (sorry I digress a bit)",
"The suit is typically British in origin, and when the suit was becoming popular in Britain, Britain ruled most of the world, so it spread.",
"The \"business suit\" as we know it stabilized its current form in the late 19^th in Europe, which was then the center of the universe while being unbashedly engaged in world-wide colonialism. The later allowed some rare occurences of gifted natives being sent off to the best European universites then accessing high ranking posts in the colonial machinery. This contributed to the worldwide acceptance of *the suit* as the uniform of the trustworthy businessman. Some colonies acceded independance through brutal wars, and some of the newly formed nations struggled with dictatorships, civil wars and foreign influences in full Cold-War mode, which led to some brutal de-europeanisation campaigns. At some point, in Cambodia, wearing a suit would have been reason enough for the revolutionary police to shoot on sight, as would have done the Red Guard in Mao's China. By the last decade of the 20^th century, the concept of violent revolution was becoming unfashionable while international commerce soared, reviving the need for buisnessmen across the globe to speak a common language, including sartorial language.",
"The \"it's colonization, bro!\" seems to suggest Asian countries were forced to wear suits. This hypothesis does not make sense because they would have got rid of suits after independence. Colonization put these countries into contact with the West, but it was the prestige of Western culture that was attractive to these countries. They felt suits looked modern, efficient, professional and this is why suits have been adopted in the entire world, not because westerners forced them but because they wanted to look like westerners. You can check each single example in history and it is always like this URL_0",
"Recently, the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association refused entry to a High Court judge because he was wearing a dhoti, a loose sarong-like garment that is perfect for tropical India. Dhotis, also called veshtis, have largely slipped out of fashion as more and more men turn to Western outfits such as tailored trousers, which they consider more comfortable and professional. The same Indian men wear dhotis at home or for religious ceremonies. The issue gained heat when Jayalalithaa Jayaram, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, threatened to take away the licences of clubs that denied entry to men who wear Indian outfits. She called it “sartorial despotism” and an insult to local pride. Ms Jayalalithaa has vowed to introduce a new law that will prevent clubs from enforcing their existing dress codes. The objects of the chief minister’s ire include the Madras Boat Club, Madras Gymkhana Club and the aforementioned Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, all of whom frown upon men entering their premises wearing Indian attire. Women aren’t accorded the same level of indignity. They can sail through wearing a sari or salwar kameez.",
"The western suit is descended from military clothing. They make fit-ish blokes look fitter, stronger, more organised, etc. Most traditional clothing is more about either basic practicality or showing off wealth so the suit is an extra type of costume men can add to their culture rather than replacing something they already have.",
"It's the worship garb for the religion of economics. The only unifying worldwide institution.",
"I always thought a standard business suit would be the best outfit for time travel if you had no idea what period you would end up in."
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65gs8g | Why is it that certain numbers are significant across different religions/cultures? | Is there any reason that certain numbers are repeated across different religions/mythologies and within popular culture? Do different numbers resonate with us in different ways? Do we subconsciously assign significance to ordinary numbers? Examples: Jews wandering 40 years in the desert, the flood lasting 40 days, Jesus fasting 40 days, Buddha meditating 40 days. 10 commandments, 10 plagues On the seventh day, 7 deadly sins (to finally cite culture, 7 dragon balls and 7 chaos emeralds) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think many of these are attention bias. You could find examples of many of the lower many cultures: * 2: Yin & Yang, Adam & Eve/Cain & Abel/Jacob & Esau * 3: Holy Trinity, three wishes, \"I divorce thee\" three times, 3 goddesses of the Zorya * 4: Four elements, four humors, 4 creatures in the chimera, four winds, four leaf clover * 5: Pentgram as an occult symbol, 5 books of the Torah, 5 Pillars of Islam * 6: 6-6-6 mark of the beast, 6 symbolic foods in a Seder plate, Six articles of Islamic belief * 7: 7 days of creation, 7 levels of hell (in Islam), 7 Dragon balls * 8: Noble Eightfold Path in Buddhism, circumcision on the 8th day after a child is born, 8 gates to heaven in Islam, the Eight Immortals in China * 9: 9 is a complete, perfect and divine number in Hinduism, Odin hung on the ash tree for 9 days, Ramadan is on the 9th month of the Islamic calendar * 10: Ten Commandments, 10 was the holiest number for pythagoreans * 11: Tiamat creates eleven monsters to take revenge for the death of her husband, The eleventh hour * 12: Twelve disciples, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 Petals in Anahata (Heart Chakra), Odin had 12 sons, 12 signs of the zodiac * 13: at age 13 a Jewish boy becomes a man, 13 is considered unlucky or sinister, 13 represents the 1 prophet and 12 Imams in Islam, Jesus had 13 total disciples (Matthias replaced Judas) * 14: Rama's exile in the forests was 14 years, Osiris torn into fourteen parts * 15: Julius Caesar killed on March 15th, Passover is the 15th day of Nisan, Quinceañera The lower number will have more significance in more cultures due to their simplicity and are more common. Numbers divisible by 10 will also have more significance attached due to our base-10 numbering system.",
"Probably because many religions developed from each other. Noah flood is ripped off from the Epic of Gilgamesh.",
"> Jews wandering 40 years in the desert, the flood lasting 40 days, Jesus fasting 40 days… It's worth noting that these three are [all from the same source]( URL_0 ). The number 40 was used proverbially to mean “a lot”.",
"Probably because people, in works of fiction (like Dragon Ball or Sonic) feel comfort in perpetuating those numbers as well.",
"The human brain loves to detect patterns, and certain numbers seem special to humans -- we tend to use these over and over. - 7 because that's the number of items the human short-term memory can hold - 10 because that's the number of fingers we have - 40 I have no idea"
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65h10j | Is the general population becoming more or less religious as our understanding of the universe increases? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The general population in the vast majority of countries doesn't actually have much access to the understanding of the universe, and is only marginally affected as the upper echelon of society gains this knowledge. Generally as people gain a deeper understanding of science and technology they will become less religious (as ideas previously 'explained' by religion become better explained by science). This is only a small percentage of the population however, and there are still plenty of flat earthers, people who don't understand what evolution is, and people who believe the earth is only a few thousand years old. Keep in mind by posting this question on Reddit, you've proved yourself to be in the top 5% or so of all technology users in the world. Similarly the typical reading level of an adult American is about Gr. 6 Ultimately: The well educated are becoming less religious, everyone else... not so much.",
"Religion, historically, has been used to explain things we cannot understand. The more we understand and can explain through science, the less need there is for religion. Many people find comfort in religion beyond explaining things (or they disagree with the science and prefer the religious explanation, such as heaven/afterlife). Tl;dr: yes."
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65h2zo | Why are humans naturally psychologically damaged by taking another human's life, or killing most things? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It largely depends on *empathy*, the ability to imagine an outside perspective combined with personal experience. Most people understand and consider that other people, and other creatures, have lives and (at least) instinctive goals if not necessarily goals on a conscious level as we understand that. This can make us hesitant to wound or kill, and often remorseful if we do hurt or kill an animal or another person. That said, there are exceptions, people whose brains work differently, such that they don't feel empathy nor remorse when they hurt or kill.",
"I took a life. A guy was actively and without a doubt attempting to kill innocent people. He had to die. The best thing that ever happened to me was when I went to see the required shrink. They told me that it was okay to not feel bad about killing someone. I felt fucked up at first because I felt zero sadness or empathy for this guy. Telling me that helped. Still to this day, I'm really glad I killed him. If I had shot some kid with a realistic BB gun, I'm sure I would feel like shit, but that wasn't my situation."
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65h9fv | why do we treat/accept Monday as the first day of the week, but almost all calendars show Sunday as the first day of the week? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I don't know about Monday being the first day of the week. It's moreso the first day of the workweek, and why its treated like the first day of the week probably originates with that. In fact, in Vietnamese, Sunday is literally translated to \"First day\" and Monday is \"Day two\" and so on for the rest of the days.",
"In my experience (in the UK) it's more common to see calendars and diaries showing Monday as the first day. But Sunday-first isn't rare. Judaism denotes Saturday as the day of worship, and Sunday as the first day of the week and a working day. Christianity moved the day of worship and rest to Sunday, probably as a deliberate contrast to Judaism, but still traditionally regards it as the first day of the week. Western societies that have become largely secular but have Christian roots retain Sunday as the day of rest but as work, not religion, has come to dominate people's life it's natural to consider Monday, the first day of a period of work after a period of rest for most people, as the first day of the week."
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65hije | Howcome English text is used so frequently in countries such as China Japan and Korea? | Something like a billboard for McDonalds, it would have English text saying "Fast Food". Why is this? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"English-speaking cultures are extremely powerful in the world if you haven't noticed, to the point that people involved in international business are going to learn English as a necessity. Once this is known people can communicate even if neither has English as a first language; a Japanese businessman might speak to an Indian businessman in English because they both learned in order to also do business in American markets. The result is that English is also very important as a tourist language. Americans traveling will want to understand the sign but also visiting businessmen will be looking at such signs as well. Since both probably speak English it makes sense to have such a translation.",
"In Japan, very rudimentary English is a mandatory subject in school. Most students don't learn enough to have a conversation, but can read the alphabet and sometimes recognize some common words. So on a business, it says \"this is foreign/international\" yet still may be understood.",
"In China, because marketing. The Chinese shopping mentality is very heavily weighted for foreign products, especially high premium brand name foreign products. Attaching English to your label makes your product seem foreign.",
"I read this before somewhere. In countries like Japan and China(or countries where English isn't an official language, per se), English is used ornamentally often to signify a certain high echelon. This is usually because of the history of white supremacy and what being associated with whiteness or Western culture means. So associating a product by advertising it with English would obviously be a signal that the product is consumed by or advertised to a certain class of audience. That's what I know, at least.",
"English is the \"international language,\" and English-speaking culture pervades nearly every society on earth. Unless one lives in a place like North Korea, most of the world's population is exposed to English with at least some degree of regularity. There are other factors involved too. For example, to many people, the English-speaking world is seen as exotic and alluring, so English is sometimes used as a marketing tool to add appeal certain goods not unlike a seeing French on a wine label in an American store."
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65hyby | What's the Easter bunny got to do with Easter, they don't even lay eggs? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There isn't a known direct link there are ideas behind both and some theories why exactly they were linked. The bunny was originally a hare. Early medieval people believed that hares were hermaphrodites and that they reproduced without having sex. Naturally the church jumped on this and loved the idea of hares since it was similar to the Virgin Mary. Eggs come into it from fasting during Lent particularly in the Orthodox church and middle East traditions. While fasting to keep the eggs edible when they break the fast they would hard boil them. Painting them also became customary, normally red to symbolise the blood Jesus spilt but other colours would also be used. As what they've both done to link up with each other then that's a bit up for debate. One theory is that the pagan goddess Ēostre (note the name) was what married the two ideas together. Early Christians wanted to spread their religion and wanted to find common ground with some of the larger Pagan traditions that were alive in Europe. The idea being it's easier to convert people by saying \"Oh cool you guys worship X? That's funny the truth is Y but I guess overtime passing things down without writing you've changed Y into X. Let us tell you why Christianity and our Y is correct and why you should follow our practices, they're not totally against what you've said they're the same but we've kept records, just look at this awesome big latin book we have...\". Ēostre who also had a feast AND had hares as one of her symbols was the ideal candidate to compare Jesus/resurrection to. Eggs also weren't too far out to link with Ēostre since both eggs and hares are symbols of fertility which she was a goddess of. Let that idea evolve over a few centuries, people forget about Ēostre and just think of Easter as a time for rabbits and eggs and the initial meaning is forgotten but the core Christian ideas still remain."
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65hzce | Is there something wrong with being honest with children about life? | Also, would you agree with the statement, "If you are old enough to ask the question, you are old enough to deserve an answer"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I feel like this is gonna get deleted right away because it doesn't seem like an eli5 question, but lemme answer it anyway because it raises an interesting point. Yes, there is something wrong with it. Because children can't fully comprehend struggles. Young humans are sponges, they pick up on everything. So if you bring up bills and work and other artificial issues, it could mess them up. It wouldn't mess them up if they were natural problems like hunger and death, but they aren't. It's a huge psychological problem among humans that we've created a world we can't tolerate. And that's for adults, an under developed child brain can't begin to understand these things, but it will try and fail in the process. Plus it's just a dick move to ruin a childhood. You only get one and it's not like life itself won't teach them anything you could tell them.",
"There's no objective answer to this. Ethics and the idea of how to raise children varies a lot between families, and even moreso between cultures. It's hard to say what's right and wrong when it comes to raising a child - you could try to compare the 'best' method by seeing what makes them the most successful later in life, but then again not all cultures have the same idea of what success means so that's also hard to measure objectively. In western culture the answer to this question would lean towards a weak 'yes'. It's not *wrong* to be honest to them, but most people seem to prefer white lies and sugarcoating things for children to avoid hurting their feelings, or to preserve their innocence. Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with being honest with children, you just have to put things in a way so they can understand it better."
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65iaps | Why was indigo dropped from the rainbow representation in recent years? Growing up, I always learned it as ROY G BIV. | Not to mention the 7 colors of the DC Lantern Corps. :) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Indigo was invented to make up the number of colours to seven because Isaac Newton was very keen on its mystical power. Although indigo is a real colour, it has a very narrow frequency range and it would be as valid to include something like lime green or cyan.",
"Short answer: because the color we perceive today as \"indigo\" doesn't match any color that is actually in the rainbow, and people have given up describing the rainbow with a color they don't see there. Loooong answer: It's important to know the rainbow doesn't contain every color. It contains every wavelength of light, but wavelength is not exactly the same as color. Most of the light we see from any object or light source doesn't have just one wavelength in it. Instead, it has a combination of wavelengths that would come from separate parts of the rainbow. \"Color\" is something our brains perceive, that is ultimately a description of the combination we are seeing, not of individual wavelengths, except for the rare situations where we are actually seeing one wavelength. The most common example of this is \"purple\", which is the color we perceive when there are wavelengths from opposite ends of the spectrum, what we perceive as \"red\" and \"blue\", coming together from the same place. \"Purple\" happens in nature, but it doesn't happen in the rainbow. \"White\" is a color too, but it's what you get when you smush all the wavelengths together. We use words to describe the colors we perceive, but the relation between those colors and our words can shift over time. For example, suppose you and I get into our wayback machine and go to England, say, 700 years ago. We make friends with a nice couple named Alfred and Sarah. Exhausted and hungry from sorting out the modern-English to middle-English issue, I pull some oranges out of my backpack to share. You and I have seen oranges before, but Alfred and Sarah never have. I hold up two oranges, and ask, \"Are these the same color\"? You and Sarah and Alfred all agree, yes, they are the same color. Then I ask, \"what color are they?\" You and I answer \"orange\", but Alfred and Sarah say, \"yellow-red\". Later, when oranges become more well known in England, we all started using \"orange\" to describe the color of oranges, and it became its own separate color. It's just a coincidence that the color we call \"orange\" is also a narrow band of wavelengths on the light spectrum. Finally, my answer to your question. I'm sure the people in Newton's time had lots of words for colors. Newton assigned just 7 of those words to describe the colors he saw in the light spectrum from one end to the other. He chose those words for at least two reasons. One was he loved the number 7 for mystical reasons, so he divided it 7 ways and used the closest words he had. The other was, maybe, that those colors matched the color words he used then, but the words have drifted in meaning. Maybe what he called \"blue\" we would call \"teal\", and what he called \"indigo\" we would call \"dark blue\". Someone today knowing nothing of Newton and ROY G BIV, doing the same work as Newton, and who loved the number 8, might call the colors of the rainbow Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Teal, Sky, Blue, and Violet. For us, ROYGBV, without the I, lines up pretty well with the color words we use today. The truth is, we just don't use the word \"indigo\" to describe things very often, and when we do, it doesn't describe a color we see in the light spectrum. There was a great online experiment done by Randall Munroe of XKCD, where several hundred thousand people were shown random colors, and then had a field where they could type in any word they wanted to describe that color. After he sorted it all out, there were about 950 colors that had words most people agreed on. Here are the results: URL_0 . Yes, there is a color for \"puke\", and to me it's the right word - it looks pretty pukey. Search for \"Indigo\" and you'll find a dark purple - dark blue with a little red mixed in. It's a color with a name, but it isn't a color in the rainbow.",
"[Serious] Wait! What! The 'colours if the rainbow have been changed? As in they've removed indigo? So is it now, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet? First Pluto now Indigo, what is the world coming to?"
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65iba2 | Why do (former) communist states always show off their army and weaponry in annual parades? | As far as I know every (former) communist state holds annual military parades where they show off their army and weaponry. What makes these states do so and why is it necessary? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well the United States has airshows, it's not really unique to former communist states. Essentially if your country has any sense of nationalism they'll occasionally show off their Armory. And after about a decade it just becomes a common tradition.",
"I'm not a specialist, historian or something, but with a little bit of google you can easily find too many exceptions for this question to be even valid. Almost all countries that were once colonized do military parades to celebrate their independence, or the day when the republic was institutionalized. The French do it to celebrate the fall of the Bastille. Make a search for how the Indians and Mexicans do it.",
"To put it colloquially, it is willy waving. The arguement goes that citizens of communist or repressive societies are subservient to the state. It is important that the population gets this into their heads otherwise they might start challenging why their lives are shit but the party heads or dictators live in luxury. This is achieved by making up an external enemy and to regularly show off their strength. In capitalist countries the people are given scraps and so feel \"better off\". However as the scraps decline we too start willy waving and making up external threats. \"take all the food off the dogs and they will eat you. Leave some scraps and the dogs will eat each other. \"",
"Everyone does this; I don't think it's unique to those countries. In the UK, we have big military demonstrations, air shows, parades... Most countries with a military tradition do this.",
"It's a Russian tradition that expanded to all Soviet states, and when the Soviet Union collapsed, the tradition didn't. And it's not just Russians. Almost everyone does this to some extent, pretty much, including the US. The idea is to show off the power of the state and get people excited about it. \"Look at all these weapons; we're gonna wreck some shit on our enemies!\" \"Hell yeah us!\" This is basically called patriotism (there are differences), and it's good for the leadership of the country because it makes people happy with the country. If most people really love the country, then a person who doesn't love the country will stand out and the country can go and kill that person (well, not the US, but Russia does). You can make people happy enough with parades that it will paper over some of the things people have reason to be unhappy about, like being poor.",
"Didnt know France was a communist state once?!",
"It's not communist states, specifically, that often have demonstrations of military power. Generally speaking, it's highly centralized states that have these shows of force so whether it's communist, fascist, monarchical, etc., it's likely that they have some type of military parade every so often for a number of reasons. First, it's a morale boost. Having a big demonstration gets the people all riled up, gets them feeling patriotic and nationalistic even if the living conditions are destitute. Especially when you believe you're fighting \"the evil *insert whoever you think is evil here*\", the military gets raised up to an exceptionally high role of honor and leadership in society. Think about the war-time propaganda even in the US during the world wars. Secondly, it's used as a show of force. Global politics can often seemingly devolve into a pissing match between two states and being better than the other guy is important for both your country and your geopolitical image. The good old Teddy Roosevelt quote about carrying a big stick sometimes requires that everybody else knows you've got the big stick... So to speak. The US and the USSR fought tooth and nail over every scientific and militaristic accomplisment in the 20th century and is a big reason why there's an American flag on the moon (all the sun bleaching probably turned it into a French flag now! :P). Finally, they become tradition. Regardless of why you had the parade in the first place, they become an annual tradition to distract people from the real world for a little bit. Patriotism and nationalism can be very important to different countries for different reasons but they can be a way to unite the people under a single cause and a single flag."
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65ihbl | why and when clothes went from being used for warmth and protection, to it being socially unnaceptable not to wear them in public? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well for starters that's not the case in all human cultures. For those where it is, the answer almost certainly predates written history, but if i can speculate a little; when humans expanded into cooler regions , wearing clothes became the rule rather then the exception. Not wearing clothes, would carry increased risk of illness and death and so nudity would develop negative connotations. It would probably also become associated with intimacy since it's required for mating. With that background, when conservative religions arose it's no wonder nudity came to be regarded as 'shamefull' (for lack of a better phrase)",
"Honestly I rather suspect clothing started off as a social thing and only later became a thing for warmth and protection. Humans started off in warm climates, and if you look at hunter-gatherers living in warm climates today, the clothes they wear aren't usually needed for warmth or protection (beyond some groin protection perhaps). But they _are_ often highly decorated and different between different groups, and therefore have social significance for telling what group someone belongs too and what their place in it is."
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65iwf4 | In U.S. political debate, what does "globalist" or "globalism" mean? | This is a term that's been in the news a lot lately, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean. Usually it's placed in opposition to "nationalism" and "nationalists," but it seems to be more than just "the opposite of nationalism." | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Globalisation is the phenomenon where increasing free trade and ease of international travel makes the economy less and less local. It is based on the theory (it's essentially proven to be true) that tax-free borders benefit both countries and is true of every two-country combination. It's problem is that some individuals in both countries lose their jobs, as people in the other country are either better or cheaper at it. For example Costa Rica is better at Banana Farming than America, but America is better at building computers than Costa Rica. This means American Banana farmers lose their jobs to Costa Rica, but America gets all the Costa Rican Computer manufacturing jobs.",
"You basically got it. It is also sometimes an antisemitic [dog-whistle]( URL_0 ) meaning \"international Jewish conspiracy.",
"Globalists can still be nationalists. For example, Barack Obama is a nationalist and wants what's best for Americans. Donald Trump is also a nationalist and wants what's best for Americans. The difference, though, is that Obama believes the best world for Americans will come about if decision makers keep the interests of all global citizens in mind. My personal opinion is that both sides have merits. The United States is the most powerful country in the world, and I think it makes sense to stabilize the world by providing basic necessities if there are shortages. This helps prevent starvation, chaos, and the spread of disease. Furthermore, improving the standard of living in the weakest countries as opposed to our own will go further to produce additional scientists and great thinkers. The majority of useful inventions in any country were invented abroad. Donald Trump's nationalist approach could certainly work. The downside is that the rest of the world is hurt, there will be fewer great minds developing abroad, and the rest of the world won't be quite as stable. I always think about how suffragists and globalists in a similar light. In both cases, more people are included in whatever is being done, and the more brainpower the merrier. I participate in the global economy, but there are billions who don't participate to the extent I do. I laid out on value because of that."
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65jj4d | Why are fake news only becoming a problem now? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a factor of scale. Fake newspapers have existed since the invention of print, but it was very difficult and expensive to print and distribute that many papers. Now, with the internet, it is both cheap and easy to spread lies across the entire globe. Yes, not everyone is going to read it, but the people that want to hear it will find it. Think of the National Enquirer. Almost nobody picks those up, but they still make them. Which means that those that do buy, buy regularly.",
"The concepts of fake news has to do with trust or distrust in the media. There's obviously outlets that push false or factually inaccurate news. But the term is being used more broadly now to include biased news. Back in the day it used to be that when reporting on stories the goal was to be as even-handed as possible. The idea was that you wouldn't know the opinion of the author or the publication, their job was to bring you the facts, nothing more. This has changed. Now many or most outlets believe they have to explain the news to you, rather than present the unbiased facts. Once you get into this territory you start bringing in the biases of the authors and the media outlets. Now that it is the norm to include commentary and explanations of the news you bring in the personal views of the author. Journalists are overwhelmingly liberal/Democrat in America. In the last presidential election, of the journalists who donated to a presidential campaign, 96% of them donated to Democrats/Hillary Clinton while only 4% donated to Republicans/Trump. The actual vote of America ended up being pretty close to a 50/50 split in the Presidential races and the local/state races had majorities to Republicans, yet nearly all political donations from the media went to Democrats. This bias means that conservatives largely distrust the media outside of a few media organizations that are clearly biased towards their ideology such as Fox News. Some Democrats tend to distrust the media because they don't feel the media is biased enough towards their ideology. These people tend to get their news from highly biased new sources such as Comedy Central and MSNBC. Moderates and Independents look at both Fox News, MSNBC and see them as being the same thing, just opposite ends of the political spectrum. So they try to find unbiased news by turning to media organizations like CNN. But if you watched the Presidential results the evening of the election you'd have seen Wolf Blitzer's head exploding because Hillary Clinton wasn't winning and a panel of journalists who looked like their dog just died as states continued to go to Donald Trump. It was embarrassing. CNN has become very politicized and left-leaning, and let's not forget it was CNN's employees who leaked debate questions to Hillary Clinton. This blatant bias causes a lack of trust. When the media believes it is their responsibility to take sides and explain the news to people they remove themselves from objectivity and people generally read or watch the news expecting facts. Instead we largely get someone's perception or opinion muddled in with facts. This creates an environment where someone with thin skin like President Trump labels every publication and/or article that is critical of him or his policies fake news. They may not be wrong on the facts, but the perceptions and editorializing of the news is debatable and reasonable people can disagree. This opens up the news for one side to label an article that may not have factually inaccurate information as fake news. So now that concept of what is fake news or real news has become dependent upon the consumer's personal perception of the \"news\" as presented to them."
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65k3fw | Why did we decide that ironed clothes were better? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Having a cleaner person normally means you have options and self-discipline, which we assosiate[sic? phone] with richness. Therefor, they are considered better."
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65k4ml | Where does the click sound come from when giving the okay hand gesture? 👌🏻 | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When I make that gesture there is no sound associated with it. Are you referring to the people who click their tongue when they make this gesture? Or something else?"
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65k603 | Why do women not have to register to get drafted? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Simply because the law does not say so and has not been updated in a long time. When new ideas for how to amend the draft system are being discussed and proposed, they pretty much always include both men and women now, however, nothing with regards to this has changed. In full disclosure, most proposed changes to the draft system are done as a political stance, not as a real thing, because now one is realistically proposing to change the system right now because there is little need to with an all volunteer service, if they ever really needed to do a draft again, they would likely quickly pass and make broad changes.",
"It's fairly recent that women have been allowed to join the military at all, much less in combat roles. When the current draft legislation was created in the 1940s, no one believed that bringing women into the military was a good thing. Women did serve during WWII, but in separate services, not the regular Army, etc. There have been a number of attempts to change the draft over the years, but none of had sufficient support to pass. The inclusion of women in the draft is probably a big factor in why the Equal Rights Amendment failed to get ratified in the 1970s. The draft isn't much of a priority issue these days, for whatever reason. Most people believe that it would be political suicide for a government to institute a draft, and the US has certainly had many military actions in the last 40 years without ever activating the draft.",
"Sexism. Women are seen as too valuable to risk in combat, for a long time they were not even allowed in the military at all. They are also seen as being disruptive to units unless the unit is all female, though this is phasing out of common military thought as it is proven to be false. Some view them as less fit for active combat as they are physically less capable of meeting the requirements. While a smaller percentage pass the requirements they are capable of doing so. After all not all men pass those same requirements either.",
"The draft is typically to enlist combat troops, mainly infantry. Until very recently women were not allowed to serve in combat roles, so drafting them would've been pointless. The laws regarding the draft have not been updated since women were allowed into combat roles, which is pretty new.",
"Because the draft began when it was commonly believed women were not equal to men. They were seen as weak and stupid. Men were the only ones seen as capable. And people have been pushing to include women in the draft for a while.",
"Generally and to put it simply, it's the same reason why women have their own sport leagues. Versus men, women can't compete physically on the field of play or battle. There's nothing wrong with that, women and men are just different, it's in our DNA.",
"1: Equal rights are brought up often. 2: This boils down to men and women being fundamentally different in shape and strength. Many/most women CANNOT get to the physical needs of the military. It was thougt that lowering the bar for women would work, but tha caused incedents with women not being able to drag bodies+gear of others out of combat, due to the lowe standards.",
"If the current law is left alone, almost no one talks about it. The current law went into effect in the late 70s. Since then, no one in government wants to start that conversation. Any discussion would lead to debate, which leads to the possibility that the draft gets abolished entirely,which is considered risky if a large scale war were to occur. So, the consensus is that nobody is really worked up over the status quo, and there is great risk involved in doing anything, even talking about it officially, so leave it alone."
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65kfil | Have restaurants existed through out history or are they a more recent trend? If they have existed for a long time, have they changed? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Restaurants have existed as far back as historical records exist. But the exact form has not. In history many were more of the open market booth style vendors you often see in Asia currently, or were taverns attached to inns."
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65kktq | When did we develop "polite greetings" (hello, good morning, goodbye, farewell...) and how is it possible that now virtually every existing language has their own set? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What is the alternative? Do you imagine that people would walk up to one another and say \"I am going to begin speaking or otherwise interacting with you\". To which the response might be \"I acknowledge your intent to do so\". \"I am finished with our engagement and will now disengage.\" \"I also feel like our interaction has reached a logical conclusion.\" Greetings and pleasantries like you describe are a fundamental part of communication. Even your computer did it when you opened this page. You called on the server, announced yourself and it replied in kind.",
"I'm paraphrasing Stephen Pinker (loosely) here, but languages are coded into to us genetically, to some degree. If you analyse them closely you find common traits between all of them. For example, almost every language uses mixtures of consonants and vowels because this allows for a larger configuration of distinct sounds in a short amount of time, and thus is more efficient. Another example would be Zipf's law for natural language utterances. This states that, in a given body of text for a given language, there is a linear relation between the frequency of word usage and rank of usage. So the second most common word is used exactly half as often as the first, the third most common word is used a third as often as the first, etxc. Choose any book you want and it will, within some statistical error, demonstrate this amazing property. There have been experiments to test this is interesting ways. If you give someone ten jibberish words and ask them to write a story with these words, the words will fall also into this statistical distribution. So I haven't really answered your question because I don't know speficially. But what I am trying to get at is that analysis of language demonstrates that human genetics play a huge role in the development of our languages. I suspect that universal greetings fall under that umbrella too."
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65lani | Why does Islam prohibit the consumption of pork? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pigs can pose a considerable health risk and are not always safe to eat. Officially they're unclean animals, but the more probable and sane reason behind banning the consumption would be to try to discourage people from eating things that'll make them sick. Undercooked pork can be very dangerous if the pig was carrying parasites like trichinosis, which can cause vomiting, nausea, diarrhea etc - things you don't want in arid climates. Moreover, pigs digest things VERY quickly and don't always properly get rid of toxins and other stuff we don't want in us. As far as I know the European climate didn't make these health risks as prominent for the Europeans so eating pork isn't forbidden in Christianity unlike it's two other Abrahamic counterparts.",
"Lack of refrigeration in the previous millennium. Same as shellfish. Without refrigeration, there were certain foods known to cause illness and they all made the list in most religious text. Since all \"Gods\" are infallible, dietary restriction remain, despite modern advances."
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65lt6c | How can a country be communist with a free market? | This is in reference particularly to China and Vietnam as both remain communist but have more of a capitalist market. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It cannot. China's Communist Party long ago gave up on true communism and decided to embrace capitalism. However, they kept the old name.",
"China is about as communist as North Korea is a Democratic Republic. I guess they got lazy and didn't bother to change the name."
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65m41a | Why is the Wedding song, well, the wedding song? | Was it used on any special wedding? [song]( URL_0 ) i am talking about | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"URL_0 > The piece was made popular when it was used as the processional at the wedding of Victoria the Princess Royal to Prince Frederick William of Prussia in 1858."
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65mu9m | How did the US and Britain become allies after the war of independence? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They weren't allies for a long time after the war of Independence. They did go to war again in [The War of 1812]( URL_1 ), although it was far less of a situation than before. After that, the sides kinda went their own ways. Britian didn't really want to fight the US in the western hemisphere, and the US didn't really want to have to fight the Brits again. Things were strained, but not awful. The US began to industrialize, and trade of cotton from the US South became a pretty major thing for Britain. The relationship was strained still but trade was good. Until the US Civil War happened. Britain really liked that US trade, and at one point came close to recognizing the Confederate States... but it just never really happened, and eventually the far more industrial north won the war. After that, relations got WAY better and both sides really began to understand a shared place in the world, a shared culture, language, trade and ideas. By the end of the 1800s, the [Spanish American War]( URL_0 ) Britian supported the US and it became pretty mutual, the countries had FAR more in common and to gain from each other than the past bitterness and conflict. The continued to be the case and by WWI they were, and remain quite strong allies, even though in WWI and WWII the US remained allied with the UK but was initially very hesitant to get involved in matters in Europe. And to add on, in WWI Britain was hit HARD in the economy, and the sorta balance of power, economically speaking, shifted from London to NYC, where it remains now.",
"If you want the a longer answer, go ahead and [click here]( URL_0 ). The US and Britain were largely at odds following the war of independence through the late 1800's. Between 1895 and 1914, US and British social and political objectives started to align. Specifically, the US made assurances to Britain during the Spanish-American War that Cuba would be left independent (which Britain favored), so Britain aligned themselves with the US. In return, the US supported Britain during the Boer War. WWI and WWII helped cement the growing alliance, as the US supported Britain immensely, sending weapons, equipment, loans, and eventually troops to aid the British (Allied) side."
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65n07s | Egyptians were one of the first people to establish a civilization, invent tools, architecture, and were rich in resources. How did other civilisations catch up to them and left them behind in modern technology? | Was it a one-time revolution? Or a sequence of events? Or the tools built by the newer civilizations more innovative? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Indus Valley actually predates Egypt by around 1000 years or so. Tools were invented before humans were a species, as were cultural elements of civilization like art. It is also likely that architecture in the form of basic structures were also invented pre-humanity but we do not have evidence as it has decayed.",
"Technology isn't like a tech tree in Civilization where you progress from one end to another. Egypt was a powerful and rich area for centuries (well past what you think of when I say \"Ancient Egypt\"). Define what you mean by \"modern technology\"? What do you feel Egypt is missing?"
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65nyid | Why was the historical development of beer more important than that of other alcoholic beverages? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Beer (and wine and mead) come first. All other alcoholic beverages are products of refining (properly \"distilling\") the various beers into stronger mixtures. So to make vodka, for instance, one makes a potato mash, then ferments that mash into potato beer, then uses heat and condensation to separate the alcohol from the water, concentrating the beer into a liquor. So beer isn't \"more important\" as a comparison of equals, it's a predicate. So the invention of the wheel is more _significant_ than the invention of the tire, because you have to make the wheel _first_ and wrapping that wheel with padding makes it into a tire. Without the predicate the follow-on technology never happens. So without beer there are no other alcoholic beverages. In general the historians talking about this subject are talking about the \"big three\" - beer, wine, and mead - when they talk about the discovery of beer. Since wine needs specifically grapes, and mead needs the domestication of honey, while beer can be made from any grain or sugar in general, it's something of an understood generalization. There is far more beer-making land throughout the cradles of civilization than there is wine or mead producing land. So the beer is though to come before the domestication of bees for mead, the domestication of the grape for wine, the domestication and enrichment of fruit trees for cider. So the various grain beers was likely first and foremost, and certainly lead to the invention of the other alcohols. There is some evidence that it also lead to the domestication of yeasts and so the baking of leavened bread.",
"So, some real booze historians could give you more info (consider asking r/beer or r/wine), but to me there's two ways to take this. 1) Beer isn't the sole important alcohol in history, you're forgetting wine. Wine dates back thousands of years, and in the AD calendar the importance of wine can't be underestimated (especially considering the rise of Christianity). There are monastic orders that have made beer for centuries (Trappist, others), but to my understanding wine has been an essential part of Catholic/Christian ceremonies for a long, long time. Wine even did relatively well during prohibition in the US because of church usage. So, I would argue wine is equally important, if not more. 2) Include beer and wine, same question. My best guess would be that a lower alcohol percentage drink allows people to still be functional after consumption, where something like Brandy is going to make someone drunk, worthless, and a social outcast (you can't function when you're hammered, and especially in early cultures you had to be able to contribute to the group in some way). Also, distilled liquor required, well, a still. Wine or beer (I think) can theoretically be made in any kind of clay pot or vessel. Then liquor has to taste good. You still can't drink too much of it if it's high proof. There's centuries old liqueurs and Brandy and grappa that fit the bill, but for the few historical successes there must be thousands others there were lost to time because they didn't do a good job tasting good, being easy to produce, and allowing people to be functional. Just my best guess, I'm not great on the technical side of booze but I work in the restaurant industry and these conjectures are based on my limited understanding. Edit: One of the big things I missed is the ease of growing grain compared to fruit (worldwide). Also, the proof is less important than the actual ease of making wine/beer. Some people are pointing out beer was safer to drink than water, but some people are disputing it. I don't my know, I'm not a German beer doctor.",
"This is something I can contribute to very well. I've given lectures at universities and museums on the history of beer. It's a fascinating topic that I love delving in to. If I go long my apologies, but beer is so important to our civilization. As has been stated several times in this thread, it's the reason why we became an agricultural society instead of just hunter/gatherers. It's the reason we have society. In early Mesopotamia it was also used as currency. Hell, Jewish slaves were paid in bowls of beer, it wasn't beer as we know it today, but it was a porridge-like substance that was created with grain and water. The pyramids were built on beer. I stated earlier that the reason why wine is used in Christianity is because it was easy to grow grapes in Italy and as Christianity spread through the Roman Empire that became the norm. If you couldn't grow grapes you had to buy it from Italians and thus helping their economy. It that time beer became a lesser drink in the eyes of many. As beer became a drink and not just for food its secrets were passed down through the monks. Which has also been stated several times in this thread. What I havent seen mentioned is the importance of Reinheitsgebot. In 1514 Bavaria passed a law stating that beer could only be malted grain (barley, oats, wheat, rye), hops, and water (later amended to include yeast). This is significant because it was the first food law passed in the history of humanity. At the time people were trying to balance out the sweetness of beer with whatever they could find. It was called gruit and it could include figs, dates, sticks, and even charcoal (again, not as refined as we know it today). Beer was important because it kept people alive, but some of the ingredients were killing people or making them sick. They decided on hops because, like the Counsel of Nicaea, they chose an available crop that was easy to grow in the area. Hops. Hops became the standard for the bittering agent in beer because both Germany and England could grow them and it helped the local economy. Beer also helped the Champagne region of France with exploding bottles. The Belgians have many styles of beer that have residual sugars still in them, much like champagne. The Belgians figured out that if you have a flat bottom bottle the residual sugar can continue to build up CO2. If it builds up enough over time, it'll explode. The Belgians put a divot in the bottle to break up the amount of concentrated sugar in one area and thus the bottles wouldn't explode. Pasteur was looking at wine when he discovered yeast, but IIRC refrigeration was developed to cool wort quicker. I have to look that up though. Beer took a big hit after prohibition in America. With the WWII soldiers coming home from Germany and developing a love for the taste of pilsners, and the rise of Bud and Miller, beer was thought as a one trick pony. It wasn't until Carter passed a law in the 70's allowing for homebrewing that we see the start of the rise of craft beer in America. Styles that were dead became revitalized (i.e. IPA) and depth of the beverage really started to emerge. Beer is incredibly important to us as a society. It helped form us and shape how we became. I can literally talk for hours on the subject. This is the cliffs notes version that I can pull from memory, I'd need to do more homework to get it down a bit more proper. But, until I can get paid for it, why the hell am I going to do it.",
"Food Scientist here. One of the fundamental importances of beer is the fact that it was the only safe form of drinking water for many people. As old towns grew, the water supply became more contaminated and disease was quite prevalent. The water supplies were full of bacteria. Now, bacteria don't thrive in alcoholic solutions, even low alcohol, and so by fermenting the water, it was effectively disinfecting it for drinking. Why beer though, and not other drinks? Grains are very prevalent and have been for millennia, they offer nutrition which carries through to the beer and when malted, are easily fermentable. Originally the beer was spiced and flavoured with all sorts of plants to make gruit. The switch to using hops was because of the superior flavour, and more importantly, the antibacterial properties of hops which further improved the benefit of drinking beer over lake or river water. EDIT: I hurriedly wrote this out and missed an essential part, which is the boil, which kills a lot of the bacteria. Much of the rest of the brewing and fermentation makes it harder for bacteria to grow. Just because not all bacteria will die in beer, does not mean it is just as unsafe as some water sources in the past. Many breweries formed because of the increase in populations and industrialisation when the water was at it's worst (last few hundred years)",
"Because you can provide weak beer to people in times of clean water scarcity without getting them too drunk. Old castles have records of beer quotas for men women and children. The beer was very weak by today's standards. If memory servers correctly it was 2 pints for children, 4 for women and six for men. China has a rich tea and porcelain culture for similar reasons.",
"Fermentation of liquids and the creation of low-alcoholic beverages was revolutionary for several reasons. First-off, it's due to the fact that the creation and treatment of alcohol cleansed the liquid. Early man had no reliable access to clean, drinking water on a consistent basis sometimes, and as they did not understand the method of treating water, or boiling it to cleanse out impurities and kill bacteria, the creation of drinks like Mead and Beer allowed for a reliable way to create healthy, safe drinking fluids that could be drunk regardless of the water content (to an extent). Next, its storable. Water, back in the millenia ago, could easily become tainted. Leaving out barrels filled with water could inadvertantly introduce pests or contaminants that would ruin an entire barrel of fluid. Low-ABV liquids made contained just enough alcohol to make long term storage a viable means of transporting or storing liquid. This was especially important when out at sea, as water would only be good for 2-3 weeks before becoming contaminated by some means. A barrel of mead however, would stay good for weeks, or months, and if properly stored could keep a crew hydrated long after water would have gone bad.",
"IIRC there is even a theory that we became farmers (instead of hunter gatherers) for beer. Not because of it, for it. In order to produce beer you need grain, and in order to ferment it you need to stay put for a while.",
"Because it goes hand in hand with the rise of agriculture! Beer and bread were invented simultaneously in ancient Sumeria. as they involve the same basic ingredients - ground wheat and yeast. Yeast would have been airborne to start with, and both processes would likely have involved soaking the kernels to soften them. You could make bread from the solid bits, and the liquid bits would have been beer. It's an ancient drink. In the Americas, the Wari went through a similar process with corn. Agriculture spread quickly across ancient Peru, because the Wari realized that by growing slightly more corn than you needed to live, you could brew it into a fantastic party drink. Their empire spread based on this teaching, they built huge stone terraces and had dance festivals, and worshiped gods of drink. The drinking cup was sacred. It was basically corn beer, and is still popular to this day.",
"So many incorrect/urban legend answers here. Stuff like this should be posted in askhistorians because otherwise you just get factoids or old wives tales for answers. Here is a link to get you started. URL_0",
"Beer requires grain which requires time so you can't be moving around following animal migrations. So beer helped us settle down. Unlike wine or mead beer requires boiling. So that nasty water that gave your buddy the shits, well, you just boiled it to make beer and now it's okay to drink. Fun aside, for the majority of human history up until about 200 years ago it is extremely likely that all beer was slightly sour and smokey tasting.",
"Some people believe that beer was the main reason for the agricultural revolution. Early man found that growing large amounts of grain in one place made it easier to produce beer, rather than just gathering it as they go.",
"So there's actually a book called something like \"the history of the world in 6 glasses\" and it goes human development in the stages of what we drank: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and coke (coffee and tea might of been switched) I read it years ago for school but here's what I remember Beer: started a few thousands years after the agricultural revolution, or main crops were grains, so what water was inevitable. There's evidence in pottery about how out brewing skills improved Wine: only existed in vast quantities once the Greeks appeared and then the Romans who exported it everywhere. It also helps this reigned through the Middle Ages warn period, when favorable climate conditions allowed grapes to be grown even in England Spirits: the process of distillation had been invented, and the age of exploration made it useful. Spirits did not spoil on long voyages, sailors were willingly paid in it and the new triangle trade found a perfect use for the waste material from sugar production (molasses made to rum). Also, one of the first cocktails called old grog featured a lime which helped the English with scurvy and gave them the name limeys. Tea and coffee:both related heavily with trade and the exploitation of India/south America and colonialism. Coke: it came after the industrial revolution and the invention of carbonate water. There was a trend of pseudo medical drinks that would do all sorts of things. Coca of course coming from cocaine, and cola coming from a nut. Most notably, coke promise during world war II that every American soldier could have a coke for a nickel, and it became export all over the world. I know nobody asked for 5/6 of this info but it's a good book. Of course some determining factor of popular drinks are the materials avaliable but also technology of production and transportation. Most of the drinks can be liked to one or many powerful empire/nation that helped spread is influence",
"Was it though? I've never heard this, what made you think that's the case?",
"You can survive solely on beer. It may be a rough existence, but you'd survive. Not the case with other alcoholic beverages.",
"Something everyone seems to be missing. Stop thinking of ancient beer like beer we have today. Ancient beer was essentially liquid bread. Imagine Guinness time 100 with a 10th of the alcohol. So unlike other alcohols, beer could actually be consumed as a meal. It had all the nutrition of bread, but had the added benefit of having water to stave off dehydration. And on top of that, you could brew massive amounts of beer at a time, literally enough to support small towns, with a fraction of the time and energy it would take to make the same amount of bread. Now add to this that you can store beer for much longer than bread. And you have a revolutionary new way to support the population!",
"One reason is that unlike wine or cider, beer does not make itself. If you go out and pick a bunch of apples/grapes and crush the juice out of them and leave it for a few days it'll start to ferment. Leave it alone for a week or so and you'll have cider/wine. Beer requires a much more involved process that requires processing the grains to get the enzyes in them to chemically change starches into sugars that the yeast can ferment, then the extraction of those sugars from the grain, and then the manual addition of yeast. So it's a much more delibrate process and represents technological developments that wine and cider do not. For another - while grapes or apples are somewhat geographically limited, grains are more ubiquitous. Meaning that you can make a beer of some sort anywhere in the world that grains can be grown, which is almost anywhere humans inhabit - so it was a technlogical development that was relevant on a global scale."
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65o82z | Why did Prohibition end, but the War on Drugs continues? | I know they began at different times, but why was the Prohibition lesson not learned, or, why was it not a lesson at all? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Prohibition failed due to cultural backlash. The ban eliminated an American staple. Alcohol was part of American daily life, where as marijuana and refined hard drugs such as opium were not. Simply put, families did not pass a roach when they came together for dinner, they enjoyed a pitcher of beer or a carafe of wine. When men and women went out 'on the town' they didn't seek out the nearest opium dealer, they sought out the nearest pub. So when the pubs closed the secret speakeasy's opened to fill the need. When the Prohibitionists attempted to change cultural norms, culture fought back. Aldo don't forget that Prohibition dealt only with alcohol, where as the so-called 'War on Drugs' is more general, spanning numerous drugs from marijuana to crack cocaine and heroin. So in terms of scope, it's an apples to oranges comparison.",
"This can only be a lot of opinions, and here is mine. Booze was mainstream. Drugs are fringe. Many drugs are far more harmful than social drinking, although hard drinking will kill."
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65pdzr | The Canadian Electoral Reform | What's the story behind it? What was the justification for abandoning it? What were Canadians' response? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The current government campaigned in the last election that if they won, they would reform our first-pass-the-post system of Parliament into something that would better represent Canadian voters. Well, the liberal party won, and quickly set up a committee to *identify and conduct a study of viable alternate voting systems to replace the first-past-the-post system*. However since the report, the liberals have started to change their mind on reform, and it looks like they'll be abandoning it all together. There hasn't been much justification yet, besides that a Proportional Representative would give fringe parties too much control in parliament, by either allocating them more seats, or by allowing them to be the swing votes in certain situations. Behind the scenes, it is speculated that a reform would just be bad for the liberal party, after all they won a majority government this election because of FPTP, under most proposed systems they would be a minority government right now. How do Canadian's feel? Members of the conservative party and their voters probably don't care too much, the first-pass-the-post system has allowed their party to control the government for the last decade. Your staunch liberal supporter probably won't care as much either, after all, it was the FPTP system that allowed the liberals to get their majority government this election. Fringe liberal voters are upset about it, a lot of people voted for the liberals this year strategically, to try and end the Harper Government. These are voters who could have just as easily been voting for the NDP in the election, and who could be voting for them in the next. NDP supporters would be upset, they tend to be a little more left leaning then the liberals. And they were tired of a conservative leadership. And all other government supporters are going to be upset. the Green party, and bloc quebecois and any outside party is going to end up with fewer seats in parliament because it is hard for them to compete in a FPTP system."
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65prfd | How did nail polish become a thing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In Ancient Egypt and a few other ancient cultures the wealthy lacquered or otherwise painted their nails as a sign of status. The fact that they were able to afford the make-up and lived a leisurely enough life that they did not have to use their hands for labor thus breaking/damaging them was a major thing for the wealthy. That carried on through various cultures up until modernity where make-up became cheap and most people's jobs stopped being physical."
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65q8mr | Why do we wear collared shirts when we want to look fancy? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically because that's what others think is fancy. It's just a social construct. It's like the question what makes a country a country. It's really if other countries recognize it as one. Same thing. The only thing that makes a tuxedo \"fancy\" is that that's what everyone in the world has been trained since birth to recognize as fancy attire.",
"\"The Oxford English Dictionary traces collar in its modern meaning to c. 1300. Today's shirt collars descend from the ruffle created by the drawstring at the neck of the medieval chemise, through the Elizabethan ruff and its successors, the whisk collar and falling band. Separate collars exist alongside attached collars since the mid-16th century, usually to allow starching and other fine finishing. During the Edwardian period and sporadically thereafter, ornamental collars were worn as a form of jewelry.\" [Source]( URL_0 )"
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65qtu0 | does easter come from the word east? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Kind of. Easter and East both come from the same root word, which meant \"toward the sunrise\". From the [Online Etymology Dictionary]( URL_1 ): > Easter (n.) > Old English *Easterdæg*, from *Eastre* (Northumbrian *Eostre*), from Proto-Germanic **austron*-, \"dawn,\" also the name of a goddess of fertility and spring, perhaps originally of sunrise, whose feast was celebrated at the spring equinox, from **aust*- \"east, toward the sunrise\" (compare [east]( URL_0 )), from PIE **aus*- (1) \"to shine\" (especially of the dawn); see [aurora]( URL_2 ).",
"No, it's from the old English 'ēastre' the name of a goddess associated with spring although I would imagine it"
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65r1ec | What are the core beliefs of Buddhism? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Search can get you a couple of answers with over 100 upvotes. [Try this one]( URL_0 ). There is also a dedicated sub, /r/Buddhism , that probably contains folks who would love to answer your detailed questions."
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65rake | What is a lawyer's main objective in court, and is it the same if they know the party is guilty? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are always two lawyers in a courtroom: The prosecution is trying to find the defendant guilty. The defense is trying to find the defendant not guilty. The prosecution does all the legal hard work by presenting evidence to convince the judge and/or jury that the defendant broke the law and deserves to be punished. The defense tries to show that either the defendant did not break the law or should not be punished. If the defendant is guilty (which the defendant may tell the defense attorney under secrecy) then the defense will still try to show that the prosecution cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was the one responsible, etc. In the process of doing that, the defense will also try to show that the defendant should not be punished. For example, if the defense can prove that the police broke protocol when collecting evidence, that evidence may be thrown out and the defendant may go free even if the judge and/or jury think the defendant was guilty."
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65rlaj | Why do high schools and colleges press so hard on learning a second language? | Follow-up question: why can't we take a code language for 2+ years rather than Spanish? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Partly because it is a unique opportunity. It is very hard to learn a second language as a adult. The best time to do so is early childhood, failing at that, it takes the sort of dedicated, repeated classroom time you'll rarely find outside of an academic setting. If you ever want to learn a second language, that is the time to do it.",
"In some places, schools are allowing computer code as a replacement for Spanish, etc. Mainly, it used to be important (way back, like 1700s back) for students to be able to speak French and Latin because those were important diplomacy and literature languages. Colleges like traditions, so they kept the importance of learning other languages. Many have argued that learning arbitrary languages in high school or college isn't actually important for the real world, and that most students in these courses don't actually learn the languages, which is a valid argument. Colleges will change when they want to, however, and that doesn't look to be anytime soon.",
"Coding is not language. That's like asking \"why can't we learn how to fix cars instead of Spanish?\" That's a reasonable question but clearly you learn how to fix cars and Spanish for two completely different reasons.",
"Huge stretches of the world don't speak your language as a first language. If you don't have language-learning skills, you will forever need someone to translate for you. Learning a second language introduces concepts other than just vocabulary, which is what most people pick up later in life. There are differences in tenses, verb-noun agreement, gender, and even sentence structure. If English is your first language, it can be helpful or interesting to learn the roots of much of the mutt of all languages. Even if you learn a language in high school or college and never or barely use it after that, an important learning skill may also have been acquired."
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65rvtw | Why do we think our mirror image looks better than our real image, i.e. a picture? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"the mere exposure effect, also known as 'you like what you're used to'. People tend to become accustomed to the faces we see the most often, so because we're more accustomed to seeing our face in the mirror, that's the 'you' that you perceive to be yourself. other people, however, are used to your actual face that they see in person, so to them your mirror image looks weird. it also relates to the fact that our faces aren't symmetrical, so there are minute differences between the two halves that become more apparent when they're \"out of place\", that is, on the \"wrong\" side.",
"It's less the mirror and more the focal length. Our eyes have a focal length of roughly 50mm, which is effectively the distance of the sensor to the lens in a camera. When you use your phone camera, especially the front facing one, you're seeing yourself through 20-40mm (it's a rough estimate, phones have variable focal lengths, but with the rise of wide angle phone cameras the distances have decreased). Generally, people prefer seeing his/herself in the focal distance similar to their own eyesight, it's what we're used to.",
"Camera lenses distort to a degree, mirrors don't. We are also used to seeing our mirror image so it can throw us off when we don't. [Lens distortion]( URL_0 )"
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65ry8d | How have we not run out of space for graves in cemeteries by now? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because they haven't. Cemeteries have become more and more of a nuisance, ask any urban planer or city developer their opinions on cemeteries? Burial plots are crazy expensive (that's not even considering the cost for a funeral as whole,) are allotted only for a specific time, charges maintenance fee's. If those cost fail to get cover, they'll dig that person up just incinerate them. If they can get a fresh one in the ground they'll gig up any ol' schmo they can legally get away and put some paying customers body there. So just get cremated. Its cheaper and much better when the zombies come.",
"The only realistic option is to have the bones organs and muscles removed from the body, the skin strengthened, and filled with helium. The body can be released into the sky the way our ancestors would have wanted it.",
"Some have, so they are several bodies deep. There's one near me that's like that, you have to go up steps to get to it as it's now above street level. I'm talking about in the UK btw, around 100 years ago. Also in London there was a problem of people being buried in shallow graves on top of other graves and the bodies floating back to the surface. Then they passed a law saying the bodies must be six feet under.",
"Funeral director here. Two points: first, the cremation rate is passing 50%, and folks are choosing to be cremated then buried with family that already have graves, instead of buying their own.",
"There are alternatives to burial, mainly cremation. As cemetery space gets more scarce it gets more expensive... therefore people are more likely to choose other options. In cases where people are willing to buy burial space despite the high cost, the money involved is enough to move graves around, expand the cemetery, or establish other cemeteries in less-populated or less-valuable areas. These are the same reasons we \"haven't run out of houses yet\", even though the population keeps growing. There are housing shortages, and unaffordable prices, but in general it is worth building more housing, building it in less-than-ideal locations, etc... because people will take advantage of it despite those concerns.",
"In Germany for example people are not embalmed prior to their burial, which would hinder or at least slow their decay rate. The casket also has to be made out of wood (instead of metal) to allow the corpse (and casket) to decay instead of being preserved for a long time. Graves do not last for ever but normally are only rented for 25 years. (This varies for some cemeteries, depending on soil type. Some soil types cause the body to decay slower (clay for example) and thus the time until a spot can be reused is longer.) After the normal resting time for a grave is over, the headstone is removed, and the spot can be reused.",
"Took an entire class on Death and Dying. Places like San Francisco (city limits) actually have no cemeteries due to the high cost of land. As others have said, stack them up. Also, the 6 foot thing isn't a thing, especially with a low water table. Some cultures still do air burials, atop cliffs and such, where the elements and animals do their thing.",
"Alot of it too is that cemeteries can use land which isn't buildable due to whatever reason. One specifically I can think of is marshlands. If the ground is too soft you can't build a full building on it, but sure as shit you can bury people in it so that space gets used for cemeteries"
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65s8q7 | Why is it that in the West women seem to have a million different options for formal clothing while men only have the suit and tie? | To use as an example, let's say you're watching the news or some sports cast, the male hosts always wear a suit and tie while female hosts have a new dress style every day. It's the same situation for every day real life formal events. Also, men are always covered up from arm and leg down. While women have the choice to be as revealing as they want while still being formal. It's one thing that definitely helps women during lets say a wedding on a hot summer day. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If men's clothing sometimes seems almost military in its sameness, that's not a coincidence. The influence of military uniforms on civilian wear has traditionally been substantial, especially when mass conscription meant large percentages of men served. In fact, if a man wears a blue blazer with khaki pants and a tie, he's basically wearing a naval jacket, British colonial army trousers, and a descendant of a scarf worn by Croatian soldiers (where we get the word \"cravat.\") His shirt has a soft collar because WWII soldiers came home and decided they weren't going back to stiff collars. The influence is almost ridiculous sometimes. Both Allied generals at the Battle of Waterloo have a shoe named after them, and two British commanders at the Battle of Balaclava have sweaters named after them. (Wellington, Blucher, Raglan, and Cardigan.) Even in times where few men serve in the military, the desire to wear roughly the same thing as other men remains strong, while cultural norms against excessively creative male clothing are still present to some extent."
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65snzp | Is human nature real? Or can the behavior of people change based on their environment? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Human nature, in the form of basic instinct, is real. Environment, experiences, and active education can overwrite (or at least temper) those instincts, however. In other words, what we are is both nature and nurture."
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65vdcv | Why does the American box office make so much money compared to the rest of the world? | I went onto box office mojo and saw that the American box office normally makes about the same as the rest of the world combined. I know America is a big country but why would Americans spend more than more instance Germany, UK, France, Italy and Spain who have 318 million people which is similar to Americas | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"World GDP - approx 75 Trillion US GDP - 16.77 trillion 16.77/75 = .22 The US represents 22% of the world economy. Simply put - the US has A LOT more money to spend than the majority of countries. On top of that, remember that the majority of movies are made in the US, by Americans, with a special eye to American audiences.",
"Ever since the Great Depression the US has had a very strong movie theatre culture. We have more theatres than many other countries combined. Also we have Hollywood that makes movies that usually appeal specifically to American audiences.",
"going to movies is more popular in us than Europe? prices of tickets are higher? until recently movies were first released in US and later in rest of world. culturally most of movies are targeted at us market so they are appealing more to American than European consumer. watching streamed or downloading copy of movie without owning it is legal in most of Europe, so there is no need to pay for it",
"Going to the movies is also very popular in the USA as compared to other countries. URL_0 There are 5 cinema visits per person per year in the USA. There's only 2 here where I live. That means there are 1.42 billion tickets sold in the US yearly, versus about 150 million in each of France and Germany. So part of it is definitely that Americans just go to the movies a lot more."
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65wn7g | Sharia and why people in America are so concerned about it. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Two worries: That Sharia law starts becoming acceptable in the US - one community adopts it informally amongst themselves, that community grows, another community starts and over time Sharia law starts becoming more and more dominant before effectively taking the place of traditional US (Christian) values. Alongside this there is the fact that Sharia law is not compatible with the current values of the US - for example it is heavily sexist, so anyone practising Sharia law is going against the wish of those who want a country that has equal opportunities for the two sexes. Mainly though, it is a fear of the unknown, and the fact that the situation in the middle east and beyond has transformed muslims into our generations boogyman, so as soon as people hear mentioned of Islam, they are scared a terrorist is going to buy the house next door...",
"The concern in America is largely overblown. The biggest concerns are with allowing people to immigrate into America who believe in Sharia as a governing system for legal and social construct. That brings about behavior that is anti-western and anti-American. If you look at countries with the largest population of refugees from Middle Eastern countries you'll see a lot of crime, rapes, etc that follow as the culture/society begins to shift with influx of people who hold different values. Additionally, many people in America believe that being tolerant or liberal towards Muslims includes accepting their views on Sharia and this belief structure is held in the underpinnings of our political discourse. For example, the Women's March on Washington was a major political movement in the United States. One of the co-founders is an advocate for Sharia Law. On my Facebook group a Christian women's club wanted to attend the rally and they were told by organizers that they were not welcome because they hold Christian values, yet the founder holds the values of Sharia Law. It's an awkward shift in American politics and discourse. This underpinning exists throughout politics and is often hidden from public because our media doesn't really discuss it. For example, also at the Women's March in DC, the keynote speaker admitted to and was convicted of the kidnapping, torture and murder of a gay man in a horrific hate crime. But she's also a militant feminist so she was cool in the eyes of the movement leaders.",
"The issue is that communities develop to use sharia law over and above local laws. Additionally sharia law imposes controls over women and children that are diametrically opposed to local laws. The application of sharia law subverts adaptation and integration into local communities. In America they are responding to the manner in which sharia law has been adopted into Muslim communities in England, the Netherlands and other countries.",
"People should be more concerned about the Alt-right's Christian agenda. I've got absolutely nothing against Christianity or Christians, but it doesn't belong in our government. Unlike Sharia, the Christian Right IS making inroads into our legal system.",
"The hysteria about Sharla law being implemented in the United States is really a symptom of Islamphobia. And like all phobias, it's not rational. Sharia, by definition, is a legal structure that applies only to Muslims, and our constitution has some pretty strict prohibitions against the government treating people differently based on their faith. So, barring a rather substantial change to the Constitution, Sharia law could never be implemented in the US. But still, people who don't understand what Sharia law actually is, and fear Muslims in general, tend to be very concerned about this because of something they saw posted on Facebook by a racist ex-classmate or something."
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65x4sx | When did humans first realize that it wasn't such a good thing to have a child with a close relative? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's one of the oldest human social structures to form clans; within these clans daughters or sons leave the family in which they were born, most likely making children with cousins or second cousins instead. This kind of structures would have been in place even before mankind left Africa, I believe. Of course, through warfare, raiding, slavery, trading, etc. etc. especially women would be taken from their clans, where they would then make children with more distant relatives.",
"Avoiding incest is pretty much a biological imperative. We are mechanically designed to avoid people who are biologically similar to us; relatives.",
"Before humans had even evolved. Other primates avoid it too, and many other animal species. So it seems to be an evolved instinct."
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65y1rk | Why do we use the term 'sister' to describe things that are close together? Sister species, sister companies, etc. | I dont want the comments to turn into a battle of the sexes, but why did we start using sister as a term to describe things that are close? If there is no definitive answer, what are some plausible ones? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It has to do with the terms used in a phylogenetic tree and direct lineage. Think for a moment about siblings and sexual reproduction. As you know males are XY in their sex chromosome and females are XX. In terms of the mom (the main store) the one X is ALWAYS conserved (in the case of a male) or both conserved (in the case of a female). Because of this conservation of the one X from the mother each \"daughter\" store (XX) are exactly the same (as opposed to a \"son\" (XY) which could have come from several different males. What is the relationship between two daughters? Sister. Official science edit: Yes I know in the case of the daughter the male actually donates their X but that doesn't help with visualizing the idea of maternal lineage."
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65ybuy | What is causing the current rise of authoritarian regimes in richer countries around the world? | With the French election coming up, this has sparked my interest in "nationalist" parties. It seems, to me, that this is becoming a serious problem but I want to be more educated on the situation. Can ELI5? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is often attributed to *populism,* which basically means that average people believe the system is being rigged against them by the elites, so they want to create a super-elite (a powerful central government) that in theory shares their values and can stand up for their interests.",
"Authoritarianism doesn't necessarily mean right wing or nationalist. It is very much alive on the left as well. This is evident in how moderate or left of centre voters are being vilified and labelled by far left politicians and media, for even slightly deviating from their ideology and policies. There is a large contingent of people who currently feel let down by the left for being dismissive about their fears and concerns. Not to mention some disturbing rhetoric from the media such as \"white men should be denied the vote\". People look to their leaders for their well being and when they are being vilified and marginalised through no fault of their own by said leaders, they become worried, as they are not in the position to rectify this as individuals. This is where populism steps in, as you are currently seeing. The parties to the right are picking up on the blind spots of the left and using it to their advantage. Currently both the left and right are thriving on sowing division to define the party line, at the cost of the people.",
"Serious question: Are there any examples (recent or historical) where this has worked out well for the general population?"
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65ytcc | Why are police/emergency vehicle sirens red, white, and blue? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Do you mean the flashing lights? The siren is the noise maker. Red has long been the color signifying \"emergency\" or \"danger.\" Blue is high visibility and not used for anything else, and is believed to carry a psychological implication of \"authority.\" Off-white is the natural color of bright light bulbs."
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65z9cq | Why is there such a sudden hate for Antifa groups in the US? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The word \"Antifa,\" the way people use it in the US, refers *specifically* to antifascists who do things like break Starbucks windows at protests and punch Nazis in the face. Some people disagree with those behaviors."
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65zsa3 | Why do old cartoon characters, when they get hurt wiggle their lips with their fingers? | I've mostly seen this in Looney Tunes but ik ive seen it in other places. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A lot of the old cartoons, the Looney Tunes especially, are either inspired by or complete knock-offs of old Vaudeville routines. Vaudeville relied heavily on physical comedy, funny faces, and wordplay. That old finger between the lips \"blubbalubbalubbalubba\" was likely lifted from Vaudeville. It works as a sight-gag, but also a sound gag, which probably helped during the transition from silent cartoons to the ones with dialogue."
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660ata | Is there a root oriental language | ELI5: as western languages have a Latin or Greek root, do Asian languages have a root language? Most Asian countries have a fairly rich history, so it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't. But why are Asian languages so structurally different to western languages? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"none of your assertions are correct, but that's fine. there is only a single language with a greek root: greek. modern greek evolved from older greek forms. a subset of western languages, called the romance languages, came from latin. those languages are, among others, french, spanish, italian, portuguese, and romanian. these languages evolved from latin. english does not come from greek or latin. it's related to those languages, and it's notable for having borrowed a lot of words from latin, greek, and french (which DOES come from latin). latin and greek are related, which means they share a common ancestor. however, the only real similarity between latin and (classical) greek is grammatical structure and some cognate words. most latin and greek words are, for our purposes, completely unintelligible to each other (consider the latin root 'aqua', the greek root 'hydro'; they both mean water). to answer your question: do asian languages have a root language? we must actually look at what 'asian languages' mean. asia is really fucking big. it's the biggest continent, after all. asia has languages that are related to english (like hindi, persian, and punjabi). asia also has languages that are related to hawaiian (tagalog, indonesian). whoa whoa whoa. all this 'related' and 'evolved' talk may be making your head spin. what does it mean? 'related' means that the languages are likely to have a common ancestor. we demonstrate this by looking at similarities and looking at how certain features of the language (pronunciation, grammar, tones, etc.) came to be in their present forms. 'evolved from' means that the language is actually a NEWER form of that language. languages change, a lot. think of new slang words that didn't exist 10 years ago. think of the way some people may 'misuse' grammar in english (i ain't got none of that!) well, imagine that happening multiple times over thousands of years. that's how languages change and evolve. so... asian languages. some asian languages are related. others have evolved from older forms of a pre-existing asian language. but i'm gonna wager a guess: you're thinking of chinese, japanese, vietnamese, and korean. none of these languages are related as far as we know. we have been unable thusfar to establish any sort of common ancestor between these languages. however, because of the point you brought up about rich history, there are somethings that are very similar. i don't know if you've ever studied chinese or japanese. but chinese is structurally very similar to english. this is a coincidence. chinese and vietnamese are structurally similar to each other, as well. this is less likely to be a coincidence, because while chinese and vietnamese cannot demonstrate a common ancestor, they still have something like 60% of their words in common. japanese and korean are structurally similar to each other, but completely alien to chinese and vietnamese. however, both japanese and korean have many words (again, something like 60%) in common with chinese. how can this be the case? well, the answer is, essentially, empire. the chinese were very good at establishing spheres of influence throughout their 4000 year long history. they took with them ideas, language, and the written word to places where writing had never even been attempted. chinese writing, though, is very restrictive. so the japanese and koreans came up with their own solution. the vietnamese, which actually fits the chinese characters a lot better, just decided to listen to the french and write their language with the roman alphabet. (you might be asking about the mongols, where do they fit into this? well... they don't, either. their language is just as alien to the rest of the east asian languages. they had their own writing system, unrelated to that of the chinese. they now write their language in the cyrillic script, which you might know as the 'russian alphabet'.) long ass history lesson. why are they do structurally different to western languages? well, in the case of chinese and vietnamese... they're not. in these languages, the order of words is the same as in english. grammar is very similar (if you've ever taken a french, spanish, german, or god forbid latin class, you'll know that these languages have relatively complex grammar compared to english) but their sounds might as well be alien to us (seriously, go do a vietnamese lesson and try to pronounce those words. that language might be one of the hardest to pronounce for english speakers.) japanese and korean are very different to english structurally. the words are not said in the same order as english. expressing ideas is a little bit 'backwards' in these languages. but they do demonstrate similarities with turkish, hindi, and several other languages. i know i'm skirting your question. you're asking why. the answer is an unfortunate... it is what it is. they evolved differently. the east and the west had basically no contact until the persian empire. that's millennia upon millennia of language evolution. **tl;dr no** EDIT: when i say 'chinese' i do mean mandarin, but everything applies to the chinese dialects that derive from middle/classical chinese.",
"There is a indo-european language that is thought to have been the root for not just almost all European languages but also many Asian ones. There is also a Sino-Tibetan language family that includes Chinese languages and several similar ones that are thought to have a common origin. Additionally while the languages are not closely related the Chinese script was adopted by several people and is still used by the Japanese today.",
"Maybe. Almost certainly, especially for nations and regions that are geographically close. Whether or not they're related to *European* languages is even more uncertain. [Xidnaf has a good video on this.]( URL_0 )",
"> as western languages have a Latin or Greek root It's not quite like that. Most languages now spoken in Europe, and many languages now spoken in western and south-western parts of Asia, all appear to have descended from the same language which was probably spoken around 6,000 years in a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. We have no records of this language, so we're mostly making educated guesses about it, but the evidence is pretty strong. Linguists call this proposed language \"Proto-Indo-European\", and languages descended from it are called \"Indo-European languages\". A lot of languages spoken in eastern and south-eastern parts of Asia -- including all the Chinese, Tibetan and Burmese languages -- are thought to be part of a Sino-Tibetan family, but here linguists aren't so sure. Currently, they're arguing over whether or not there could have been a common Proto-Sino-Tibetan language. The Korean language seems to be what's called a \"language isolate\", meaning that there's no other language it appears to be related to. On the other hand, it may or may not be an Altaic language, a group that includes Mongolian and Turkish -- and may or may not include Japanese. So, the south-east Asian languages may have descended from one, two, three or four proto-languages -- we simply don't know. We also don't know whether all the proto-languages in the world descended from a single language (sometimes called \"Proto-World\"). It seems plausible, but we've not found any good evidence."
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660t81 | Why is it that certain actors have names that just //have to be said in full? Examples include Neil Patrick Harris, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Robert Downey Jr. What is it in our brains that compels us to always say things a certain way? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Probably because that's how we constantly see them billed in movies and television. We've been conditioned by exposure to say their names like that."
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661ggn | What happens to the trademarks of companies that shut down? Could I open up a store called Circuit City? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A trademark has to be used to remain valid. If a common law trademark ( & trade; ) falls out of use, the USPTO will consider it abandoned. The threshold is a bit higher for a registered trademark ( & reg; ) Registered mark holders have to show the USPTO every 5 years that their mark is in active commercial use. If the registrant doesn't or can't show this, the USPTO will consider the mark abandoned. It could then be registered by someone else. There are other ways for trademarks to be labeled abandoned as well, e.g. genericization, losing a trademark battle in court, etc. However, to your particular example, [the Circuit City brand is not abandoned]( URL_0 ), so, no, you can't open a store called Circuit City without getting into a trademark fight. Recognizable brands like Circuit City rarely are abandoned. They'll change hands, and get used for different purposes. E.g., the Circuit City trademark and brand was sold to the company that owned CompUSA and TigerDirect, who operated URL_1 as an online store for years after the physical stores were all closed. It was sold last year to investors who plan to launch a new chain of physical stores under that brand.",
"Circuit City's assets, including their brand name, was owned by Systemax/TigerDirect until recently, and now it has been purchased by some investors trying to revive it. So no you cant use Circuit City. When a company bankrupts it will try to liquidate its assets to pay off its debts. It doesn't just lose all its stuff. The company still owns its name and logo and brand. So if you want to use a dead brand, you can but you're going to need to buy it from somebody.",
"Even if you could reuse the trademark of a failed company, the public perception of the trademark may not be a favorable one. For example, I would not suggest reusing the Edsel trademark for a new Tesla car."
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661n6r | Why is the Confederate flag still allowed? | I never got that. The confederates lost and so did their "values". Why is the "losers" flag still allowed anywhere in the USA? Edit: It may be important to note that I'm european. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Freedom. You can put a up a flag with whatever the hell you want on it. Not everyone wants the government and their masters to control what they can or cannot do.",
"I don't know, why do people still wear Browns jerseys?",
"Despite never having historically represented the Confederate States of America as a country, nor officially recognized as one of its national flags, the rectangular Second Confederate Navy Jack and the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia are now flag types commonly referred to as the Confederate Flag. They both have become a widely recognized symbol of the Southern United States. It is also known as the rebel flag, Dixie flag, and Southern cross and is often incorrectly referred to as the Stars and Bars. The actual \"Stars and Bars\" is the first national flag, which used an entirely different design. The self-declared Confederate exclave of Town Line, New York, lacking a genuine Confederate flag, flew a version of this flag prior to its 1946 vote to ceremonially rejoin the Union."
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661o72 | why do a lot of non-native speakers of a language tend to speak that language in a higher pitch than their own language? | I have met several people who speak in a lower pitch when speaking their native language, but use a higher pitch when speaking their second, third... language. Why is that? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm actually the opposite. When I speak French or Spanish, my vocal pitch is lower than my English speaking voice. I couldn't tell you why with any scientific evidence. But I do have a theory. Confidence is often expressed in vocal pitch. Maybe they are less confident in the foreign language. Or maybe they were less confident while learning it, and the higher pitch became a habit ... just a learned part of the second language. For myself, I grew up very insecure as a teen and my voice was very tentative and somewhat high pitched in English. While learning Spanish (and later French), I found out that I had a real gift for it, and as I learned the language, I found confidence in this new Spanish language persona. I became more confident, popular, sociable and liked by my friends in Spanish class and my vocal pitch dropped ... but only when I spoke Spanish (and later, French).",
"I think it's the same reason we talk to small children using a baby voice unconsciously we're *straining* to be more clearly understood than we think we would be otherwise and emphasis express itself as higher pitch, similar to how a question 'rises'at the end of the sentence speaking it cant be \"passive\" like one's native language, this added effort to annunciate properly raises the pitch",
"Are you sure it doesn't depend on which languages they're speaking (both natively and as a second language)? I'm English speaking but am fluent in Afrikaans, and I've noticed that my pitch lowers substantially when I speak Afrikaans simply because I \"associate\" that language with a lower pitch. On the other hand, friends of mine who speak Mandarin as a second language tend to up their pitch because they \"associate\" Mandarin with a higher pitch - which makes sense, given that Mandarin speakers generally speak at a higher pitch than English speakers."
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6621gt | Why does Theresa May want to vote for a new Government in the UK? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"To consolidate her power. At the moment her party (the Conservatives) only has a slim majority. But other parties are in disarray and way behind the Conservatives in the polls. So a snap election is basically a guaranteed win and will almost certainly increase her majority by a significant amount."
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6621su | Why is it common for developed western countries to hold snap elections but the US doesn't. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The US uses a presidential system while most other countries use a parliamentary system. These systems differ on who elects the executive branch of the government. In a presidential system the executive branch of the government (ie the president) is directly elected by the country's citizens. Once elected, the president serves out their term regardless of their popularity. In a parliamentary system there is no election for the executive branch of the government (ie the prime minister). Rather, the prime minister is chosen by parliament and serves only so long as they retain 51% support in parliament. When the prime minister no longer has sufficient support in parliament then one of two things can happen: either parliament selects a new prime minister (which is rare) or the government just doesn't have an executive branch until the next election. Because the government can't function without an executive branch, the solution that parliamentary systems have come up with is the ability to hold snap elections to replace the entire current government and start over again from scratch in the hopes that the new government will be able to select a new executive branch.",
"In part, it's a function of the system's design. All liberal democracies feature systems of checks and balances to restrict the opportunities of a tyrant to seize unchecked power. For this function, the Westminster system relies heavily on an apolitical and impartial referee to enforce often loosely defined rules against tyranny (this is one of the functions invested in the monarch). By contrast, the Congressional system favours more mechanistic systems that rely on strict rules that are enforced in large part by mutual respect of the rules by all parties. In accordance with this, Westminster systems traditionally leave election timing up to the referee (ie the monarch) to decide. There are usually a few guiding principles that historically the referee was free to consider or not as they saw fit. Traditionally these principles are that elections should be neither too frequent nor too infrequent, that they should be held as often as necessary to ensure orderly operation of the parliament and that unless there is a reason not to, they should be held at a time convenient to the parliament. (Recently in the UK these guiding principles have been more fully defined and hardened into rules the monarch must follow, but the principle is still basically the same). This naturally leads to the possibility of early elections, if the referee or the parliament itself decides that fresh elections would improve the running of things. On the other hand, congressional systems just have a rule establishing that elections are held every x years. Typically such systems have a much shorter election cycle (2 years US vs 5 years UK) because otherwise they have no other system for ensuring a dysfunctional parliament faces an election sooner rather than later. This naturally excludes the possibility of early elections. Elections happen when the rule says they should and that's pretty much that."
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662gah | Why are tinfoil hats associed to silly People ? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Stereotypically, it's associated with a negative image of a mentally ill delusional person who's trying to block out mind control or telepathy or some such - the \"tinfoil hat brigade\" being an imagined group of such people used as a pejorative for conspiracy theorists.",
"I thought that it was that crazy theorists believed that aliens/governments were trying to read there mind and the hats would stop it. So theorists and crazys were associated with tinfoil hats."
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663woq | Why are violent crimes more present in states or cities with tough gun control laws? | I keep hearing this. Is this even true? This has never made sense to me. HOW? and please... pretend I'm five, because I keep trying to google it and I end up becoming more confused and 10 pages deep in a gun regulation debate and thats not what I want... I'm just trying to understand. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You may have cause and effect backward. It makes sense to me that states with more gun crime would have more public support for gun control laws.",
"It's not, really. One example frequently used is Chicago, where people cite strict gun laws and the high number of murders. The issue with that claim is while Chicago's murder count *is* high, it's also the third largest city in the nation. When you adjust for population Chicago's murder rate is actually lower than more than a dozen other major cities. /u/StupidLemonEater also has a good point. Using Chicago as an example again, long before gun control became such a heated debate Chicago had a long history of gang related violence and organized crime. It's not like they passed strict gun laws and a peaceful city became a violent wasteland. There was violence to begin with and gun laws were an attempt to curb it.",
"There's no simple answer because it's a very contentious subject. Instead, I'll give you the argument from each camp: * Anti-Gun-Control Camp: The strict laws on gun control only affect law-abiding citizens, as criminals can still easily acquire them through illegal channels. As such, criminals face less opposition from legally armed citizens and can get away with more violent crime. * Pro-gun-control Camp: The statistic is misleading in that it confuses cause and effect. Places with lots of violent crime are more likely to enact stricter gun control laws. While these laws certainly help, they aren't enough to completely remove it, hence why there is still more violent crime there. It's the same reason you'd expect a city with a larger police force to have more violent crime: there's more violent crime, so you need more police."
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664sgh | Why/how does anyone deny climate change. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most people never read and likely wouldn't understand the science, at least without it being explained in a ELI5 fashion. Some people *are* politically motivated to deny/ignore climate change or have some reason to oppose the things needed to mitigate climate change or reduce human impact. It's *those* people that the average denier listens to. And they believe the things they say, including the things they say to defame the climate scientists. In the actual realm of science, there is no debate - human caused climate change is happening. The only debate is the exact extent, what can feasibly be done about it and just how bad it's going to be. The non-scientific 'debate' happens because when you abandon facts, you can behave as if your opinion is just as valid as any other.",
"It partly is political/emotional. A lot of people have drawn a hard line between Republican and Democrat or Liberal and Conservative, and they feel like they have to oppose ANYTHING that is on the other side. For those people, \"Shut down this entire air field so the noise doesn't disturb the habitat of the southwestern spotted mud slug\" and \"Admit the scientific evidence shows that we should probably do something to minimize how badly we're altering the earths atmosphere\" are in the exact same box, equally in the frame of \"tree hugging bullshit\"."
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6652mk | Now that we have better manuscripts, how far off was the King James Bible translation from how we understand it now? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A few things to bear in mind: * it is never possible to make a 100% accurate translations, even with languages we know...words in different languages mean slightly different things, which can be difficult to capture * our knowledge of ancient languages is imperfect * the bible was written over centuries, which is enough time for languages to undergo significant changes * Hebrew in particular is difficult, as it lacks vowels, and words were sometimes chosen for their dual meanings or numerological significance * translators, even modern ones, typically have theological motives. Isaiah 7:14 is a good example: *Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.* This is a pretty important verse, it is considered to be prophetic and establishes the virginity of Mary, which is pretty fundamental to a lot of Christian theology. However, the word used here for virgin, is \"almāh\", which most Jewish scholars translate as \"young, unmarried woman\", similar to the English word maiden. Such a women would be presumed to be a virgin, but that is not the crux of the word. When the Revised Standard Version came out, they used the latest scholarship and translated it as \"young woman\". This causes a major uproar, particularly among Catholics, and ever since this has been a litmus test for new bibles. If you want your translation to sell, you translated it as virgin, no matter what the scholarship says.",
"Pretty much any serious Bible scholar will tell you that the KJV is one of the least accurate translations. It uses language that was almost archaic at the time, was translated with the intention of making it flowery and impressive and was one of the first non-latin Bibles widely available, which is why it is so popular.",
"I'm just going to throw my two cents in here. I'm in my third year of studying Biblical Hebrew, so I won't claim to have any superior knowledge, but here's what I can say. Accurate is something of a broad term. An English Bible would sound very stunted if everything were translated with 100% accuracy. Whole chapters would just be long run-on sentences (vav consecutive imperfects... vav consecutive imperfects everywhere). As far as I can tell, translation accuracy is something of a spectrum with two main schools of thought on either side: 1) Formal correspondence: an attempt to translate true to the grammar and vocabulary of the text as possible, taking note of context both within the text itself and in regards to the period in which the text was written. For example, the ESV translates Psalm 1:1 \"Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers\" and that's fairly true to the text. Other translations take up the philosophy that each word should be translated the same way every time it appears, which doesn't always work. Both of these translation techniques lean towards Formal Correspondence 2) Dynamic Equivalent: an attempt to capture the idea and the message of the text. This comes in handy when translating a verse which doesn't come together well in English. Still others take it to an extreme. The Message translation translates Psalm 1:1 thusly: “How well God must like you— you don’t hang out at Sin Saloon, you don’t slink along Dead-End Road, you don’t go to Smart-Mouth College.” Frankly, as a lifelong Lutheran, that translation makes my ears bleed and my testicles retract back into my body. In some instances it works, but others take it too far. I have more I could say, but I've probably said a lot more than I know well enough to talk about."
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6657z0 | Why do muslim women wear hijab and muslim men don't? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I believe these rules are enforced by men. These men believe they are in control of said immodest actions and don't need it. Those women however must be watched close /s Plus the Koran and bible do not paint a good picture of women morally.",
"The Quran basically says that men and women alike should dress modestly, but doesn't go into much more detail than that except to say that women should cover their breasts, and when going out in public they should wear outer garments. It doesn't even use the word \"hijab\": in the Quran, this refers to a curtain or a more abstract separation (in particular, it referred very specifically to a curtain that separated the living quarters of Mohammed's wives from the part of the house that visitors were admitted to). There's a lot of debate over exactly what all this means, with some scholars suggesting that the Quran doesn't at all mandate the wearing of a headscarf, much less something like a burqa. Some believe that the rules actually apply only to Mohammed's wives, as Mohammed frequently had meetings and visitors who often camped in the compound just yards away from where his wives were sleeping. Like Christianity, Islam isn't one monolithic religion, but has many very different traditions and interpretations of scripture, from the brutally restrictive to the really quite liberal. How modest your dress has to be to count as \"modest\" will depend on which particular branch of Islam you follow. Modest dress does also apply to men, but it tends to be less of an issue -- it's certainly true that the regulations tend to be drawn up and enforced by men, who then concentrate on how *women* should dress. But you may remember the Taliban of Afghanistan punishing men for wearing shorts, for example.",
"The whole situation is pretty vague and there are tons of interpretations, with some of them saying that the hijab isn't mandated at all. Some societies do have men wearing a sort of hijab that covers their face and some don't. The whole thing either depends on personal interpretation or the interpretation of the authorities depending on if you live in a secular country or not."
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666y3c | Why do we never hear about other ethnicities in America during the Civil Rights Movement? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Part of the reason is that the U.S. was less racially diverse back during the civil rights movement. Just pulling some numbers of Wikipedia, in 1960 only about 1% of the U.S. population was not white or black (about 89% and 10%, respectively) and only about 3% of the population identified as Hispanic. Compare that to today, where 12% of the U.S. population is not white or black, and 16% of the population is Hispanic. America today is simply a more racially and ethnically heterogeneous place than it was back then.",
"Because the Civil Rights Movement was led by blacks primarily to end laws and culture targeted especially and specifically against blacks."
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66766z | How did vanilla become the default ice-cream flavour? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Vanilla is a pretty good blank canvas flavor. It takes other ingredients well unlike some others"
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667mf5 | How does Germany honor their WW2 vets and their soldiers who died in WW2? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Small towns have their quite modest memorials bearing the names of the men from that town who lost their lives. Often they were originally First World War memorials, and the names of WW2 soldiers were added to them. The concern is the creation of Nazi shrines, so you won't see big memorials specifically for those who fought for the Nazi cause. You will see memorials dedicated to the victims of the Nazi regime, though, and the soldiers are seen as victims as much as anyone else. The emphasis is less on honouring brave souls who fought and died for their country, but on comemmorating those who died at the hands of a dictatorial regime. (stolen wholesale from /u/rewboss)",
"German here. In Germany there are a lot of roads and buildings referring to people that fought wars BEFORE world war one, mostly the 30 years war and the wars against France. But finding anything honorable for the soldiers that fought in WW2 is very hard. As many others in this topic posted before, you can find small monuments on almost every graveyard in Germany, where the fallen soldiers are being remembered. BUT overall in Germany there is nothing like Vets day in the US as we are all learn about the war crimes and the holocaust in school. Even 'innocent' generals like Guderian and Rommel are not remembered anywhere at all. If a German openly stated that he is a fan of Erwin Rommel, he would get weird looks from everyone around him (if he doesn't life in a far-right environment at least). This is a major difference between Germany and the US where you can easily say that you are a fan of Eisenhower or Bernard Montogomery. The only Germans from WW2 that are really honored in our community are the ones who fought against the Third Reich while it still laste, e.g. Stauffenberg, Sophie and Hans Scholl, Georg Elser. As for the vets in Germany, mostly everyone (including myself) has or had a gradfather who fought in the second world war. But in contrast to US-vets who probably are proud of their years in service, German vets are mostly ashamed of their time (or some are also still brainwashed by Nazi propaganda and will tell you stories about how amazing Nazi Germany was). My grandfather NEVER told me anything about his time in the Wehrmacht. The only things I remember is that he was able to tell me to close the door in French and Russian. But I first got the hint where he learned these languages after his death in 2004. Some years ago I found a letter he wrote about his time in service, it is in German, but if anyone is interested, it would be a pleasure for me to translate ist. EDIT: I made a (very rough, sorry!) translation of the letter, which can be found here: URL_1 . EDIT2: German original of the letter (with some gaps from where I was not able to read his hand writing): URL_0",
"Most big, official memorials in Germany (including the Memorial Day on November 11th) are dedicated to \"all victims of war\" or something like that. You'll very rarely find anything honoring soldiers explicitly. If you do, it's probably pretty old and has been left there for historical significance (like the [Berlin Victory Column]( URL_0 ) that was built in the mid 19th century but upgraded with references to later wars, including WW2 while the war was still going on... and it very nearly got demolished multiple times for that, which would've been a shame because it's really one of the most important landmarks in the city). In general most German's don't honor soldiers actively, neither past nor current. We don't do \"thank you for your service\" or special veteran's privileges or anything like that. People probably care privately about their family members, and the armed forces probably hold small services for people that die in e.g. Afghanistan, but there's no great parades or giant flags over a coffin like you would know in America. We don't really see it as anything more than other people doing a dangerous job that they get appropriately compensated for.",
"In Germany being a soldier is not such a big deal as it is in countries like the US. It is a job as every other and not more honourable than being a policeman or nurse. Therefore honouring vets is not a big deal either. Most towns have some kind of marble wall with names of loved ones engraved. But don't put your hopes in finding names of \"famous\" nazi generals. Usually only the local folks are being listed. Also we don't have a special day honouring our vets. Usually if you are going to the graveyard, visiting thr grave of a relative, you take a short brake infront of the marble wall and read a few names. But don't salute under any circumstances. At least that's what it's like in the region of Germany where I'm living.",
"I have never appreciated foreigners trying to be \"understanding\" and thinking it's a shame we don't honour Nazi soldiers. You probably have the best of intentions, but the majority of Germans doesn't see anything honourable in our ancestors' involvement in the war, tragic and worthy of commemorating perhaps, but not honourable. We do have memorials for the White Rose and other resistance movements because they made difficult and dangerous choices at a time when the easy option meant participating in the worst crimes in History. That's honourable.",
"> They were just following orders See [here]( URL_0 ) and [here]( URL_1 ). \"I was just following orders\" does not absolve you of responsibility for your actions. There is nothing \"honorable\" about following orders to do evil. > how do you honor those who lost their lives You don't. You *remember* them. WW2 was not about \"honor\". At least not when seen through German (or European) eyes. You remember them as lives lost, as victims of a brutal regime. Not as some kind of honorable war heroes who died doing the right thing. > (Mainly the SS) If you want to honor those who died in WW2, do what the Germans have done: don't try to shift the blame to a small clique. Understand what happened, and accept that *everyone* had a responsibility for it, and that *everyone* has an obligation to ensure it doesn't happen again. Don't pretend that \"it was just a few SS people, everyone else were good and honorable and did the right thing and cannot be blamed for anything\".",
"In northern germany where I grew up (former GDR) there are no memorials of german vets at all. I think thats mostly because of the time the soviets occupied the eastern parts of germany. In my hometown are quite some soviet memorials. Some still standing, others beeing ignored and left to the nature. My grandmother even told me that they cellebrated a soviet vets day. There are memorials for soldiers serving during the 1st ww. Usually directly bear churches. But the ones Ive seen are quite small and rather big stones with a big christian cross (no iron cross) and the engraved names than oppulent statues. In comparison the soviets build big monuments for there propagandistic needs. Today we do not celebrate any vets day. Not even for the soldiers that died in recent missions like Bosnia & Herzegowina, Kosovo or Afghanistan. As a former soldier (serving 2 yrs, attending several foreign missions) Im sad about that. But the awareness for our soldiers is still very low. If you have any other questions about this topic Iam glad to help :)",
"You are working on a false premise, i.e. the idea that every country does and should honour their fallen soldiers. Germany doesn't. They honour their *dead*, yes, but serving in the armed forces is not considered especially honourable or respectable, and definitely not deserving of special mention. It's a job, and an odd job at that. Not one that's seen as desirable or prestigious at all, at least outside the right-leaning circles. So it's not just WW2 vets, it's ALL vets. Or rather, none of them.",
"We Germans do not honour our WW2 veterans and casualties, as it was Germany that did start WW2, it was German soldiers that invaded Europe, Scandinavia, North Africa and Russia, it was German soldiers and German people that built concentration camps, gassed hundrets of thousands of Jews, Disabled, Roma, dissidents, ... . Germany has official days to remember all victims of WW2. We - as individuals, as family - mourn for family members that did die during the war. But honouring would be an utterly wrong approach to deal with our history.",
"I did finish my military mandatory in Austria last year and I voluntaried for a maintenance duty on Zentralfriedhof in Vienna. There is a huge WW2 german soldier graveyard we voluntereed to \"wash\". Little did we know washing meant replacing THE TOMBSTONES BY HAND... so for 2 weeks straight all we fucking did was digging, carrying heavy tombstone out, putting new tombstone (about 80kg) in and then close the gap. We (4 austrian recruits) and our german camerades had a lot of fun and the amounts of respect for the soldiers was touching. It was an honor and the 2 weeks were really very beautiful despite the hard work.",
"German, but non-historian here: We generally see WW2 as something that has to be remembered to prevent it from happening again. Quite a bit of the history lessons are focused on the history before WW2 which made it possible and on the atrocities being commited while WW2. I can only remember 2 people from the military from my history lessons: (1) [Claus von Stauffenberg]( URL_1 ) who was involved in Operation Valkyrie, a plan to assasinate Hitler and (2) [Erwin Rommel]( URL_2 ) due to a plot against Hitler (and I vaguely remember there was something in Afrika ... I think the German soldiers had severe problems, Hitler wanted them to either win or die and Rommel ordered retreat... something like this) Besides that, [SoyIsMurder]( URL_0 ) is right: We rather remember the victims than the soldiers.",
"there is no veteran cult in germany like in the usa for example. + most citizens realy do not care at all about our military and the people involved in it these days. + i realy dont get the question at all , i mean what is there to honor ? and why should we honor those people, for what ? all of the men in my family of that generation died/served in ww2 btw. and i def. cant see myself beeing thankfull,honoring them, or whatever, for anything they have or not have done.",
"This is a difficult question to ask. There is risk of misinterpretation. Good on you for asking it, no questions should be off limits.",
"ELI5: How does the United States honor their Vietnam vets and their soldiers who died in Vietnam? I know that not all of their soldiers were bad people. They were just following orders. But regardless, how do you honor those who lost their lives, without thinking about the ones who did heinous things? (Mainly everyone) How do you reconcile you invaded and were responsible for the death of a million people, who just wanted freedom",
"My bachelor's thesis and some masters level research related to this topic. Some people have hit different aspects of this quite well already. There is little to no outright, direct memorialization (akin to something like the US WWII memorial in Washington D.C.). The few still-living veterans of the war rarely talk about their memories with anyone who didn't also experience them, so this has made research difficult. Even though it can generally be assumed that every man born between roughly between 1900 and 1945 served in some capacity, such men do not publicly \"wear\" their time in service. The few de facto WWII veterans associations are small, very private, and often can't be recognized as such by their name alone. Memorials specifically for the German soldiers in WWII don't exist, but that doesn't mean the siblings, children, grandchildren, friends, etc. of that troubled generation don't seek to honor and respect them despite the stain they all bore. As was correctly pointed out, WWI and Franco-Prussian War monuments often serve as proxy memorials. As for the victim memorials, it very much depends who you ask as to whether they think the soldiers should/are included in that category; regardless covert memorialization happens their far less frequently. In addition to this general societal discomfort with publicly affiliating with the quagmire of WWII, yes the issue of Neo-Nazi appropriation is also always a concern. The German government generally seeks to give them as little to affiliate with as possible. Sidenote: I suppose it's not suprising the 'clean Wehrmacht' issue was brought up. The scholarly evidence is overwhelming that the Wehrmacht was complicit, instrumental even, in the crimes of the Nazis *as an organization* but no it does not mean every individual was an evil, Jew-hating Nazi. Funnily enough German academia and I think society came to terms with the dirty Wehrmacht earlier and easier than a lot of Americans did ( some American military scholars and history buffs often have a peculiar erection for the German Army). The fact that the word cuck was thrown around shows you that this issue inevitably draws in less savory extreme-right sorts.",
"German soldiers were not 'just defending their country'. They committed acts of pure aggression against the rest of Europe and many mainline Wehrmacht units participated in atrocities. I have no idea why this idea is so widespread, but it's completely inaccurate.",
"It seems strange to me that you would say \"they were just following orders.\" as if that's good enough. That's exactly the defence the nazis used at neurenberg and it wasn't enough to stop them getting shot. When you are butchering millions \"just following ordrrs\" isn't an excuse.",
"German here with both sides of my familie tied and affected by ww2 Something most people here tend to forget is that basically every German from this time was involved in this war. Every citizen has his or her war stories. The WW2 was fought not in some far away country but directly in your neighborhood. Talk to anybody who lived through this time it doesn’t matter if they were children or adult they are basically war veterans. We still find to this day around 5000 old Bombs every year. A parade or memorial just for soldiers would make no sense as they were not the only ones who had to suffer and pay for this war. Each and every citizens was affected by it. After it was over most people just wanted to forget it, that is why there are no memorials to honor the soldiers but ones that remember the all the people who were lost.",
"As a german all this hate in this thread makes me really sad... Many soldiers just followed orders. They had barely a chance and were forced to fight. What would you do follow your order to fight or get shot as a traitor? As hitler said: „Der Soldat kann sterben, der Deserteur muß sterben“ which means \"the soldier can die but the deserter must die!\" And yes nazis are fcking evil we get it. But to claim all of the 18.2 million wehrmacht soldiers were nazis and took part in war crimes is just wrong! My grandfather was in the \"Fernmeldetruppe\" which was like telecommunication troops. they never took active part in battle they only build up communication lines behind the troops and build telegraphs. He did this until he got injured by an air strike and was sent home to bavaria in fall '43. He never commited a war crime and was strongly against hitler and the nsdap he always voted for the SPD a left wing worker party... So long story short : i see him as an honorable man who did only what he had to do. He was a very kind and liberal thinking man. He never commited a crime.. And so were many other wehrmachts soldiers. And yea only \"honoring\" here in germany are stone memorials originally build for ww1 and some of them got lists for ww2 soldiers added. Thats it nobody likes to talk about it and if you do so they immediatly see you as a nazi sympathizer. What i think is a very wierd way to handle the past and the own great/ and grandparents. Iam until today voting for spd and i hate nazis / neo nazis and all such folks!. But that is no reason for me to not honor our grandparents who where no criminals. Edit : grammar and some words, my english is not the best",
"They were just following orders. if we follow this logic hitler was just following orders from Germans demanding massacres, in the end no one is responsible for anything",
"He asked how people remember German soldiers from ww2. Not your opinion on nazis. If you don't get a good enough answer from here then possibly the history subreddit could help.",
"Slightly off-topic: Having dual american-german citizenship, and having lived in both countries for many years - I remember how respected soldiers are in the US. If there is someone walking around in a uniform, they usually get thanked for their service. I remember my dad(vet) often going out to get drunk, but end up not spending a dime because of his service. In Germany, nobody thanks or even notices soldiers, when they are seen. I actually went up to a german soldier at the train station a few years back and thanked him for his service. He looked at me, and didnt really know what to say - Im guessing this was a first for him. Seriously people, thank your soldiers for their service",
"In our family we just don't talk about it. My grandparents fought in the war and never said a single word about the time. It also never occurred to me to honor them in any way. In Germany there is no real pro-military culture. Serving in the army is not seen as something good or honorable.",
"We don't. We have memorials for the fallen in some places but more importantly we have memorials for the millions the Hitler regime executed because they thought them to be less than human. There seems to be a misconception here, that the German Wehrmacht was fooled by Hitler and unwilling to got to war. That is not true. They committed countless warcrimes too. The thing is: the atrocities were not committed by a small group of ss lunatics. They were committed largely by normal men with familys at home. Because normal people are capable of horrible cruelty. We don't honour soldiers because it is no honourable job. It's the only job that actively seeks to bring out the worst in men: the willingness to take a life in pursuit of an imaginary greater good",
"I always wonder how the \"bad\" guys are honoured in death. Since during a war both sides view the other as \"the bad guy\" only at the end of it that it becomes clear who the bad guy was, the one who lost. I'm Belgian and not that long ago I found out that a part of my family was executed for being Nazi collaborators, every name buried and forgotten. If Germany would have won the war would you find their names on our village's WOII monument and the rest being forgotten. But from the stories my grandmother(non Nazi collaborators) told me about the war the soldiers from both sides were more often than not friendly and respectful. Since she was the \"only\" one with a big farm in area that produced lots of food she had lots of soldiers over the floor. Both sides of the war helped with farm work if they wanted food or a place to stay. Never caused any harm to her family or farm. She never spoke badly over the \"bad\" soldiers."
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667q0h | Why are men seemingly always in supply and women in demand? | No matter which market you're talking about (dating market, paid sex market, etc.) it seems like a constant than women are more in demand than men, despite the population being split roughly 50/50. At this point, I think we just take it as a given, but I wonder if there's any proven math behind this by now. I've only heard vague musings about our biology that always wind up sounding sexist. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because of something biologists call [sexual selection]( URL_0 ), and as a result of the biological realities of [parental investment]( URL_1 ). In any organism in which one sex must invest more into offspring than the opposite sex, the higher-investing sex will be more discriminating in their choice of mate. It takes a trivial amount of resources and energy for a male mammal to produce a child. But for females, it requires months of expensive gestation and years of child-rearing. This leaves its mark on the psychologies of the sexes. Obviously it's not the only thing that influences our decision-making when it comes to sex, but these basic principles of sexual selection are among the most robust, well-established, and uncontroversial principles in biology and evolutionary psychology.",
"Women are typically more selective of partners and when to have sex. Men are typically less discriminatory in this regard. Ergo, the average man will be less in demand than the average woman. That being said, the further to the right of the bell curve you are, the more in demand you'll be (for both sexes, though more strikingly so for men).",
"Yeah I think us ugly women and our opposite, the highly attractive man, have a different experience."
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6686cq | How did baby boomers when they were young manage to pay for a house and raise a family while on single incomes (the dad working), yet today young couples can't even afford a small home and struggle to raise even one child while there's two incomes (mom and dad working)? What happened? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"WARNING: long historical analysis in broad strokes, that will rile people up with reactionary emotional responses and down-votes follows... Wages and costs were once in parity. The line on the graphs for worst, median, and best salary were basically the same shape as the line for cost to buy a home, cost to buy a car, cost to raise a kid, and so on. Then a particular and peculiar force took over the economy. People who'd read Ayn Rand (and similar nonsense) in the sixties became the makers of policy in the eighties. This brought us \"trickle down economics\" and corporate raiding and some other stuff. (Continued after aside...) {deleted} So the other key thing that happened is that the racists switched from the Democratic party to the Republican party in the sixties and seventies. See \"Democrat\" used to to be the party of \"institutions\", so business etc. these \"institutions\" included big business and racism was institutional before the Civil Rights Movement. This was an accident. If your government and business and your churches are all racist and you are in support of government and church and business, you got racist indoctrination as an underlayment. The \"Republican\" was the party of \"individuals\" which _included_ the Unions and Workers Rights and the Civil Rights Movement itself. The important thing here is that business interests and workers rights were on opposite sides. But then the Civil Rights Act passed. Institutions, particularly government and business _banished_ racism. So what's a racist to do? Well they switched sides. So racism, my right to tell a ***** to (whatever) became an \"individual rights issue\". People switched parties in droves. The fine \"Democrat\" institution of the KKK etc, wanted to continue on, so the message of the Republican party sounded like what they wanted. The thing is that a lot of business and social (church) power was carried across the divide because those people _owned_ those institutions and interests. You have to look at the now-dead politicians of the age, the last to leave office or die being Strom Thurmond, who did the former by doing the latter. The pattern of defection from Democrat to Republican is historically obvious. Even today, some GOP partisans point out that the KKK was a Democrat institution, but they lack the sense of history to understand why they should be suspicious that the KKK is now on their side. See the Civil Rights Movement was revolutionary instead of evolutionary, so the structures of power didn't properly realign properly. Basically a lot of people moved \"right\" all at once, while nobody was moving left. With the business owners and the unions now in the same party one had to lose status. Businesses had the money. A union couldn't shut down a business without losing the union, but a business could shut down a union and benefit. Add to that the fact that a lot of people just plain old _didn't_ _notice_ that the sides had switched up. The less educated you were, the less likely you were to read the papers, the easier it was to miss the fact that you might now be voting for the wrong side. Unionists had just _nobody_ to vote for because they \"knew\" \"Democrats were bad for unions\", and largely they _were_, having had no reason to change their tune. They still had a lot of business interest and whatnot, with no worker base. So with the individual rights people, the unions, and the businesses all in the same pile the Republicans started dismantling what they'd built for the individuals. Their social support agenda, their actual pro-worker mandate, and their successful Social Security and Welfare programs were not in the interests of their new business buddies. So the eighties were an orgasm of deregulation and \"corporate raiding\". See the Objectivists came of age but landed in charge of the side that is supposed to protect workers interests. So they just let go of their side of the rope and started pushing it towards the right, and the Democrats were pulling to the right out of habit. Basically the Republicans leapfrogged over the Democrats so that the entire political spectrum was just slewing to the side we now call \"right\". The democrats eventually realized that someone needed to be on the left, but by then the damage had been done. At this point, with nobody protecting individual incomes of the working middle class, and even the working upper class, the wage growth lines basically flatten out for everybody who isn't a business _owner_. The Objectivists and the business men dismantle regulation. The Savings and Loan system collapses, and the barriers between the three types of banks (commercial, investment, and ~~housing~~ consumer) disappear. Now banks that are supposed to anchor commercial and individual (worker) interest are free to gamble, which creates a series of bubbles and bursts that the workers and government interests have to support because the firewall around risky investment is _gone_ and investment banks can no longer be allowed to fail because they'll take business and personal interests down in the blast. Meanwhile, medical care has become for profit. Kaiser-Perminante (if memory serves) was the first non not-for-profit hospital, but once that barrier was pierced the HMOs and the for-profit hospitals took over in a tide. The private institution of higher education has always been a thing, but with deregulation of student loans and the really broad application of the GI bill - and with the lack of political champions for education - tuition became a gold mine for schools. This happened right as the lust-for-advancement of the fifties was dying off. The dream of the twenties, thirties, and forties that science was going to solve everything died during a duck-and-cover exercise somewhere along the way. Another regulation limited how many media companies any one business interest could control. With the death of that just a few businesses, a few _huge_ businesses, can now \"set the message\". \"Greed is good\", \"they're poor because they are lazy\", \"more deregulation will solve the problems of deregulation\", \"free markets now\" (which is great for business but hell on workers). An endless series of messages that somehow just never understand that working people create value. Democrats are slowly taking up the interests of the individual workers, the unions, the environment, and all the things that the Republicans dropped. But terrific damage has been done. The economy and deregulation have left the vast majority of people far, far away from where they are supposed to be. Meanwhile lots of people are one issue voters, voting for gun rights and electing people who want to remove every other law in their favor as a consequence. Further still, there are people who've just got a formula for god-and-country or all-democrats-are-thieves (a leftover from when all democrats were businessmen). And still further the \"big government is bad\" meme and the \"tax and spend\" meme that sits like a turd, ignoring the fact that the alternative is \"borrow and spend\". So the answer to your question is that someone \"scrambled the teams\" and orphaned the interests of the moderate worker who just wants a _fair_ wage for _everybody_. Poor people vote republican because they think of Democrats as \"elitists\" because in the forties they _were_; that vote being totally blind to electing people who literally own elite country clubs. Rich people vote republican because it's good for their bank accounts. But then the republicans vote to dismantle _their_ _own_ prior policies that made our workforce so amazing and egalitarian. Meanwhile the Democrats are in a three-decades-long shell-shock identity crisis and our economy is slowly deflating as the money pours into the pockets of the ultra-rich. QUICK UPDATE: - Thanks for the gold! - Yes, this is USA-Centric. That's where I grew up. But if you look at our history of treaties and our role in the cold war, which was contemporary with this whole thing, and our control of two of the big-four world stock markets, it's pretty easy to see how we _exported_ our worst ideas to the rest of \"the western world\". - I was alive for lots of this. I was born in 1964. I remember desegregation. I was initially republican. I am democrat now, but for lack of choice. As long as the U.S. has \"simple majority rule\", as in you need 50% plus one guy to win, the math just gives any three-way split to the dominant party in the House, so we can't have nice things like a third party. - No, I didn't \"forget about women entering the workforce\", nor the \"illegal immigrants\"... nor automation. The continuous boogey-man of new workers is a role that has gone to Blacks, Irishmen, Scottsmen, Chinamen, and every other racist label you can think of. By always having some people forced to take slave-labor wages you can drive down the labor market artificially. Whenever fair labor laws change this for the current out-group we've seen economic booms. - \"Kaiser Permanente\" is not-for-profit, but \"Kaiser Perminante Medical Group\" is a wholly owned for-profit entity. These sorts of distinctions are important. Sorry for confusing you. - No, I am not a \"Communist\", if you think everybody who references \"workers\" is a communist then you need to study the history of labor over the last 3 thousand years. - Yes, this is \"biased\". Facts tend to be biased for having only one actual, factual condition. - No, I didn't include _your_ pet theory, write your own post. - Character cap limits specificity in some areas. - No, this was not for literal five year old children. Read the rules in the side bar. 8-) EDIT2: - look up \"Republican Southern Strategy\" it was that deliberate and done in plain sight.",
"A lot of the comments here are focusing on the US, citing US-specific reasons as if this is a US-specific phenomenon when it isn't. Things are exactly the same here in the UK and Europe in general, so whilst I'm sure the reasons cited are contributing factors I think they omit to mention a major factor that is common to the entire developed world: the reduced value of labour. This is long so I'll make a TL;DR at the end. Pre-ww1 as you have observed, for most families the husband worked for money whilst the wife was primarily concerned with keeping the house in order and caring for their children. The wife may help out with garden or farmwork in some capacity and she may even have some paid employment as a cook or a cleaner on some limited basis if there were older children at home who could care for their siblings but *in general* the vast majority of the family income was provided by the husband such that the wife didn't *have* to work. Lots of women did work of course, particularly in areas like service, but not *married* women. For most the choice was marriage *or* employment, not both. This began to change in the interwar years since it had become acceptable for women to enter many professions. Nursing and teaching are perhaps the best examples of this; the reason we consider these as 'female' professions today is because they were among the first where women really came into the foreground and were allowed to do so because it fit with the gender role of caring and childrearing. Women still didn't *have* to work however, the war and the push for universal suffrage had simply made it both more necessary (due to the reduced workforce) and acceptable (due to changing attitudes) for them to do so. Ultimately however many women did just go back to being housewives for their husbands and that remained economically feasible since few women really had a 'career' still, more an occupation that could be engaged in if they were single or needed less at home due to having no children to care for. WW2 brought another profound shift for all the same reasons: even further reductions to the workforce of a world which had still not recovered from the previous 'war to end all wars' (bear in mind some poor bastards fought in both) and a realisation of the fact that women actually *could* do all the same jobs as men saw them really enter the workforce proper for the first time. When the men came home, it was no longer simply a case of them going back to their old lives since many did not wish to, and even if they did the economics of the time made that challenging as decreased supply of goods (Europe continued rationing well into the 1950s) increased their value and thus more work was required to maintain standard of living. Rather than adjusting back to the old economy which was calibrated for only 50% of the population working though, things were recalibrated to assume everyone was. Thus, once populations recovered in the 1960s you suddenly had 2 people for every job there had been initially. GDP was increased of course and more jobs were created but fundamentally the value of labour had been reduced - all of which was excellent for business but (as others have explained in their criticism of Raeganomics on this point) not so good for the population at large. This effect was only exacerbated then from the 1960s onwards with the push for gender equality, since for the first time women really started to have careers rather than just jobs and began to equal or even overtake men in many fields - so it wasn't even safe for men in highly technical fields anymore where previously they had largely escaped this effect and had continued to be able to act as sole provider as a result of women being unable to enter their sectors of the workforce. By the 1980s the effect was largely complete, with women not only *able* to have a career but actually *expected* and all but *required* to do so - the societal values had shifted but also the economics. Over the same time period, we also had a massive increase in automation. Whereas you once needed hundreds of men to work a field, you could suddenly buy a machine to do their work for you. The wars brought huge technological advances on top of those of the late 1800s leading up to 1914, further reducing the value of labour before you even consider the effective doubling in supply. Everything is only worth what its purchaser is willing to pay, and this includes labour - it stands to reason if the value of a mans work is reduced because he must compete with a machine *and* suddenly twice as many other people are available to do the job instead of him then he will be forced to accept lower pay whilst his employer reaps the benefits of both a mechanised workforce *and* cheap human labour. This effect of automation is only likely to increase, as computers and AI continue to encroach on jobs which people currently occupy today - driving wages down and profits for companies up. **TL;DR** - Machines and women entering the workforce increased the supply of labour and thus reduced its value, reducing wages and requiring everyone to work in order to maintain standard of living at pace with technological advancement.",
"Got out of the Navy in Wash. D.C. in 1971 after 7 years as an electronics tech. Did a couple temp jobs in the Wash. DC area for a year and then went to San Jose (now called Silicon Valley) with a wife and a kid. No problem getting a decent high paid technician job paying $14K in 1973. Used the GI bill to buy a house for $28K with a mortgage less than rent on an apartment. Wife never worked (but is extremely frugal). I changed jobs whenever I heard about something more interesting that also paid more and we always seemed to have enough money even to buy a new car and motorcycle every few years. In 1985, sold the first house for $120K and bought new house for $150K keeping the same monthly payment making my cost of housing much lower than renters or first time buyers. Later I cashed in some stock options and bought a rental house with a small negative cashflow, sold it three years later for a profit and bought another house that had a positive cashflow. Finished college getting an EE using the GI bill. Career advanced, taking the most interesting and best paying job. I even took months off between jobs traveling in Asia. Eventually I aged out of the market and sold everything and retired living on social security and investments. Nothing like that could happen today. I lived in the golden age of employment in technology.",
"Two main reasons: First, we have very few well-paying jobs that don't require at least 4 year degrees to obtain. Education is getting unattainable for many. Student debt is at near crisis levels. Second, we have cost of living that is increasing while wages stagnate. We also have had incredibly low interest rates for nearly 15 years. This has fueled massive mortgage debt and housing bubbles across the country. House prices rise and incomes stay stagnant. A regular house 50 years ago may have cost 2 to 3 times yearly income; today it may be up to 10 times or even more in some places. I like to chalk it up to the loss of a strong labour movement and decreased government regulation to make sure average people aren't screwed by... well... capitalism. The boomers got theirs... They don't give a shit about the next generation.",
"Here's something I haven't heard anyone else say but is true in my case: I make the exact same salary that my mom did in her first job out of college 40 years ago. She & my dad lived in Ohio & I live in NYC. According to this inflation calculator, URL_0 I would be making over $100K if companies adjusted their salaries for inflation",
"Since 1980, minimum wage has doubled, and the cost of bread, hamburger, eggs, gas, etc. Has quadrupled. It's not really about the bubble, or Reagan, or the boomers... it's about the things you absolutely *need* to survive costing almost exactly twice as much of your *time* at work. The only reasonable way to double the time you spend working is to have two people with a job. So \"working couples\" is now the baseline just to survive.",
"The US had post WW2 economic boom of orgasmic levels between 1950s-80s. Some of the world was hurt from war, and a lot of it wasn't even developed yet. The US was untouched, and had a massive manufacturing base. This was a time when an unskilled guy could go out into his community, stand next to a conveyor belt, and make a sold middle class salary. The coal mines, auto plants and factories were all up and running. Then things changed. Other countries started to catch up. Business owners realized they could ship jobs to other countries and slash payroll in half. Now that there's less jobs, wages are being driven down because workers are getting desperate. So that's kind of where we're at now. An economy with fewer jobs at lower wages.",
"Blue collar work started to die out as new advancements in automation took them over. Any blue collar work that still exists has had its wages drop significantly over the past 50 years. This means that if you want a job capable of sustaining a family, then you have to go to college which usually results in large amounts of debt. Due higher education becoming standard the supply for college graduates is much larger then the demand resulting in lower wages for specialized jobs as well. This would all be fine if the cost of living didnt increase over the last couple decades. Tl:dr People have to put themselves in debt to make less money in a more expensive market place.",
"This probably won't be a popular answer but I grew up in one of those houses with one income. My dad worked all the overtime he could get and we never went away or out. My mom cooked dinner every night and we never bought anything that we didn't absolutely need. We didn't have iPhones or tablets that needed replacing every year with the newest model and they drove the same one car for 10 years before buying a second car, and keeping the first, for another 10 years. At that point I got that first car and they bought their third ever car. If something broke my dad would try to fix it whatever way he could and kept it going for as long as possible until fixing was no longer an option. I didn't see the inside of a restaurant as a patron (I had uncles that owned pizza shops and diners so I did see commercial kitchens at a young age) until I was well in my teens. Today I can't think of a single dual income family that hasn't purchased hundreds of dollars of gifts for their kids every Christmas, some of these kids (pre teens) even have phones. Not to mention new cars purchased about every three years and the need to have everything they (I'm also guilty) want when they want it. Or parents saved and scrimped to get what they had on a single income. Families with more than one income spend way more frivolously.",
"2 good but not great salaries, jobs with all the benefits so health ins was free (really, free for the employee and only an added cost for family members but we each had our own) with a large company that people often stayed with their entire career. My husband had about $2,000 in student loans left and I didn't go to college so we knocked that out ASAP. The plan was a house before pets or kids and we bought one 2 years after we married, in 1984. for $99k with 10% down. Very small (1000sq ft) but cute. That house nearly doubled in value in 8 years and because my husband started and finished his MBA during that time he got promotions and raises and a company car, while I quit to stay home with the kids. Sold that place and bought another smallish place (1350sq ft) with a second bath in a better community for for $235k. We rode the SF Bay Area real estate boom after that and added a family room but never moved again. It was nothing we did special, we just played by the rules that were in place at the time, and they made sense. These days there are no rules and nothing makes sense.",
"There's a lot of personal anecdotes here, but there's two major reasons from what I can tell: **Market inflation** - As in, the mean value of property has risen compared to the relative income of the average American. The reasoning behind this is a many-fold economic and financial discussion that is far bigger than the scope of your question. **Differences in what the same job paid back then, adjusted for inflation** - The answer here is that 40-50 years ago, the same job simply paid more because those jobs were mandatory for people to fill. With Technology taking over many, many common jobs employers don't have to offer competitive wages to fill job positions for common jobs, which means more Americans make less money overall.",
"We spend more money today. I grew up in a two income household, but my parents both grew up in lower middle class families and didn't spend. We ate dinner at home every night, my parents packed their lunches. The kids all brown bagged it through high school. On the few occasions we went out to eat we went to an inexpensive neighborhood restaurant. There were no cell phones back then and we didn't get cable until I was in high school. My parents bought mostly second hand cars and when they did buy new there were very few options (defiantly not air conditioning). Speaking of air conditioning, it had to be over 90 degrees and it had to be cleared by my dad to be turned on. For vacations we visited the free battlefields in the Midwest and New England. I learned a lot about the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. I spent lots of time in museums (free back then). All this saving meant that my siblings and I have never had a student loan, my parents paid for it all. They put down 20% on everybody's first home (you had to get one within reason, dad was the final judge). I look at the way I live and I'm ashamed that we don't have more money. We rarely eat at home, I buy breakfast and lunch at work every day. We have a $200 phone bill and a $200 satellite TV bill. Our vacations are freaking expensive. Basically, today we blow most of the money we earn on pleasure for today and we do not think about tomorrow.",
"We fucked up. There was a gentlemans agreement after WW2 that the supply of labour would always be restricted. Well, we fucked up. When women entered the workforce, we didn't reduce hours by enforcing things like overtime pay. We didn't put pressure on the supply of labour. Surprisingly, when the labour force is twice the size, you can pay half as much for the same amount of work. It's not exactly like that, because nothing ever fits a model perfectly, but you get the idea. The price of labour responds to the supply. We didn't restrict the supply. We effectively lowered the price. Now two people do two people's work for what was (in real terms) one person's pay.",
"This isn't exactly true. It depends a lot on what area you look at. You're getting a lot of \"I know, right!?\" answers, so heres a different perspective: My wife and I are on one income, and we bought a reasonably priced 4 bedroom house with a mortgage that was less than our previous rent. I have a job that doesn't require a degree, and we're homeowners at 27. This is totally possible in Minnesota, but California, Colorado, or DC, probably not. Edit: a lot of people are pointing out how affordable/expensive it is in their area, which goes to show it totally depends on location, even within states. Also, I live in a suburb of Minneapolis, not rural MN, to be clear.",
"I'm late to the party, but I have an example that really put things into perspective for me. My dad is 65. When he graduated from college, his first job paid $35,000 per year. He bought a house for around $50,000. This was in the 1970s. He sold it many years later for $150,000 or so. I'm in my late 20s. When I graduated from college, my first job paid $36,000 per year. Needless to say, there are no $50,000 houses I can buy. I always knew that wages stagnated and that housing prices skyrocketed, but this really put things into perspective for me.",
"They didn't have to pay for cell phones, the internet, cable t.v.. didn't have two cars and a lifestyle that supported it. Took cheap vacations camping or going to the beach. They didn't travel and paid for a carload of kids at the drive ins. They didn't go out to eat or have fast food takeout daily or even weekly. Didn't have designer clothes, sneakers, even made their own clothes. Didn't have giant houses and grandparents lived with them. They saved. The big banks and insurance companies didn't run the world. Everyone paid taxes and the rich didn't get out of it. There were no commercials pushing drugs. Played board games as a family, did family things. Christmas didn't put them in debt. Pets were free. Ect..",
"I think you mean the parents of baby boomers more so than baby boomers themselves. My parents are (early) baby boomers, and so are my aunts, uncles, in-laws, etc., and for the most part their families were 2 income. My mom is born in the late 40's, and is the oldest of 4 children. Her dad was a teacher, my grandma stayed at home - though she did at times earn some extra money through sewing at home. She sewed most of their clothing (and also clothing for dolls out of the scraps). The home my mom grew up in started as a 2 bedroom with one bathroom, though they did build an addition which added a rec room and third bedroom, and added in a 2nd bathroom at one point. This is for 2 adults and 4 children. They did not have a TV, at least for a while, my mom talks about going to a friend's place to watch TV. They had one car. You had a phone (maybe on a party line), electricity, but no cable, internet, cell phone... you had one TV if that. Actually the house my dad lived in as a baby in rural Alberta had no electricity (think how you can't get good high speed internet in some places now), and I believe also had an outhouse.",
"It's really not too hard to understand the reasoning as to why expenses are vastly outpacing incomes: 1. Population growth and the inclusion of women in the workforce. There are simply more people competing for jobs in an era where technology is quickly replacing the requirement of a skilled human labor in most white and many blue collar professions. Corporations love this as they can get higher quality candidates for almost nothing now. Flood the market and you get a drop in prices. Pretty simple. 2. Globalization: The marketplace is no longer local, and global demand creates pressures on local (high quality) production. 1st world real estate, food and education is being bought up by practically every capable person world-wide. Prices of goods in your city are no longer dictated by the demand in your city. Go to any mall in a major employment center and count how many tourists from other countries are buying up massive amounts of items because how hard those goods are to get in their home countries. 1st world colleges are now world-serving colleges with the inability to service all demand. In response, these colleges are constantly building up capacity and hiring more \"rare\" professors to educate the ever increasing number of students as demand dictates that people are willing to pay more and more to be able to attend something that is considered a base necessity now that there are so many people competing for local jobs on a world scale. The governments of the 1st world make it worse by blindly giving easier access to anyone who wants access to university learning, hence why many colleges are full of non-native students from across the globe. Don't forget any enforced diversity requirements. Colleges are forced to let certain groups in, and that creates a situation where colleges have zero incentive to keep prices reasonable since those groups are usually also using government-subsidized loans. 3. Limits to efficiency: Global population growth has a huge strain on world resources and thus input costs are higher. First world countries are growing at below replacement value while developing nations are reproducing at massive rates. This creates multiple inefficiencies: Government infrastructure issues, war/political upheaval, quality issues and corruption. Most of the stuff that people want are extremely bottle necked: High quality education, quick transportation, highly nutritional food, water and utilities are not capable of providing billions of people with access. You can be sustainable, or you can grow. The world is choosing to grow instead of being sustainable... so prices are rising in response. 4. Education costs: Thanks to the above pressures, the cost for local 1st world population groups is skyrocketing. Young local people are being forced to either pay a lot of money or not get the required education necessary to get a decent paying job. Alternatively, they could work in trades, but those are dirty jobs and our population has quickly become picky about that stuff. Unfortunately, even the less-impressive education facilities are charging extreme prices, so a degree from Harvard maintains a decent market rate to employees, while the same cost degree from the university of hogwash texas probably wont get you access to many high-end jobs due to the over-supply of qualified candidates from around the world. Tldr: Competing ideas that we need continued population growth, and those people need easy access to everything. Too many people, not enough jobs and resources. It's not sustainable.",
"A lot of people are making true and valid points about government influence. I have no education or knowledge to refute or even really disagree with their basic points, but I think the actual problem is a more personal one. It can be kind of cathartic to blame somebody else for our problems, but we can actually fix this ourselves for our own individual circumstance. The truth of the matter is that we tend to make very poor monetary and purchasing decision as individuals. We upgrade many levels of tech on an annual basis when what we have is already fully functional for the purpose we need it for, we eat out at expensive restaurants (by which I mean fast food) for $5 a meal when it is relatively simple to eat for $1.50 a meal from home and be healthier and tastier, we drive inefficient vehicles that cost us money to use that we had to borrow money to get in the first place (pick-up trucks make no sense for 80% of people that drive them or at least 80% of times they are driven), and we agree to slow rates of debt repayment to buy it all which causes more of our money to disappear to no personal benefit. Of course, this is all encouraged by big businesses who want our money but our purchasing decisions are our own. The reason we have money issues in America is because individual Americans stopped making responsible, wise decisions with their money. For evidence of this, check out the Mr. Money Mustache blog about a guy whose family of three lives happily on 27k a year or the Early Retirement Extreme blog about the guy who lived off 7k a year. They both live happy fulfilling lives that don't look all that different from our own. We need to stop the mentality of buying above our earning. Tl;dr - URL_0 Edit: I'm getting a lot of replies that say I'm blaming the consumer, which is basically true when I look at my wording in the first paragraph but I didn't really mean the consumer is at fault for the whole mess. My apologies for that. But more to the point, I'm not trying to make this an issue of finger-pointing. If you want me to point a finger, I would point it at the government like most of the other comments here. Government policy has created an unstable economy, but to my limited understanding and my lack of relevant education, the economy is freakin' complicated. I can't actually speak on that. I'm not trying to. My comment is trying to generate the mindset of \"Let's try to fix our own situation\" instead of one that waits for the government to fix it for us, because let's be honest, how likely is that in the near to moderate future? The consumer didn't get themselves into the mess, but they can help themselves through it. We can have an impact on our financial situations by cutting out unnecessary luxuries and not being tied down to rigid modes of thought about spending and earning levels. Will that fix the economy as a whole? I have no idea. As I said, I think the economy is freakin' complicated. I'm not thinking nationally; I'm thinking personally.",
"Tons of great answers. Here's another piece of the pie: Think about what it costs now. Then, think about what it would cost if your house was 1400 sq ft, if you owned one car, if you didn't pay for cable or Internet or cell phones. If you *never* got in an airplane. If you vacationed by going to visit relatives and staying in their home instead of staying at a hotel. If when you got sick you either got healthy quick or you died, because medicine couldn't keep you hanging on. If you didn't own 10 pairs of shoes or multiple pairs of sunglasses or 12 kitchen gadgets or multiple video game systems. A piece of our problem is that we *consume* a hell of a lot more today than folks did just post WWII. That stuff improves our quality of life, but it comes with cost. Part of r/frugal is living a lifestyle like those of our grandparents.",
"It's not just that, but you could raise a family on some jobs that now are basically minimum wage jobs. And jobs like my dads that paid $60,000/yr starting wage in the 80's only required a high school education. Same exact job now requires a college degree. That really pisses me off. If a 1970's high school education was good enough then to grow a thriving business, why isn't a 2000's high school diploma good enough now? It's shit like that that makes me feel like this isn't just the way things naturally evolved, but is damn near a conspiracy to put people in debt. People in debt are easy to control and make good little worker bees.",
"I highly recommend watching Robert Reich's documentary \"Inequality for all\". R.R was the labor secretary for Bill Clinton.",
"Short answer: that was the highest point in our economy. Wages were at the highest they ever were. People forget that everything has an average. That was the peak. We are currently slightly below the average. Also realize the rate of poverty is historically low actually. We were fighting a \"war on poverty\" during the time you are talking about, so it wasn't great for everyone. You have a nostalgic look at a time you didn't live in. Ask the blacks in the south and the hill folk in Appalachia how the era you are talking about went for them.",
"Due to demand for property prices of property increased faster then wages increased. This compounded for 15 years into the situation we have today.",
"\"Real\" wages have stagnated or declined relative to inflation, while prices continue to rise due to the increase in money supply. People also don't take into account their spending habits enough. Today's generation is much less savings-oriented than prior generations. Cell phones, laptops, cable bills, etc. are all things the past generation didn't have to deal with. Taxes on the working class are also significantly higher than in prior generations.",
"I have no scientific sources, but think a lot of it has to do with population growth. 1950 the US had 150 million people (2.5 billion worldwide), now there are 320 million (7.5 billion) So much more people want houses, but the land area is constant, so the property prices go up a lot. On the other hand, there are much more possible workers, so the wages go down. Supply/demand.",
"I am URL_0 Dad couldn't. He worked full time for the phone company and had his own floor sanding business on the side. He worked 8 hours for telco, the went straight to work for work at his business weeknights another 6 to 8 hours. Weekends he worked Saturdays, sometimes Sundays. He did it for years to buy a house for us. In the 80's I was in the Air Force, worked my 8 hours , as a telephone tech. We worked like a civilian company, Mon thru Friday, nights weekends and holidays off. It was awesome. No shift work. Me and 6 other techs worked full time for a civilian telco at night , running cable, terminating and testing them, 6 to 7 hours 5 nights a week. I was married and even with the extra money we got for living off base, lower ranks could not live on base, we could not make ends meet, wife worked as well. I also worked a 2nd full time job after I got out and worked for a telco company and did so for a few years. It always has been rough starting out in any career, it has never been unusual for people to do this, even baby boomers. Not sure why everyone thinks it was easier then, sure ,cost of living was less but so was income.",
"what did the world look like 30-50 years ago? did they eat out 4 nights a week? did they have TV? cable? internet? cell phone? How much of a modern persons monthly expenses did not exist? power was cheap, gas was 50cents/gallon. Cars didnt have airbags, abs, crumple zones, or any power, they might not have had a radio, ac, or carpet on the floor. healthcare was cheap(er) because we didnt have half of the tests and equipment that have trillions of R & D attached. What about homes... look at homes built in the 40s'. central hvac, nope. insulation? nope. low E double pane windows? nope. Of course there were *less* people, which means less demand for land. Shop for a 1940's house in detroit, boston, NY, Chicago, you'll see small lots and small homes. On top of that, they got by due to high demand for our exports. Now we are competing against so many other countries, our wages are still heavily skewed in our favor, but we are trending to the median. Our prior wealth was the anomaly, we are just feeling the pinch of reality now. could blame corporate greed, that would be easy. and sure, there are a handful of CEOs that live a pretty enviable lifestyle. but most of them have the bulk of their wealth tied up in stocks that are invested in companies, spent to afford the capital investments, computers, offices, machines, ect that facilitate our jobs.",
"Prices have gone up much more quickly than salaries. If adjusted for inflation, many salaries today are lower than 50 years ago. Housing prices have soared and requirements for building houses have changed over time so that minimum house sizes keeps increasing, so even fewer people can afford the ever bigger (and more expensive) houses. Women entered the work force.",
"This is due to a paradox. Women entering the workforce actually massively increased labour supply, such depressing wages. Consider it that way: when no women worked in payed labour, no man would even consider accepting an offer with which he could not sustain his family, effectively setting a minimum wage. With more and more women entering the workforce, there was higher supply on the one hand, so that employers could start offering (comparatively, i.e. measured in value added / productivity gains passed) lower wages, and on the other hand when it became the norm that both slides work the \"inherent\", implied minimal wage dropped to a level where the wage of *both* working parents together is just enough to sustain a family. In a more traditional analysis, supporting women to enter the workforce has the same dynamics as supporting exorbitant rate of immigration (effectively doubling(!) the working population in a decade or three): it creates an [industrial reserve army]( URL_0 ). EDIT: correction of autocorrects.",
"My parents never had new vehicles, house was very modest, clothes and toys were past down through 3 kids. Any family trip involved staying at a relatives place, never a hotel and always drove. In my experience it's not so much the cost of living as it's what were willing to live with and where were willing to live.",
"Smaller houses. Fewer toys. Cheaper houses. Less strict zoning. If you have a 700 square foot place, with a couch, a bed, and a dining room table, life is cheap. Now, everyone thinks they need a 2000+ square foot house in expensive suburbs, with a 5 acre park next door, and the latest gadgets running the house. Zoning laws have taken much land off the market. In other words, today's \"starter house\" would've been considered a mansion when I was a kid. And true starter houses have mostly been zoned out of existence or peer-pressured out of existence.",
"Theres a massive element of supply and demand on house prices. Because nearly everyone has a dual income household, when the supply goes down and a bidding war starts, the ability of most people to spend big is greater than it was. It has been a sellers market for years because couples pool their finances and are able to buy much more expensive properties than they would if it was a single income economy.",
"Something that may have been glossed over: People used to save money. Of course there are exceptions, but we are groomed from birth to spend our money on very specified products through years of research and study on how we make purchasing decisions. We didn't need four cell phones for a family of four. PERHAPS there was a house phone. Then mail. Dishwasher broke? We repaired it. Our expenses have risen in quantity and quality.",
"I have a brand new 2 bedroom home that cost 1.5 times my fiancé and I's annual income. I live in San Antonio where our salaries are high compared to our cost of living. We both had offers in NYC, LA, and Austin, but we decided that the cost of living there was just too high. There are are far too many people in out generation (25 & 23) that complain about this but are the ones that screw themselves. There is a supply and demand component that gets ignored to solely blame the economy. Yes the economy is a factor but so is the fact that people will charge as much as they can, if you want to fix it people have to use the product less. Until there aren't another thousand people standing behind you willing to pay a million for a sixty thousand dollar house you're screwed. Go to where the situation is reversed, i.e. Good pay low cost of living.",
"They had to walk uphill both ways through 6' of snow every day?",
"Less discretionary spending. Not much in the way of consumer technology. Fashion was limited. Basic housing was more popular than suburban prestige.",
"Um...I work general construction, and since I was 21 have had a wife, kid, and house on my income alone. The problem isn't so much that we aren't making enough anymore as to the fact we aren't given golden information that can get us where we want to go. Information like you don't need college for some good paying jobs and getting a house doesn't mean you are buying one fully furnished, you can by foreclosed houses for dirt cheap, or even do contracts for deed if you look. The point is, if you're willing to put in the effort for what you want, it's really not that far out of reach. Just don't expect to have the American dream kind of house right away, you need to work for that.",
"Some of these are more complicated than they need to be. Houses/land are more expensive. Easy loans (in the 70's you couldn't dream of buying a home with zero down) and demand outstripping supply in major metro areas make the prices go sky high. Also, day care is expensive. As in costs more than state college. Having one person stay home full time with kids makes financial sense still in many cases. But it's taking a while for people to realize that. Also we used to *train* women for this role. Makes a big difference in your budget when you can cook well. Finally, healthcare keeps getting more expensive. Almost all of the rise in wages since 1970 are eaten up by those three things. People will argue all day about why those got more expensive, or why wages haven't risen faster than them. But those are some of the big cost drivers.",
"The definition of \"struggle\" changed. That couple in the seventies didnt pay for cable tv, or smart phones or video games. They ate at home every meal and brown bagged lunch every day, eating out maybe once every other week. They didnt buy organic anything or expensive coffee. They got on an airplane or stayed in a hotel at most once a year, usually less. They had small wardrobes and sewed clothes when they got a hole, rarely buying new clothes. They fixed things when they broke, rather than buying new. Cosmetics were kept to a bare minimum. Hair cuts were cheap or done at home. They didnt go to the doctor that often or take many prescription drugs. They didnt put kids on expensive private sports teams or buy them mountains of toys. They probably didnt have air conditioning. All of these expenses are considered normal now, but they really add up. Cut them all out and the paycheck goes much further.",
"Basically the answer is that you CAN afford a house, just not in any place you would pick as your first choice. The concept of a \"starter\" home has apparently been lost from generation to generation. My parents didn't start out in the same house they ended up in. Buy something your credit score will allow, then trade up when you can.",
"Why is no one mentioning labor unions? There was an organized smear campaign, starting with Reagan's deregulation, aimed at demonizing labor unions. They were super prominent back in the day, and every right you have as a worker was fought for by labor unions. They're still around now, but not as abundant. I dropped out of college and make $75k a year doing blue collar work. Do your research. Unionize to keep these big corporations accountable for taking care of their employees.",
"Is no one going to mention how now day people just think getting all this debt to start your life is just perfectly normal? Or how if your a first time home buyer your should be looking for your 3 bedroom 2 bath 2,000 sq ft home with all the bells and whistles? The problem is people just honestly don't know how to be poor. Most of the homes that people were buying in the 50s and 60s were small 2 bedroom frame houses and some didn't even have AC unless it was a window unit. They didn't have any outrageous cellphone bills, they didn't have $120 per month cable bills, eating out was a rare luxury, cars were much more affordable, credit cards didn't exist, no one financed their furniture. People today are spoiled, myself included, and also aren't taught any type of financial literacy until they have to learn the hard way.",
"WW2 changed everything. America was able to step up our manufacturing during the war since we were not being bombed or occupied. That allowed us to make better things cheaper. We sold that to the world, food was plentiful and we sold that also. Later, the economy started to shift and right about the time we were starting to lose our textiles and machinery to other countries, we switched to cars, then when the market went soft, electronics. Soon Japan came and started eating into the electronics industry we discovered computers. Made huge advances in computers until they were taken over seas, then the Internet came and again the world looked to America for guidance in programming, designing, and technology. The fact that we led in technology, and was able to exploit other countries to make our goods kept our purchasing power strong. Now we are globalized, our goods are being made off shore or automated and we do not significantly lead the world in anything at the moment. Now that so many people are going to college, qualified people are easy to find, at will employment means employers can fire their entire senior well paid staff with recent college graduates for half the price. This is also part of the reason there is a wage gap, older white men are in senior positions because so many went to college years ago and have been in the work force making good money, and entry level jobs are being filled with new graduates at less money.",
"Elizabeth Warren lecture from 10 years ago on the Coming Collapse of the Middle Class has a section where she goes into this. Basically the cost of most things went down, but 4 big ticket items - housing, healthcare, cars and child care - went up. That's where all the money goes. It's really good viewing, about an hour long URL_0",
"Prices have gone up quickly. In Australia the price to income ratio sat at 3-4 until during 1980-2000. In 2010 it was 6-8 depending on the city. See: URL_0 'The price to income ratio is the basic affordability measure for housing in a given area. It is generally the ratio of median house prices to median familial disposable incomes, expressed as a percentage or as years of income.'",
"The answer is fairly straightforward economics. No need to call anybody racist like the silly answer given by /u/BitOBear. Chapter 23 of [Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson]( URL_0 ) explains that the purpose of inflation is to cancel out minimum wage laws. Devalue the currency and suddenly businesses can afford to pay $15/hour to flip burgers. But inflation is worse than that; it necessarily involves a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich (since the wealthiest folks are those closest to the newly minted money). This is very useful to people in power because the effects are largely indirect and invisible. [The Nixon Shock of 1971]( URL_2 ) removed the exchangability of US dollars and gold, instituting a freely floating currency and unleashing the Federal Reserve's power to devalue the dollar with impunity. This has involved a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top, sucking purchasing power out of the middle class and resulting in the current situation that OP is inquiring about. [This chart]( URL_1 ) shows inequality over time and illustrates what happened since the 70's.",
"Productivity continues to rise, real wages stagnate then drop off. Rather than lose quality of life, wages were replaced by private credit - ie debt. Problem is it's just getting worse and worse to the point where within another decade something's going to give. Companies are seeing record profits, workers are more productive than ever, but it's apparently un-American to ask for a fair, livable, wages... Meanwhile the executive class are all making 8 figures. Look up oxfam's latest numbers on inequality. Literally a handful of the richest individuals have more wealth than billions of average people combined. And that's just what can be proven with records and paper trails. Edit: First, I should have been more specific and stated that all of this started right at the end of the 1970's. 1979 is when the American dream died. It's almost conspiracy like how the stagnation of wages and the proliferation and widespread mainstream promotion of credit and debt based living took off together. Anyway, main thing I wanted to add is.. Remember how FDR's self professed greatest achievement was \"saving capitalism?\" That is exactly what is needed now. Unfortunately what you're going to get is the exact opposition. Instead we're going full speed ahead.",
"Mass immigration and population booms - there are a lot less resources to go around for everyone now.",
"After the [newdeal]( URL_0 ), the policy was full employment which favoured workers. Then the idea of neo-liberalism came along, and the policy now was low inflation and low interest rates (which favours the super rich). Globalisation means that if you wont work for a low wage, somebody in China will (which favours the super rich). Low interest rates, and low tax on the rich, favours asset inflation ie house prices increase. I read were people with just a high school diploma, in the last 40 years, have seen their real wage drop 25%. tlrd; if you have little education you are screwed. Watch URL_1",
"In postwar America there was a lot less things to buy that required monthly installments. There was also just a lot less things to buy in general, and a lot less ways to market to people to make them think they needed to buy something. If you add up the costs of 2 car payments, 2 car insurance policies, cell phones, cable, internet, random amazon purchases, app store purchases, it could be over $1000/month. Saving $1000 a month for 20 months is a downpayment on a house. Might not be a great house, but you have to start somewhere. The fact most people here are going to blame wage stagnation, etc. is a psychological defense mechanism. It's an excuse as to why they haven't bought a house which makes them feel better about living above their means. Regardless of the time you live in, saving to buy a house has usually taken time and some amount of sacrifice.",
"Greed happened. The biggest cost for most companies are wages. In the 40s through the 80s, wages were high enough to maintain a good standard of living for most Americans. To satisfy the greed of the very wealthy, all of the things that kept wages high went away. These things kept wages for the middle and lower 'classes' high: Labor Unions, High Taxes on the Wealthy, Protectionism. Labor Unions are collective bargaining organizations that create equality between employee and employer through the threat of work stopping (and therefore hurt to the employer). Big companies colluded with politicians and other big companies to first paint unions as an evil (even creating rifts between unions and their employees in the later days of some unions). Then, politicians used legislation to destroy the protection unions had in many working-class areas to conduct their threats without real reprisal. Finally, with unions weakened, politicians were able to kill or geld unions by destroying the things that protected the status of the goods they were producing (see below). Unions and union laborers were able to keep high wages because a massive proportion of our GDP was cycling through our economy. There were very few areas where money could 'settle' because taxes on the very wealthy were very high. The wealthy could either pay taxes (in some areas as much as 90% on income over 1 million dollars (2.5 million in today's wages or more)) or spend their money to build things for public use. This is why so many libraries were build in the 20s thru the 70s. This is why so many universities had buildings named for rich folks built in the 60s and 70s. When they paid those taxes, the money went to pay employees of the government, who spent the money on goods and services, which went to pay for more laborers, keeping more people employed. When they built and endowed a library, again it employed people in its construction and then later its use. Now, with low taxes, the wealthy are not forced to put money back into the economy. Some still do, but many just squirrel it away and it does nothing for anyone but the wealthy person. (The idea that the wealthy would *of course* spend all of their extra money is the false premise that trickle-down economics is predicated upon). Finally, american goods and markets were protected. Only certain goods were imported into the US and only from certain places. As unions lost their sway and as companies Greed gained more traction, protections of goods and markets were destroyed. This is why jobs are able to be shipped overseas - those markets could not sell the products of what they shipped here in the US.",
"I tend to take a different approach. People are buying houses, people are travelling the world, and people have two wages and are living better than they ever have. Interest rates are at record lows, and being able to borrow for a house is easier than ever. So I'd look to answer this question in one of two ways: 1. How did they do it in the past? They worked damn hard. I look to my grandmothers era. She immigrated to Australia, and was known as a £20 pom. They had to find work, while having three children to look after, and they did. They worked their tails off, and eventually bought their own home, while the children eventually finished school and moved into full-time work. My grandparents three children (One of which is my mother), ended up doing quite well for themselves. They all worked hard, they all lived through 15% mortgage rates, and they survived. So hard work, savings and being smart with what they had is what they did. 2. How come people today find it so hard? Well in many cases they don't. In my case I to work hard. I went to university, I moved from my hometown to a capital city. I lived with in a share house, And save money. I moved out into an apartment by myself, Which I rented. I then did an overseas deployment with the company I was working for, and made myself some good coin out of it. This was enough to save for a deposit for a house. I then bought a modest home, found a girlfriend, Eventually got married, she quit work and I supported her for four years. We lived modestly but comfortably during this time. She then got herself a well paying job after doing the study. We would then on double income with two decently paying jobs. We saved further, kept our apartment, and bought another house in a reasonably priced area. Now we have two properties one of which we rent out and the other that we live in. None of this was terribly difficult, certainly not compare to my grandmothers era. I didn't get a big inheritance, I was brought up in a blue collar town, and my parents got a divorce halfway through my schooling. None of this makes me special, I am not in a particularly good or bad position. I'm just normal. Anyone could of done what I have done. It is not hard to buy a house, It just takes a little bit of sacrifice and hard work. Of course there are people who are in particularly unfortunate situations, where they have been laid off work unexpectedly or perhaps have sick family members to look after, or maybe they got unlucky in an accident and can't work any more (or have to be re-trained to work in another industry), but in my opinion by and large, any able-bodied person can buy a house if they plan and budget. There is no institutional barrier to purchasing a home. Many people marvel at being able to travel the world, take a gap year after they have finished school, work overseas, or live at home for an extended period (people are leaving home, statistically, far later than they used to 20 or 30 years ago). That's great, and if people want to do that they should. However, when I hear people complain about how hard it is to buy a house while in the next breath talking about how they want to travel on a holiday to this country all that, or by the latest iPhone, or go out partying with their friends etc. I have little sympathy for them. As I alluded to, it is not that they shouldn't do that, it's that they shouldn't complain when they can't buy a house.",
"This is a complex issue with a lot of moving parts. Here's a small piece that may help with understanding the larger whole. When you negotiate price, the most important things are your alternatives, and the other guys alternatives. Let's say you're buying a house. The asking price is $120k. You think you can get a house that's almost as nice for $100k, and the seller thinks he can sell it for $120k sooner or later, but it might be a while if you don't buy. You decide that you'll pay up to $110k for this house, otherwise you walk. He decides he'll take anything over $100k if you buy today. Neither of you say this to the other person though, because you don't want to tip your hand. So what about that $10k overlap between the most you'll pay and the least he'll accept? That's the \"surplus.\" A lot of negotiation is about figuring out if this exists, and trying to be the one who gets as much of it as possible. After all, while you would pay $110k, you'd rather pay less. And he'd rather you pay more. With little information to go on, bluff and bluster will decide where the final price falls. But sometimes the structure of the market is different. Let's say the seller knows everything about you. He knows your other options, he knows your decision making process. He figures out that you'll pay up to $110k. Well, don't expect to pay any less than that. The same could be true in reverse if you knew his priorities. Wage negotiation follows the same systems as any other negotiation. Its based on everyone's alternatives. Yes there are hard limits- no one will pay you more money than they earn by hiring you- but mostly it's alternatives that kick in way before that. So what are the alternatives, and how much does each party know about them? In a typical job search the worker puts out lots of resumes and gets only a few hits. Maybe even only one or none. The company puts up an ad and gets dozens or hundreds of responses. So right away we see that the company has lots of alternatives. If they don't like you they can hire the next guy. And you probably have few alternatives, and one of them is unemployment. Further, the company, if its moderate to large, probably has extensive salary data for you industry, and knows what your alternatives will pay. You might have that, and you might not. Worse, you probably have no data on what they'll make by hiring you. In short, they have lots of alternatives that they understand very well. You have few and you understand them and the size of the surplus very poorly. So you should expect wage negotiation to favor the employer, and wages to be crammed down over time. The latter occurs because every time an employee loses one of these negotiations, the alternatives for everyone else look worse. It wasn't always like this. Unions change the game dramatically. They can aggregate information better than a lone worker. And they change the companies angle from \"negotiate a low wage on this guy or hire the next guy\" to something like \"negotiate a deal with the entire union at once or they strike and everyone suffers including me.\" In the latter there's a lot more leverage for the union, the information disparity is more even, and the union is likely to capture a lot more of the surplus. Plus, for all the non union guys out there, their alternatives in a wage negotiation are to go work in a union shop at union wages. So a lot of other companies either beat union wages to attract good workers, or go cheap and hire the people the union jobs won't take. This is just one component. If you want to learn more about negotiation google \"batna\", which stands for \"best alternative to negotiated agreement.\" Or research why it's hard to make money selling \"commodities,\" and consider what features a commodity shares with a wage earning job. Unions aren't the only issue by any means. But the disparate negotiating strength of companies and workers is. You may have heard that profits are at record highs, but wages continue to stagnate. That represents employers capturing more and more if the negotiation surplus, and workers less.",
"Because back then the average house price was about two times the average yearly salary. Now it's more like 10 or 15 times.",
"So pretty much everyone here is wrong or at least misrepresenting the actual problem. You asked why the cost of living is different now compared to the past. This is a simple answer. It's called the Federal Reserve and the US dollar being the global reserve currency. Prior to 1913 when the FED was created, the dollar was tied to the value of gold. That acts as a limiting factor on the amount of money that can be produced and as such limits inflation. The general economics 101 rule states: *the more money in the system, the more inflation destroys the value of the money you have.* As the 1970s rolled around Nixon removed the last vestiges of the gold standard allowing the US dollar (and for that matter, every other currency in the world) to become a fiat currency and be produced at whatever level the FED and governments of the world wanted. That resulted in [**THIS CHART**]( URL_0 ). Notice the upswing that starts in the '70's. Now that the money supply is growing, something dramatic happens to inflation. [**THIS CHART**]( URL_1 ) shows what happens to cumulative inflation over time when you have a fiat currency. Notice the cumulative inflation PRIOR to 1972 (when your father or grandfather made a living) and the cumulative inflation AFTER 1972 (the time we now live) and you can see very clearly why we cannot have nice things.",
"I'm not a baby boomer, but I am the main breadwinner for my household (1,700 sqft 4 bedroom 2.5 bath house, me, wife, 5 kids) and we have a comfortable life. I went to university in 1999 and graduated with a BS in electrical engineering and computer science. I immediately went into doing encryption work for 2 years and then moved into an engineering field position. I did that for seven years, then moved into a higher paying job in construction estimation and have been here since. The first house I bought was shortly after getting my first real job. I got a good deal on a foreclosure and bought a house at right around 100K with a little over 2 acres of land. I was always very frugal and saved every bit that I could and bought vehicles that were older and could be bought for no more than $2,500. I would then fix them up and drive them for several years until I couldn't keep fixing them and then I would buy another vehicle. Eventually I moved my way up the company that I am at now until I reached the head of my department. I bring home $5,600 per month and are able to pay all our bills and put away a bit of money towards our savings/retirement. We now drive decent cars (5 year old cars Nissan/Honda), eat out once a week, and have season passes to local zoos and museums for the kids. We are both in our mid thirties, so we still have a long ways to go in life. It seems like I got into the workplace at just the turn of the tide for everyone, because it seems like everyone slightly younger than me is having a very difficult time with staying afloat. I would like to get some feedback from other people my age, or people that make around what I make and try and figure out why they are struggling so much, so if you have comments or input, please send it my way.",
"The fraud of 'trickle down economics' is what has led to this. URL_0",
"A lot of comments for the US. Any responses to explain why we have the exact same financial problem in the UK?",
"Over the past 20-30 years, the following things happened: 1. The price of the average house went way, way up. 2. Value of the dollar went down. 3. Minimum wage has not changed, despite #2.",
"Ok im going to mic drop the shit out of this one. The mother of all ELI5's on this topic is right here: [\"How an Economy Grows and Why it Doesn't\"]( URL_0 ) It takes 45min to read and blows your mind how simple it really is. Its a cartoon and truly is an ELI5.",
"1. Stagnant wages 2. Lines of credit. Credit artificially inflates the amount of money in a market. By letting you borrow a large amount at interest products (like houses) that would otherwise have to lower their price to get sold because no one is sitting around with 150,000 to spend, lenders allow the price of goods to inflate. This happened with college tuition as well.",
"Immigration the last 50 years really screwed the U.S. and European countries as well. You add a bunch of uneducated workers with kids and it not only puts a huge burden on government programs (welfare, public schools, etc) but it also pushes the average wage down. Throw in that it now creates MORE demand for housing and you can quickly see how everyone lives lower than they did 50 years ago.",
"Capitalism is an economic force that inevitably concentrates wealth in fewer and fewer hands. After WWII, the US had a very strong labor movement relative to its history. The labor movement forced capital to make concessions, i.e. housing bills higher corporate taxes, and a bigger share of the pie. This were rolled back soon thereafter but especially since Reagan. Capital has been accumulating greater and greater wealth since then. We're fucked. Eat the rich.",
"The single biggest problem, regardless of anything else and the reasons for this problem, is that wages have not increased enough to keep up with cost of living. Plainly put, minimum wage should be a national $20/hr right now if it were to keep pace with what it was 75 years ago. People with a shitty degree even would then earn $30+ and be able to support themselves like their grandparents and parents did. End of argument.",
"I make a little more than 40k, it's not a lot but it's not poverty either. I could easily (though frugally) support me, my daughter, and her mom on my salary if not for our student loan debt and health insurance, the latter of which would take up a third of my take-home paycheck if they were both on it. So there are two of the main differences between now and then. Healthcare costs have sky rocketed and student loan debt wasn't a thing back then.",
"I see so many people who are absolutely struggling. I am 30 years old and don't know not 1 person who is successful in buying their own home or even making decent money and if they do, they still live at home just trying to save it all because employers are ruthless. I have a union position in the private sector but my union only makes sure I get paid a certain wage, I can get thrown in the garbage tomorrow for no reason and seen it happen so many times before. I'm scared to buy a house and will probably live with my family until I find the right woman. I'm very fortunate to have a house we own. This is in NYC",
"A couple of issues: 1. College tuition/student loan debt - My dad was able to earn enough money to cover a year's tuition at Northwestern during his summer job (working for a suburb's city planning dept). Now, Northwestern runs about $50k -- nobody's earning that over a summer. 2. Middle class jobs were more plentiful. Factory jobs provided middle class jobs for those without college degrees. There were lots of middle management/supervisory roles in companies. More small business owners running stores, shops, etc. Now, manufacturing has been automated and/or shipped overseas. As businesses grow in size, they become more efficient and require less bureaucracy. Technology also sped this up. Profits that used to stay in a community and provide solid middle class/upper middle class lifestyle when people owned a local hardware store or shoe store now feed up to CEOs and shareholders, while local managers earn lower middle class wages.",
"There are some good answers here but if you're an American please realise currency inflation is very real and our money is essentially 100% fake. The Federal Reserve isn't a piece of the government it's a privately owned thing that really only cares about citizens in as far as they can profit from them. We're already at a point now where **a single real dollar in 1900 was worth 26.66 of our Monopoly money 2014 dollars** and there's no forseeable way to reverese the trend. Every day you are holding inactive money you are losing value and it's devaluation is accelerating. Expect to be sold onto some regional or global currency eventually by our monied overlords before the current system starts flying to pieces. Some things to google if you're interested: *[Federal Reserve]( URL_1 ) *[Fiat Currency]( URL_3 ) *[Quantitative Easing]( URL_2 ) [This Forbes article puts it short and well enough]( URL_0 )",
"1. the costs of things have gone up greatly. If you compare minimum wage in 1957 to minimum wage and adjust for the average costs of rent, a hospital stay (having a baby), milk, gasoline, bread, minimum wage should be 18 dollars. 2. Moving excess capital into stocks and bonds and digital investments and away from pensions, moving worker rewards into 401ks (effectively forcing them to play the same game) has led to a super-concentration of wealth for a scant few, as well as ballooning compensation for CEOs while putting an anvil on wage growth, primarily in the form of shareholders collectively fighting pay raises in return for stock performance. 3. Tax and regulations have been gutted, eroding workers rights, and forcing states to find this revenue in more regressive ways like car taxes, dog and fishing licences, Wireless telephone fees, parking tickets and a million other nickel and dime schemes that affect rich and poor at the exact same rate.",
"Very simple. The costs of things have gone up exponentially, but the wages have not increased by the same % amount. My parents made 40k yr combined (bank teller and factory worker) and they bought a median house for 85k. A little over 2x what they made. They had brand new vehicles that they bought for 8k and 10k (work van and large family car). My sister still lives in the house and its currently valued at 400k. The same types of vehicles cost 30-40k each now. My GF and I make 100k yr and most median houses where I live are 500k. 5x what we make I remember paying $20/month for gas and electric when I first moved out on my own. I currently live in a similar sized apt and I pay over $100/month. 5x My car insurance for full coverage on a used car as an 18 yr old male was $75/month. I now pay over $300/month for a similarly aged vehicle with clean record for the last 30 years. 4x A gallon of milk was about $1.50. Its now about $3.80. 2.5x",
"Econ degree here, though I'm sure this comment is going to get buried. The simple answer is that the market will charge what it can for quality goods, including homes. As women entered the work force, home prices rose because sellers could ask more from buyers with 2 incomes, so they asked for the best price they could get. Price creep snuck in: \"if the Jones can charge that much for their house, we can too!\" Couple this with the standardization of 'good debt' 30 year mortgages, where sticker price doesn't matter (compared to monthly payment), and buyers begin thinking it's OK to rack up debt to make the purchase. As soon as this starts happening, prices balloon (see college debt). Also something to consider is that the size of a suburban home has ballooned compared to the baby boomer generation. There's also less land close to cities to build on, driving up prices, etc. TL;DR: people have been given the financial instruments to stretch their incomes further, so they have. People then charge as much as they can get away with, (usually vying for the highest price an earlier seller used) which leads to price inflation. This causes prices everywhere to rise.",
"You still can in places. But the average home size has... Quadrupled or something. People used to have a single family car. Maybe the spouse had an old one. Now people are often making payments on multiple cars. People used to cook their own food. Now people tend to go out to eat more often. All of those things (and more) make it much more expensive to live these days. Sure, wages and the cost of living haven't ridden in parity, but I know a number of families where only one person works, in a number of states. The Los Angeles Times did a study on this problem a few years ago and they found that it is possible for a family to live on one paycheck, just like people used to, but they have to live like people used to. Only one car, cook your own food, have a smaller house. Edit: To explain, the spouse at home will likely stay at home most days, but one or two days a week will drop off the other spouse at work then pick them up after work. This takes more gas, though, so most days the home spouse just stays home until the writing spouse gets home.",
"So I'll probably get downvoted to hell for this but.... I'm a millennial, I have just a HS diploma, my wife is a SAHM, and we have 4 kids, have a house (and looking to upgrade to a nearly half million dollar home soon, like in the next month or two), have paid for cars, and have all of our needs met and a majority of our wants. How can anybody in the US do this? is not really too difficult. We know many people who have been able to do similar, some have college degrees, some have their own businesses, some have just high school diplomas, some have certs/training/licences for their desired career choice. Things I could suggest: 1) don't go into massive amounts of debt. Car loans, student loans, Credit card debt, furniture etc. 2) set proper expectations. you cannot, at 21 years old expect to live like your parents at 50 years old. 3) cut back your lifestyle. Get rid of things that cost you monthly payments. cable bills, eating out all the time, expensive cell phones/cell phone bills, etc. 4) make things last longer. maintain your own car, don't buy a new computer/cell phone every year, figure out how to fix stuff yourself. I never once saw a repair man in our house growing up. My dad did all the home repairs himself. as I'm trying to get my house ready to sell and get a few things fixed, the cost to fix it myself vs having somebody else do it can be 100x as much. 5) Budget. Its amazing how many people who are my peers don't budget/save for/plan for the future. whether it be as far as retirement, or as soon as a car repair, or even new clothes. 6) work hard, have a little ambition. Its amazing how having a micron of ambition and the ability to work hard, show up on time, put in a decent day's work gets you further ahead than other people....",
"So many different factors attribute to this, it's hard to correlate properly IMO outside of estimates. Just take a look at the average person who attended a 4 year university from 1977 and 2007. The average yearly cost for tuition, room and board was $2,275 in 1977 with an average starting salary of $13,772 for a college graduate (Uni cost was 16.5% vs starting salary). For a person in 2007. Tuition, room and board was $15,434 and starting salaries at $45,725, or 34% Uni cost to starting wage. Now i'm no statistician, and maybe the correlation doesn't justify itself. But that doesn't seem to be very linear in scale from an economic standpoint. Taking these two factors into perspective. A graduate in 1977 had $9,100 in total loans, and a 2007 grad had $61,736 to repay. On a 10 year repayment plan at say just 5% int rate. A 1977 grad would pay $97/month (11% of monthly income) vs a 2007 grad paying $655/month (24% of monthly income). That's a pretty fucking big gap. Now just look at the increase in monthly costs each generation has to deal with. In 1977, an individuals monthly cost breakdown came from housing, utilities, automobile, food and other minor variable expenses. Whereas a 2007 individual has all the same, plus cable, internet, cell phone, etc. Those three alone could be up to $150/month in extra expenses. See where i'm going with this? I added another website that gives a nice view into 1975 vs 2015 cost structures of basic expenses. Yes, I know it's not '77 vs '07, but let's look past that for a moment. Inflation is not linear among all expenses by a considerable gap in the larger expense categories. Times change, and so does the economy. We also live in a world where more people feel they are entitled to so much more than they're willing to work for. Rip me a part if you like. But this is also my opinion from someone who isn't an economist. *Note that these probably aren't the \"best\" sources. So take it with a grain of salt. URL_1 URL_0 URL_2",
"I don't have an explanation, and I probably don't represent the norm, but we do just fine on my income alone. I'm definitely not rich. I live in the US, I don't make 6 figures, but getting close. I went to a local community college, got a job in IT, nothing special. Married with 4 kids, 3600 sq/ft home, and 3 cars. Very average inexpensive cars mind you. I'm trying to save for my kids future, and we just finished our basement to the tune of $30k. The only debt we have is in our home. We save up for Christmas time and don't go into debt for that either. I think the reason we make it work is because we have a budget, and we don't buy outrageously priced cars or toys. We try to make our smartphones last, without buying new ones every year, and I only buy a video game if it's deeply discounted. No pre-ordering lol. What I'm saying is if the average family these days has to persist on both incomes, I think in general they just spend too much. We think we need more than we do these days. Again, we are not the norm, I realize I make close to double the National average. But I can tell you that if I made much less money, we would have much less house, a car or two less, and probably wouldn't buy smartphones or video games at all. We would just live within our means. Also, my wife stays at home on her own choice. She wants to be with the kids. And I agree with her. I don't want the kids raised by strangers. I'd be fine if she were working and I were staying at home. It just so happens my career affords us the life we want, her teaching degree alone would not. When the kids are all in school, she plans on going back to work. We just need to live within our means. I see people in run down neighborhoods in very small homes, driving cars I couldn't ever justify buying. And that's fine that's what they want. But they have to work two jobs to support that. And that's their choice. Not skin off my back. But for me and mine, we'd rather one of us is home raising the kids, so I sacrifice not buying a Corvette so that can happen."
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"https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232",
"http://inequality.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/15.-Wealth-Shares-2-e1455659383123.png",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock"
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSS4GCA__As"
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"https://www.economicgreenfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/MZMSL_1-16-15-12919.9.png",
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"https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2014/02/11/after-a-century-of-the-fed-its-time-to-return-to-constitutional-money/amp/",
"https://www.google.com/search?q=federal+reserve&oq=federal+reserve&aqs=chrome..69i57j0j5j0.5331j0j4&client=ms-android-verizon&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8",
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"http://www.naceweb.org/job-market/compensation/salary-trends-through-salary-survey-a-historical-perspective-on-starting-salaries-for-new-college-graduates/",
"https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp",
"http://www.mybudget360.com/cost-of-living-compare-1975-2015-inflation-price-changes-history/"
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668tjf | Common law vs Civil law | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Common law is the system used by England and the former colonies, such as USA, Canada, Australia etc. Civil Law is often used in continental European countries such as France and Germany and the various colonies. The biggest differences are: **Disputes** * Common law is *adversarial* in the sense that two parties to a dispute will argue their case before a tribunal (e.g. a judge). The tribunal will, base on the evidence presented by the parties, make a finding of fact. In other words, both parties basically argue over who has the stronger and better case. * Civil law is *inquisitorial* in that the parties will look into the dispute and determine what actually happened and interpret the relevant laws. **Sources of law** * Common law is based on a mixture of laws made by a legislative body and previous decisions made by Courts that have interpreted the law. These judgments sometimes give rise to various legal doctrines. There are some truly old (hundred of years old) that law students still learn about and apply. The system of precedence means that a decision from a higher court will be binding on lower courts. * Civil law is codified in the sense that all relevant laws are written in various legal codes. The parties will then interpret the law, such as by referring to what legal expert say the law means. There is no system of precedence and one decision will not bind another."
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669ed9 | What did Nietzsche mean by this? | Nietzshe said that traditional, existing moralities would inevitably be destroyed. But why and how? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nietzsche's work is tremendously influential and very open to interpretation, and I am also not an expert in philosophy, so forgive me if my explanation is unsatisfactory or incorrect in some places. Nietzsche was an extremely harsh critic of traditional Judeo-Christian morality. He believed that its values dedicated to equality and compassion between men, encouragement of self-sacrifice and altruism, meta-narrative of traditional good and evil, and the presentation of a higher power to which mankind is subservient encouraged a \"herd\" or \"slave\" morality among its followers. He claimed followers of this herd morality were inherent weak people who used Judeo-Christian morality and narratives to justify their own inherent weakness and self-denial. Nietzsche also believed that human progress would inevitably lead to a re-examination of the Judeo-Christian belief system, claiming that it would ultimately reveal the narrative of a magical supreme being ruling over everything as fraudulent and obsolete. Hence his famous saying, \"God Is Dead\". If God is dead, where does that leave the masses, the followers of the herd morality? Suddenly, the core of their long-held belief system is gone, proven to be fraudulent. What then do the masses believe in? Nietzsche argued that many might turn to nihilism, despair, and self-destruction. **If I recall correctly, Nietzsche believed this sequence of events was an inevitability, and thus his criticism that Judeo-Christian morality is inherently nihilistic and self-destructive.** But Nietzsche presents an alternative to herd morality and Judeo-Christian nihilism in his concept of the Higher Man, or \"Uebermensch\" as it is likely more popular known. The Higher Man is a being constantly in conflict with himself, and constantly ponders questions about himself and the human condition. If life has no inherent meaning (despite what the Judeo-Christian narrative would have its followers believe) then the Higher Man chooses to derive his own meaning from life and his experiences. The Higher Man does not look back on his experiences with regret and does not seek to avoid challenges in life, he takes pride in his struggles past and present and in overcoming them. He overcomes his self-hatred and embraces his self-love. Thus the Higher Man forms and lives by his own self-actualizing moral code. The Higher Man takes pride in the struggle that is life and seeks out future struggles to overcome. The antithesis to the Higher Man, and another alternative response to the death of God, is the Last Man. The Last Man sees no inherent meaning in life, and thus chooses to seek out a comfortable life and avoid discomfort. He does not take pride in past struggles or seek out future struggles, he avoids them entirely. Thus, the Last Man is the ultimate embodiment of self-denial. This is likely only scratching the surface of Nietzsche. You can possibly see how these concepts were so influential on future philosophical and political movements."
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669jf2 | Why is it socially acceptable to eat donuts for breast, but not, for example, cake or pie? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Coffee cake? Apple strudel is kinda like pie... Danishes are another sweet pastry. Muffins are pretty much cake without icing. . . There are loads of sweets that are considered socially acceptable to eat for breakfast even though they have little nutritional value other than providing you calories.",
"I don't believe it is socially acceptable to eat a donut for a breast anywhere. Perhaps in a very low class brothel.",
"I've found from experience that the more doughnuts I eat the less breast I get. So the real question is what am I doing wrong?"
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669lv2 | What is the difference between HipHop and Rap? | I find myself quite knowledgable on music, I listen to practically all genres, know a lot about cultural origins of a lot of genres and I play some instruments on a relatively high level. But I havent been able to wrap my head around the difference between hiphop and rap, because I'd call Kendrick Lamar rap, but grandmaster flash hip hop. (please dont kill me if this is dead wrong) But I have no idea from what attributes this distinction is made. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Rap is a style of lyrics and vocals. Rap has been described as using your voice for rhythm, whereas singing is using your voice for melody. Hip-hop is a style of music that commonly uses rap vocals. Rap is nowadays strongly associated with hip-hop but can be heard in other musical styles, for example nu metal (such as Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit) or grime (such as Dizzee Rascal, although he's also done hip-hop.)",
"I believe 'hip hop' is the name for the music, whereas 'rapping' refers specifically to the vocal/lyrical technique. So you can have \"instrumental hip hop\" with just the beat, and no rapping. But 'instrumental rap' would be an oxymoron.",
"hiphop is a culture, we can say that rap is hiphop's music genre and one of the hiphop's element. other ones: graffiti, breakdance and emceeing(mc).",
"Hip hop is the culture in its entirety. this includes breakdancing, emceeing, graffiti etc. Rap is the art of putting lyrics together to form rhymes.. something that most of these new \"rappers\" dont know nothing about.. Kendrick can be excluded"
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669vui | how do make-up artists for shows like 'Sons Of Anarchy' ensure that the fake tattoos always look the same? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They do a makeup test for each actor prior to filming. This is done so they can experiment with different styles of makeup and get approval from the director. During the makeup tests they take a lot of reference images of the makeup. If you ever see some behind the scenes footage from the makeup department they have a lot of these reference photos around when applying the makeup. This way they can constantly check that the makeup looks exactly the same as in the makeup tests. If there is changes to the makeup during a scene, for example a fighting scene will have bruises and cuts added, makeup artists would walk around the set with a digital camera and a makeup kit to make sure they can change the makeup back between takes.",
"It's pretty easy to get temporary tattoos made these days. They just design an image and order a bunch of them."
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669wt1 | Why is it that hats are "hung" but people are "hanged?" | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I believe they simply have different definitions. Hung is the past tense version of hang and hanged means to be killed.",
"\"According to Fowler’s Modern English Usage Guide, in Old English there were actually two different words for hang (hon and hangen), and the entanglement of these words (plus an Old Norse word hengjan) is why we have two past-tense forms for the same word in modern English.\" Source: URL_0",
"It largely has to do with changes in English regular and irregular verb declension. Old Anglo-Saxon words commonly were strong verbs with irregular declensions. Go becoming went is an easy example. Outside language influence played a huge part in bringing the passive ending “-ed” for past tense. Think walk vs. walked. Over time regular forms started to take precedence over the irregular. Of course, we need to keep in mind that English is weird. So some words kept the original strong endings and some adopted the new endings. Now English declension is kind of a joke, so there are inconsistencies everywhere. Like hung vs. hanged. Source: have MA in linguistics."
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66aros | Why was the reunification of West and East Germany in the early 1990s seemingly easy but a reunification of North and South Korea is seen as being extremely difficult, if it ever happens? | I will admit that I am not historian so I may be oversimplifying the reunification of East and West Germany as being easy o please excuse me for that. I am curious why it seems they are a thriving, western country after just 25 or so years while be split for nearly 50 years and why the reunification of Korea is seen as something that would be very difficult for the people of both of those countries as well as others assisting them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Communist East Germany wasn't exactly a worker's paradise, but it wasn't a nightmarish personality cult dictatorship either. The nation had functioning (but dated) infrastructure, education, and industry in the 80s. The East Germans had access to enough media to have a good grasp of world events and were modern enough to transition fairly easily back into a free society. North Korea has none of those things. The citizens are very poorly educated and have minimal skillsets beyond military service and subsistence farming. Much of the nation's industry is obsolete and there is very little infrastructure. Media is heavily state controlled and all news is propaganda. Modernization of North Korea is a pretty daunting task, they're many decades behind their neighbors and extremely poor. East Germany wasn't very far behind or unusually poor when reunification occurred",
"First, reunification between East and West Germany wasn’t a seamless as your title suggests. West German taxpayers have spent over $1.5 trillion to modernize the East since unification and it still lags behind the West in nearly every metric that matters: per capita GDP, household income, poverty, worker productivity, education, etcetera. Even at that though, East Germany was by far the most robust Soviet block economy and things could have been much worse had it not been. East and West Germany voluntarily reunited and the chance of North Korea voluntarily and peacefully reuniting with the South are non-existent. Similarly, East Germans were well educated, relatively well skilled and still maintained contact with relatives and friends in the West (all be it heavily censored). North Koreans on the other hand are dirt poor and know nothing of the outside world other than what the government tells them. As hard as East West German reunification was, it would be several generations and cost Trillions to bring North Korea anywhere near to the Souths level of development.",
"There's dozens of reasons. Many of them have been mentioned, I'll take a shot at the ones that haven't been, or haven't been mentioned in detail: 1. North Koreans don't have any marketable skills. East German unemployment is pretty high (compared to 0% under their old system), but most people were able to either keep their old jobs (particularly the working class), or could easily train to be as good at their careers as West Germans (in the case of sciences, history/sociology/anything that has a political bent to it, and so on). North Korea has some fantastic workers. They have doctors who can operate on you using an old beer bottle for an IV, and tools that were made before the Korean War even happened, and have a high chance of success. Their life expectancy is very high for a country roughly at the same economic and technological level as Ghana. But when those doctors enter a South Korean hospital, with state-of-the-art equipment and specialized drugs, nobody's going to need their beer bottle anymore. Those doctors will know next to nothing on how to work in a South Korean hospital, besides maybe a decent understanding of biology and anatomy. More likely, they're going to have to wait tables and sweep floors in that kind of society. 2. Anyone who knows anything in that country is probably a member of the elite and closely tied to the ruling family. If you get rid of all of them, put them in jail or so on, you'll have a serious case of Problem #1. Also the actual unification will be harder because they'll fight until they've got nothing left to shoot but their fingers, because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain. But if you keep them on to help in the transition, it's going to be a huge political mess, because the last thing the North wants is more of the same - we just sold them on the idea of joining the rich, high-tech South Koreans - and the political blowback from keeping the people who were putting their own people into death camps, running the same group of people. 3. Getting to the unification is going to be a problem. The Kim family won't hold on to power forever, but they can hold on for a very long time. If we try to make peace with them (as we have before), they'll probably take us for a ride again, and then go back to business as usual, their regime a little more stable. But if we try to push them into a war they can't win... the South Korean capital happens to be just a few miles away from tons of North Korean artillery. West Germany couldn't've probably integrated the East by force for the same reason (West Berlin). The people in Seoul aren't going to be happy if their gung-ho leadership ends up getting the whole city shelled. 4. Whereas in Germany you had the Allied powers wipe the slate and set up the eventual reunification, Korean division was a bit more messy. North Korea used to be home to a lot of landowners, who made sure to take the deeds to the huge estates they owned with them when they escaped to South Korea or Japan. Many of their kids and grandkids still have those deeds locked in a safe somewhere, and since the South technically claims sovereignty over North Korea (they even have official governors of those provinces), there's nothing right now stopping them from marching North and demanding their huge tracts of land back from whatever group of farmers is currently there. 5. In East Germany and other Soviet bloc countries, the worst thing that could happen to you is that you could be shot. If life sucks enough, you might be willing to get shot if the alternative is a chance at a better life. Why live on suffering? Eventually, life began to get so bad throughout the communist bloc that tons of people looked at each other, realized life was pretty bad, and started to rebel. If your dad went to jail, you could lay low, but still have some hidden sympathies that would come out when the time is right. In the North, punishment is collective. If your grandpa gets caught listening to the wrong radio station and doesn't have the bribe money (about 4 years' worth of honest wages for that crime) or lives in a politically significant area like the capital, he's going to get sent to a concentration camp, but so will his close family and whoever lives with him, which probably includes you. If it's a serious crime (like escaping to the South), they'll probably follow it through to the letter, which means three generations of your family goes to camp. If the third generation doesn't exist, it'll be born there. Some North Koreans are born and die within the walls of a single concentration camp (look up Escape from Camp 14 for more on this). And if by the clemency of the Great Leader you're released back into your society, your songbun (for all intents and purposes, your caste) will be the lowest, \"hostile\" tier. So you'll be untouchable and your kids and grandkids will be untouchable, all because your grandpa tried to tune in to a South Korean soap opera. So that kind of pressure makes people very, very hesitant to stray from the system, whereas in East Germany, by the end, everyone was so wary of the government that you seemed suspicious if you were 100% enthusiastic about the ruling party or the socialist system.",
"The difference is that the 1989 Chinese Student Protests had just happened and the Soviet Union's leadership did not want that to happen in the Warsaw Pact. In the spring of 1989 there were widespread student protests across China that culminated with a crackdown on the central protests in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989. Hundreds to thousands of students died, soldiers were attacked by mobs of civilians and even some PLA units, including most of the 116th Division, refused to advance on the students. In the fall of 1989 various Communist bloc nations in Europe were allowing people to leave and go to NATO member states, it became something of a crisis and ultimately lead to the fall of the Inter-German border and the eventual unification of Germany. There wasn't more violence because in July 1989 the Soviet leadership said that the Soviet Union wouldn't invade a Warsaw Pact ally that was liberalizing. With that assurance Hungary took down it's border walls in August 1989 and the whole thing unraveled by Christmas 1989 when the leaders of Romania were sentenced to death by their own people. In North Korea there is no discussion about such liberalization because it is an absolute dictatorship in a way that no Communist country has ever had.",
"East Germany, and most of eastern Europe, were essentially a part of the Soviet Union. The were independent on paper, but orders came from the Kremlin, and if they did not comply, Soviet tanks would show up, as happened in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. People in these countries typically resented Soviet control and cultural repressions. They saw totalitarian communism as something being imposed on them from the outside, and once the Soviet Union started to crumble, they got out as quickly as the could. Many of them, not just East Germany, have reintegrated with the western powers, and many are now NATO members. North Korea, in contrast, retained a lot more independence. While they started out as a Soviet puppet, they were led by a bona fide freedom fighter who was able to mold the country into his own personal empire. Partly because of geographical isolation and cultural differences, North Korea maintained greater independence from the Soviets, and drifted more into China's sphere of influence. Their government has become its own brand of Stalinism, without any master to break away from. That said, Germany remained divided for over 40 years, and at times it seemed reunification would be impossible. Should the current North Korean government implode, reunification might run a similar course as it did in Germany.",
"A lot of it has to do with the powers that are in control of the DPRK and who was in charge of East Germany. In 1989 When the USSR began to falter and fail, they went into a period of \"openness\" which also coincided with the removal of the Border fence from the Austria/Hungary border. When the Berlin wall came down, for all intents and purposes, the USSR had no resources to stop Germany from reuniting. The case with South Korea and The DPRK is that first, there are literally millions of land mines on the 38th parallel left over from the Korean conflict, which makes crossing difficult. Also the Kim regime is one of total control, they have successfully brainwashed their population into thinking that Kim Jong Un is a god and the unquestionable leader of the North. Every John Q. Taxpayer in the DPRK believes they are the greatest nation on Earth, and that the South has been tainted by the United States and western thinking. Even if the entire government of the DPRK was wiped out, there would still be a long and painful re-unification process. Much like Admiral Yamamoto said in WWII about why he didnt want to invade The United States, \"there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass\"",
"1) East Germany had more contact with the outside world. While the USSR did filter a lot of information and limited trade tremendously it was not anywhere close to as isolated as North Korea is. 2) They were separated for a much shorter period of time.",
"East Germany was not as technologically, economically and culturally behind/different as NK is compared to SK. Maybe more importantly people from both sides kept in touch and thus their shared cultural identity. East Germans had access to basically all the not too political literature the West did and regularly watched West German TV. East Germans travelling to the West (or travelling in general) was not as prohibited as the wall makes most people think. They were rare but possible. And West Germans frequented the East even more often. First it was only allowed to visit relatives about once a year but in the 70s the GDR basically introduced tourism. The East also had at least some private economy and the state sponsored economy did not operate too differently from the west. So it was possible to integrate the East German workforce. And yet East Germany iis too this day economically way weaker than the west and it was still a major task to integrate the new states that is still ongoing. People from NK and SK on the other hand rarely meet. Their systems are extremely incompatible. Even their languages grew apart. Other than in their frequently closed down shared special economic zones and very limited contact with each other. Their whole system depends on the party and is centralized. If the party goes down it is likely that chaos will ensue.",
"1. Economic disparity is so much wider between the Koreas, meaning reunification would be FAR more of a burden on the South than it was on West Germany because There would have to be so much more redistribution of wealth for the North to come close to catching up. Specifically, GDP per person in West Germany was [twice]( URL_0 ) that of East Germany at the time of reunification. By comparison, South Korea's GDP per capita in 2013 was [18 times]( URL_1 ) that of North Korea. 2. North Korea's regime, because of its unique totalitarian nature, has the capacity and the willingness to exert brutal coercion to stay in power. East Germany was coercive, but its citizens actually had more freedom than those in North Korea; once its leadership lost the resources provided by the Soviet Union, its leaders lacked the capability to effectively preserve its power in the face of popular mobilization against the regime. 3. North Korea has nuclear weapons and a powerful military, so regime change by external pressure is extremely hard to achieve at anything approaching reasonable cost. East Germany, by comparison, was weak, and if the regime had not collapsed internally, it would have been highly vulnerable to military pressure from the West once it lost Soviet military support."
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66bbgg | Do ancient, obscure languages like Navajo and Tokelau have words for modern items such as "Phone" or "Television"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Probably not. They could *describe* such things, but they wouldn't have a word for it. Do we have a specific word for the future machine that turns boring nutrient paste into delicious sandwiches? No. But when someone invents it, they could give it a name then, and it could become a common name for such a machine. Similar to how kleenex is now a word for tissue paper.",
"A lot of languages will borrow the words for new technology from English or from whatever language invented the device. Radio, laser, robot, machine, these words are all examples of this, and they are the same word in a majority of languages. [This website]( URL_0 ) can show you how similar some words are in quite a few languages.",
"Languages will either borrow the new words from the languages that created them, or interpret the concept in words that exist. That's not just for obscure languages. *Computer* is an example. Many languages borrow the word from the original, which is English with a Latin source. French uses *ordenateur* from the root of putting things in an order. Hebrew uses *machshev* from the root of thinking."
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66biob | Why was Vincent Van Gogh not famous and his works sought after until after his death? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"His style was almost completely unlike anything in its time. He was also a mostly unlikeable, depressed, drunkard, or so the story goes, so people probably aren't going to flick to him to buy his stuff. And finally he was from a small-ish town in the Netherlands, so even if he was locally famous, he might not have gotten national or international recognition."
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66bnuv | it seems that there are a lot of violence/drugs etc problems with us sport stars but scarcly any violence between the fans in us sport compared to europe. Why? | Dear redditors, i am a huge NFL Fan and every offseason there seems to be Shootings, drug overdose and you name it. Additionaly you have Sport Stars who have to go to jail like Hernandez and so on. Compared to Football in Germany or Europe We do not have that on any scale. I only know a few examples of that stuff, it even is a scandal if some of the players Party too much without causing any trouble. On the other side there is so much violence between the Fans. While there is just normal violence in every Match even in the 4th League, you have places like in Poland where the different Fans will stab each other (not only in Poland but in cracow they are really vicious). You do not have that in the US. While I have some theories on why that is, i am a European and I would like to hear from people with more Insight. Excuse my English, my phone just keep using capital letters... | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Interesting question that I don't really have the answer to. From an American perspective I'm kind of interested in why there is such large-scale organized hooliganism around sports fandom in Europe. I mean you'll see American fans wearing their team jerseys and maybe bad mouthing the other team, but it's usually more or less friendly, and even if it isn't, that's a guy who got drunk and started a fight. What you don't see in the US are these groups of supporters who act collectively and are seriously violent toward supporters of other teams. The closest thing to that I can think of is a street gang. Which leads me to ask if you have a lot of criminal street gangs in Europe? Maybe that's what fills that niche in Europe instead of local or ethnic identity as we get with gangs over here.",
"Go to a Raiders game. See people get shot and beaten in the parking lot. ALL the time. EVERY game.",
"I don't know about fans but I think I can address the player violence issue. In America, most athletes are not wealthy growing up. African Americans are a large percentage of the athletes in America. It is theorized but by no means proven that [people of West-African descent have genes which may lead to greater athleticism]( URL_0 ). However, this group in America has been greatly disenfranchised due to centuries of discrimination including slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, etc. Currently, [Whites are 5 times richer than Blacks]( URL_3 ). So most athletes in America are more likely to be poor before they make it big and the poor are more likely to commit crimes than the wealthy. When it comes to American professional athletes, they are actually *less likely* to commit crime than people of their former poverty level or even the general population. But they are more likely to commit crime than people that were born into their wealthy status. [Source]( URL_2 ). [Second Source]( URL_1 ). I assume that European athletes do not usually grow up in the levels of poverty that American athletes do. Please correct me if I am wrong."
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66c7lw | How does the ESRB rate video games? Do they play through it or is the developer expected to disclose everything that you could find in the game? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No they don't play through the games. The game designers submit video clips of game play and a list of all the sexual and violent themes in the game."
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66ca51 | Why can't psychologists prescribe medicine like psychiatrists, & how did the two professions come to exist as separate beings? | I'm very aware one can prescribe medicine and the other essentially is only there to talk with you about your life but if I'm not mistaken, both are doctors correct? So why can only one prescribe medicine when they both seem to have intimate knowledge of the mind? What I mean is, how did the two ever get distinguished? Were they ever just one profession? Also, which one came first? (In a professional sense. I assume that people have been talking about their problems for a long time) | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Psychiatrists go through medical school and (normally) 4 years of residency after receiving their B.S. They are the typical \"medical doctors.\" Clinical psychologists usually have a M.S. or a Ph.D. in psychology. If their title is \"doctor,\" it is because of the doctorate degree (like how professors may address each other). Keep in mind that there are other jobs you can take as a psychologist, such as research and counseling, some even with just a B.S. Whereas the psychologist has probably studied basic biology as an undergraduate and understands the general workings of the human body (outside of psychology), the MD has had extensive training on every organ system, dysfunctions of these organ systems, and pharmaceuticals + their effects. Simply put, psychologists know how the brain and behavior work and what psychiatric medications do, but psychiatrists know how the rest of the body works, what effects the medications have on the rest of the body, and what non-psychiatric drugs/substances are contraindicted with these drugs. They are also required to have many more years of clinical experience before they are allowed to practice independently. You can also compare it to eye care: an optometrist goes to optometry school and can do eye exams and prescribe limited medications for specific diseases. An opthamologist goes to medical school + residency and can do what an optometrist can, prescribe any medication to treat any eye disease, and perform eye surgery.",
"The basic difference is in the etymology of the words. Psych**ology** is the study of brain activity and conditions, whereas psych**iatry** is the clinical treatment of such issues. One is meant to study, one is meant to treat. Therefore, only one has the power to prescribe medicine.",
"> but if I'm not mistaken, both are doctors correct? No. Psychiatrists are medical doctors. They go to medical school, get an \"MD\", do a medical internship and residency, just like any other medical doctor. Psychologists are not medical doctors. They may have a doctoral degree, but it would be a PhD or PsyD."
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66d4r5 | Why do some people seem to naturally attract others to them, while others have to try really hard just to make one friend? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most people like those that don't take themselves too seriously and can crack a joke or two. But I think people who stop worrying about what others think of them actually make the most friends.",
"This is more of a pet theory than a qualified answer. People are attracted to people who expose their vulnerabilities. We live in a world where you can't say or do anything without some criticism. When you wave your vulnerabilities around as if they don't matter it makes everyone else's vulnerabilities just as meaningless. This recreates social conventions to be more joyous and less exhausting.",
"In this video they talk about it, The School of Life is a good youtube channel I follow and recommend you URL_0"
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66dcx8 | Why are cartoons primarily considered as being "for children" in the modern day? What happened? | I know cartoons tended to be a normal thing for adults to watch in the 1930s or so. Why did that change? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The answer is \"Saturday Morning Cartoons\". In the 70's and 80's, Toy manufacturers and their marketers figured out that they could make half hour long commercials for their toys, run them on saturdays when kids were off from school, and profit. During this time, the cartoon business was essentially an extension of the toy business.",
"I don't know why it changed but cartoons seem to be coming back as something acceptable for adults. As you can tell epic tales not possible with live actors far cheaper.",
"There was a moral panic in the US after WWII, part of the larger Red Scare, where comics were accused of brainwashing kids into becoming antisocial criminals (c.f. *Seduction of the Innocent*). After that the old way of doing cartoons, with jokes that both adults and children could get, was erased. Thereafter, cartoons were aimed at children only (with exceptions like Ralph Bakshi) and dropped in quality creating the impression in American culture that they were just for kids."
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66dqy5 | Why are there always more sinks than hand dryers in public washrooms? | I just visited the mall and noticed there were 8 sinks in the washroom, but only 2 hand dryers. Why would they not make the same amount of each? If 8 people can use the sink at once, why can't they all dry their hands at once? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Having more sinks encourages more people to wash their hands. If there were fewer sinks, some people might just be tempted to leave because they wouldn't want to wait in line. After your hands are washed though, the mall doesn't care if you leave with your hands wet."
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66ensi | Every country seems to know how terrible Kim Jong Un is and how oppressed the people of N. Korea are. How come the worlds more powerful nations haven't "taken him out" by now, Either overtly or covertly? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"1. Not every nation cares about North Korea all that much. As much of a headache as North Korea may be to Russia and China (the only non-Western nations with the power and reach to affect North Korea), they've generally not cared at all when dealing with foreign nations no matter how reprehensible their governments are. 2. Since 1950, North Korea has been a useful buffer for China. Throughout the Cold War, it was feared that any war with North Korea would draw China back in again. And even since then, China has largely shielded North Korea with their veto power in the UN. 3. Speaking of China, while it is unlikely China would go to war with the US or Japan over North Korea, there has never been a resolute and solid answer that they wouldn't get involved either. As long as that question persists, the question is still: is fighting North Korea worth the risk of a major war with China? 4. The policy of most Western nations towards North Korea has been one of isolation and/or sanctions towards the regime. The hope is that political, economic, and social instability will topple the regime from the within and limit the loss of lives to people of other nations and effect a more peaceful transition. Unfortunately, that hasn't worked out despite two power transitions since Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, died. 5. The Korean War, fought from 1950 to 1953, saw over 2 million people die in just a span of 3 years, making it one of the most bloody and destructive wars post World War II. Any actual or perceived provocation towards North Korea that may well trigger a full blown war is cast with a wary eye by all parties involved, especially so now that South Korea has grown as prosperous as it has and since it is a major economic player now. In sum: * The costs of war would be high, even if victory is assured for South Korea/the US/the remaining nations of the United Nations Command. * There are question marks about China's role in all of this that make the risk even higher * The long term goal has always been to hope that reform and/or internal collapse will happen by itself barring nothing changing in the status quo. * The cost to rebuild the nation would be immense. Even the US at least tried rebuilding Iraq after 2003. Where would you even begin with North Korea?",
"All other reasons aside, the biggest one is that there's some 24+ million North Koreans. There is nobody in the world who wants to be responsible for a collapsed state with 24+ million potential refugees. The Syrian refugee crisis was a massive problem. A collapsed North Korea represents a humanitarian catastrophe the likes of which the world has never seen before. Nobody wants or can be responsible for that. So, for the most part, the world is perfectly happy to leave NK to stew in its own mess. We're even happy to send in humanitarian aid and other forms of support so that NK can keep doing what it does rather than collapse and become everybody else's problem.",
"Taking him out doesn't eliminate the next 100 chain of ascension. And you lose the capital of South Korea cause they'll just fire all their artillery and missiles. Lest you forget that the two countries are still in a state of war.",
"Because the cost to clean up would be tremendous. It's horrifying, the things happening in North Korea, but we're really kicking the can down the road, to be honest. It's ..\"convenient\" to let it be. People will inevitably tell you it's because of a delicate diplomatic entanglement with China and somehow Russia but this isn't exactly true. China supports NK only because of the land barrier NK creates between China and the western world. That alone simply isn't valuable enough for China to engage in war over.",
"They are a sovereign nation. We \"take out\" leaders when there is an economic or geopolitical motive not to save people.",
"North Korea's propaganda always tells the people that theirs is the best country in the world, that Americans are evil enemies, and then doesn't tell them about anything in other countries. North Korean citizens do not usually have access to the internet, and nearly all of their television is made by the government. This makes so that if any other country attacked, the citizens would think that all of North Korea was the victim, and the people would fight against those whom they thought were invaders. The United States could probably assassinate the current leader of North Korea within an hour using a cruise missile, but then all of the propaganda the people have been growing up with since childhood would be confirmed as correct.",
"Because it would start a war. The people there are brainwashed to worship their leader. They have a very dedicated albeit outdated military. An attempt to topple their government would result in the deaths of thousands.",
"China prefers Kim Jong Un to a united, US allied Korea on its border. The US prefers Kim Jong Un to a Chinese puppet state. Both might dislike him, but unless they can get the future Korea they prefer, they'd rather he stay in power.",
"From a military perspective, invading North Korea would quite an undertaking. The geography is mountainous with many caves and bunkers, posing similar tactical issues as Afghanistan. A ground attack would mean lots of casualties for the good guys. Air attacks would kill more innocent than guilty. Not to mention you're dealing with a country and population that's been preparing for such a war everyday for the better half of a century.",
"First, most nations are in no position to help North Koreas people by attacking Kim. The vast majority of nations don't have the military ability to take him out or free the country from his regime. Even those that do, why would they? Governments never do things out of kindness. They sometimes do kind things, but not because they are kind, its because it benefits them in some way. Maybe resources, maybe perception, etc., but for a country to want to take out kim, they would have to directly benefit from it. Most countries don't. In fact, the only one's I can directly think of would be South Korea, the US, perhaps Japan. Some powerful countries would actually lose things if North Korea's regime was overthrown. China and Russia see NK as a buffer to US military power in the pacific. In fact, both these nations would prefer to have a kim ruled NK, but non nuclear, as that would lessen Chinese military control over the DPRK. In short, many countries can't do anything about it. The countries that can do anything about it need a reason to. And some powerful countries don't want to depose him."
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66exhi | How exactly does leasing a car work? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"* you go to the dealership to buy a car * the dealer gets to you fall in love with a car you can't afford to purchase * they offer you a lease instead, being intentionally vague and confusing about the terms * the car is sold to a leasing company at a negotiated price * you pay an acquisition fee, they monthly payments * during the course of the lease, they pay for maintenance and repair costs for most items * after 24 or 36 months, the lease ends * you pay a bunch of excessive mileage and excessive wear fees the dealer forgot to mention * you have the option to buy the car for more than market value, otherwise you just made car payments for a few years and now have nothing to show for it"
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66fxli | What's the difference between emotional cheating and having close friendships? | Some of these definitions make it sound like monogamous people can only have friends when they're single or else they're scumbags. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When the relationship is being used to elicit feelings that one would normally seek from one's SO. Basically, would I want the feeling I'm experiencing to come from a friend, or a lover? And would I be ok if my lover was experiencing it from another person instead of me?",
"The difference? Close friendships exist and emotional cheating doesn't.",
"Intention: are you doing things that would make your partner uncomfortable? expectation: what does your close friend expect from you? what does your partner define as emotional cheating? and boundaries: what separates your relationships between romantic and non-romantic?",
"Do you seek emotional comfort and support from your \"friend\" more than your SO? Do you share secrets or deeply personal things with your \"friend\" that you don't tell your SO? Do you bad-mouth your SO to your \"friend\", and tell them how they understand you so much more than your SO does? Do you have romantic/sexual feelings towards your \"friend\", especially to the extent that it impacts your sex life with your SO? That's emotional cheating."
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66h7b7 | How do Dictators maintain power when it seems that most of the country is against them. | With what is going on in The Middle East and South America where is seems like significant portions of the county are against a particular regime, how do these dictators maintain control? I understand they have the armed forces but surely people in the respective armies must be against the dictator as well or at least have family that is demonstrating. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"- Surrounding yourself with corrupt people who financially gain from your policies, and who in return provide you with \"donations\" - Ensuring the wealthiest citizens benefit from your policies and are exempt from prosecution for the laws they break - Changing laws to marginalize opposition - Silencing journalists - Employing state media to control the narrative - Creating nationalist fervor through a perceived outside threat from foreigners - Indoctrination of ideology in schoolchildren Many countries that are not currently dictatorships have already checked off a few of these boxes, including the United States.",
"In addition to everything else already mentioned, dictators keep themselves in power by spending enormous resources on propaganda (and censorship) to keep individuals who hate the government from realizing they're not alone. If you hate the government enough to want to act, but fear that you are alone and therefore essentially powerless, you're probably going to keep your head down and grudgingly obey. If you realize that *everyone* feels that way, well, if *everyone* revolts, the dictator is in deep trouble. Therefore, it is in his interests to fill the media with lies 24/7 about how great he his, how popular he is, how good everyone under his rule has it, and so forth. It doesn't even matter if the lies are transparently false--as long as you can't be sure the population as a whole shares your hatred for the regime, the risks of revolting are huge. But when it becomes evident that hatred and unrest are widespread, you can see a dictatorship fall seemingly overnight. Suddenly everyone realizes the regime is a house of cards and reacts accordingly.",
"CGP Grey actually has a really good video describing the general structure that most dictatorships (or any power structure) follow. Here's the link: URL_0",
"Governors and Rulers are kept in power by their key supporters, not necessarily by the populace which they rule. Many countries in which the citizens suffer and the elites flourish are actually quite stable, when compared to democratic societies. For example, in Saudi Arabia, only the royal family can vote in the next king and the king only really has to maintain the support of his family members (albeit larger than your typical family). The saudi citizens has no real say in who rules next. Whereas in the U.S., the president requires key support from major political figures, who are they themselves supported by their constituents and contributors, who are also themselves supported by local level constituency / stockholders etc. TLDR: Dictators tend to need to keep less people happy than elected leaders. You mentioned the role of the military, which behaves similarly to any political pyramid. At the top you have the generalissimo, who is presumably a key supporter of the dictator, and is being kept happy by the dictator. He is then appointing and keeping happy the top officers he needs to keep the army under control (typically with help from the regime's coffers). These top officers will dispense and acquire whatever influence they need to keep their subordinates under control, and so on. The army, with the general in the lead, is not likely to abandon the current regime unless a new regime is likely to improve their welfare. At which point they might throw their weight behind a revolution. Its important to note that populist uprisings are typically seen as the people rising up against the establishment, this is a fallacy. What actually happens in a populist uprising is a new regime moving to push the old regime out, probably having swayed some key supporters their way. It's just a better public image to let the people (aka angry mob) do the work for you. This is why so many new governments born of populist uprisings ends up being just as bad or if not worse than the previous government. When a new ruler comes in power, new key supporters are installed, much of the old support base is purged, and the day to day lives of the people tends to stay the same. Since the money used to maintain the previous government's support base is now being spent to keep the current government's support base happy.",
"CGP Grey(youtube channel) has made some awesome videos explaining the dynamics of dictatorship. I hope links will help you to understand : URL_0 URL_1",
"This question is so on point given the current situation in Venezuela.. There you have a guy (in fact he used to be a bus driver) who is now a defacto dictator, slowly eliminating political opposition. In a country where there's so much oil that a tank of gas costs less than a coffee, the vast majority of Venezuelans have nothing.. No food, and no basic supplies.",
"See the CGP grey video (The Rules for Rulers) on youtube for an ELI10, and/or read the Dictator's handbook for an ELI15.",
"\"It seems like\" is the key word there. Most people don't give a fuck, or simply don't care enough to be involved. It's really two minorities one of which has much more resources than another one."
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66hdn2 | Why do religious/conservative people seems usually to be the less moral/honest people? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because you're not religious/conservative. Your assessment has more to do with an \"us vs. them\" mentality than actual facts. They seem less moral/honest because you disagree with them. It reinforces your belief that you're right, and that's a nice feeling."
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66hdo6 | How do politicians benefit from mass migration? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In a rich economy where labour costs are high, the wages of lower skilled jobs can be suppressed by the mass immigration from much poorer countries. The lower wage bills means companies can pay out more money in dividends to share holders, who in turn make donations to political parties, who in turn advocate a looser immigration policy to allow more immigrants in that have low wage demands. The mass immigrants will also vote for the parties that will allow more mass immigration, keeping the politicians in the job, and hence the cycle continues. So essentially the winner of it all are the share holders who get richer, politicians who keep their jobs and get richer, poor immigrants who significantly increase their wages compared to country of origin and get richer. The main loser is the indigenous low skilled population who have their wages suppressed or jobs lost.",
"Because they will vote for them. The democrats main strategy is to make promises that they cant actually deliver to win voters. So it makes sense that they want to bring in lots of migrants that cant be vetted and that have no useful skills because then they will be dependent on welfare and thus more likely to vote for the party that promises more welfare money."
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66ht03 | How is the Fast & Furious franchise still going? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Fast and Furious franchise is now worth more money than the entire star wars franchise. To understand it you need to look at who goes to the cinema. Really, for all importance, cinema goers can be considered aged between 18 and 26 and the guys tend to choose what both the guys and the girls watch ( :( ). After that age group it just kind of fades away almost into irrelevance. The fast and furious appeals to large swathes of that key demographic. Young lads with their girlfriends tagging along.. Also the same film format works time and time again as the cinema audience for fast and furious 'resets' every 8 years. Wait for 8 years, and you've got a completely new set of 18-26 year olds to market the same shit to and they'll want it (this is also the reason why many films types seem like some other film concept that was out about 6-8 years ago just told slightly differently .. because the target audience has 'reset' and they're really marketing to a new group that 8 years ago were mere 10 year old children!). Finally clever casting includes Whites, Asians, Blacks and Latino as Heros - which gives the film great international appeal - especially the Latino dollar which is apparently 35% of revenue and something most of Hollywood ignores altogether for not altogether nice reasons. A screenwriting that never takes itself seriously, and 'just watch beautiful people and cars getting smashed to bits with a dollop of violence' as a 100% guarantee, also mean the ticket buyer knows exactly what they're buying so 'buyer risk' isn't a drain on revenue like it is massively with that .. er .. wacky looking bizarre sci-fi trailer/posters where they can't give spoilers so you don't really know what the hell you're gonna get if you risk paying to go to see it.. tl;dr : If you knew a way to make more and more and more money and were good at it .. would you stop?",
"if it makes money in hollywood it will keep going no matter how bad it is. if it continues to make money it will never stop being being made."
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66isfo | What actually led the Renaissance to be a time of such intellectual and cultural advancements? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, for starter the geography, Italy, where it all started, is in a perfect spot between europe and mid-east and consequently, India and China, so it was a huge trade route, so there was a LOT of money flowing there, like, real big money. So, a lot of money, a lot of people with a lot of money, where would they spend their money? Obviously they would try to impress their peer, and the way they found was through patronage, they hired and maintened a lot of artists, big cities started to form an overflow with music, art, and everything, and since the dawn of time when you get a lot of people together with lots of food, and not a care about money, they will think, and thus some briliant minds can be founded to just think incridible things! Remember there is money overflowing Italy, and the big rich guys want to impress, and they are religious too, so the Church got a lot of money, and then they funded a lot of artists too, with lots of artists, lots of money and lots of food the advancements where just a natural consequence."
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