Will the good times ever return?

dublincc2

The late 80s-2001 period was incredible.

Immediately after I did my leaving cert, i could easily afford to purchase a car. By my late 20s I bought my own house and pretty much anything I wanted I could purchase. Plenty of money to spend/save. It was ridiculously easy to earn a real salary, headhunters were constantly trying to poach you from other companies, etc.

We didn't have this extreme PC culture. everyone got on well, people weren't perpetually "offended". You could smoke in pubs, restaurants, aeroplanes, etc. women loved attention, there was no "shaming" and "toxic masculinity". I approached a girl in college in 1992 and after getting to know each other over a few weeks asked her out for a drink. Today we have been married 26 years and have three children. Today young men don’t have the balls and toxic attitudes with people like Tate prevail.

Italia 90 was a moment of national euphoria that nobody who wasn’t alive at the time will ever understand. The country was on the crest of a wave. The only real financial boom also happened around this time.

The music and culture was going strong and there was finally peace in the north. Everything was chill and cool.

I was working in the IT sector from the mid-90s and the dot com boom was basically a 6-year-long rave, where you were constantly peaking on the best ecstasy of your life. Anything was possible. there were no limits. Life was good.

Then in 2001 something happened at the World Shìte Centre and nothing has been the same since.

Will we ever see a return to the golden days of the 80s and 90s? The hope for this is one of the things that keeps me going TBH. Anything is better than what we have now.

zell12

No.

buried

You've got to take the rough with the smooth.

Or don't.

pgj2015

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058312282/will-the-good-times-ever-return

Anything is better than what we have now. 🙄

You live in one of the best and richest and free Countries in the world, count your blessings you dont live in Iran, North Korea, China, Gabon, Ukraine, Russia, even America or the UK.

gmisk

Er u ok hun

rogber

Middle aged person looks back on their youth and decides everything was much better then than it is now.

A tale as old as time itself.

Jim_Hodge

Times are good for most. Living the dream here.

rapidash_2023

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058312282/will-the-good-times-ever-return

Almost everything is worse now, compared to what it was.

Some will say that's "moving with the times". That's all well and good, but "the times" don't always move in a positive direction.

I put it down to people being too busy looking for problems to fix that were never problems to begin with. It keeps them busy, but makes life worse for the rest of us.

Emblematic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121069501#Comment_121069501

I thought it was supposed to be "of course in my day we had it tough!"

Isn't that how it normally is: middle-aged and older people saying how the young have it easy these days? The OP is doing the opposite though.

mikemac2

In college in the early 90´s before free fees. Your family weren't struggling anyway

L.Ball

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058312282/will-the-good-times-ever-return

No.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121069524#Comment_121069524

With what?

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121069544#Comment_121069544

I put it down to people being too busy looking for problems to fix that were never problems to begin with.

Like crusading against tiny, tiny minorities of the population who just want to be left alone by conservatives yearning for the good ol days TM

Jim_Hodge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121069912#Comment_121069912

Sheets of prosperity and rolls of happiness.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121069944#Comment_121069944

What ever happened to Snuggle anyway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TRsgx97pZw

Oh yeah, we shattered his innocence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nJtoqeIwk0

We chose this path of war we're on...

Faugheen

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121069524#Comment_121069524

Yeah I’m having a great time personally.

D-Lo Brown

Call me PC mad but I think it's a good thing I can eat my chips without having to breath in a ball of smoke.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121069944#Comment_121069944

😂😂 good man Jim!

joseywhales

No part of my life was better than this part

Edit: well obviously early childhood , that's just not possible to get back.

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121069501#Comment_121069501

Life was more affordable during the period described, to be fair.

Ubbquittious

There was freedom in the 80s,90s and perhaps the early 2000s that we will wont see back unless there is a massive crash in the global population. I was too young to enjoy most of it

GSBellew

Things were still great long after September 2001, Ok the Dot Com bubble went sometime around then, so maybe that's why the OP thinks it went completely at that stage, the rest of us were still having a great time for several years after that, I would have said it was only really in 2009 that things went down.

They did come back though, I think we are all a little less spend crazy with the hindsight of 2008 - 2009, that said, there were never as many new cars floating about as you see these days.

dublincc2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070192#Comment_121070192

It was because of the World Shìte Centre coming down that everything went downhill. That was the key event.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070154#Comment_121070154

For who would be a salient question.

Elements of life were more affordable for many, equally many were completely out of reach for most people.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070192#Comment_121070192

Autumn 2008 was the other real tipping point. You could almost pin it to the day: September 15.

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/world/americas/17iht-mccain.4.16251777.html

If you wanna talk major inflection points in the world besides 9/11 that was the other big one. So much to unpack there tbh. It changed the entire global and political landscape (alongside people realizing right around the same time Palin was chosen as a cardboard cutout, conservatives have had a crisis of identity ever since, the 'silent/majority' aka white supremacists were suddenly aggressively activated by a black president, devolving from there to Tea Party then MAGA, etc). This ran completely parallel with the explosion of twitter and major social media, and with it the race to drive engagement metrics, fueled by disagreement usually, nevermind state-actor efforts to drive these wedges as they arose. This totally changed the state of play in the middle east as well. It was a flip between "we're getting out on X date americans are tired" to "maybe we'll stay there 100 years, **** you al qaeda"

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070161#Comment_121070161

Which is what one might expect with the confluence of the birth of the internet and the end of the Cold War. Since then governments have learned better to reign it in, ie. Web 2.0 etc., the great firewall of china, state spying programs, state propaganda programs, and more.

Princess Calla

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070154#Comment_121070154

Was it though?

It may have been affordable if you had a job. However the 80's was high unemployment and high emigration.

Reeling in the Years is an excellent programme for giving snapshots of what life was like.

There was a randomer being interviewed in 78/79 young enough guy who was despairing at how shyte and dangerous Ireland, Dublin more likely had become.

Income tax was very high , I remember my dad saying there was no point doing overtime as it all went to tax man. Mortgage interest rates were also very high.

You're living the dream when you've disposable income and no responsibilities, however for most of us, those years are short-lived and lived without us realising how good we had it.

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070251#Comment_121070251

The average or median salaried person was able to buy a house. I wouldnt say thats the case anymore. Unless you live in Leitrim or somewhere similar.

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070260#Comment_121070260

I was thinking more of the 2000s. When people were writing their own mortgage approvals :)

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070265#Comment_121070265

Yes and that's absolutely worse for young people. Though it's worse for young people because they are a minority and the majority of the population who own their own homes don't really care.

But lots of things were worse in the 80s and 90s, not least unemployment and general salary levels. I suspect disposable incomes were worse. Life was a lot worse for women in particular.

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070258#Comment_121070258

Yes orwellianism is a big part of it but in Ireland you also had the brief power vacuum from a declining Catholic church and the state picking up the slack

GSBellew

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121070248#Comment_121070248

But they really didn't, not in Ireland, things were flying high long after the twin towers fell, that was but a temporary blip in world economic terms. now maybe the boom would have been even boomier to borrow a phrase but it certainly kept on going in Ireland regardless.

Year on year 2001 to 2009 I was earning more each year than the year before it.

If things were gone in 2001 why did peoples earnings keep climbing? why did property keep climbing? they did because we were in a bubble and it did not end in 2001.