Memes

My mom worked in a factory, my dad has been chronically unemployed and her parents worked at a food cart.

We owned a 3 story house with two kitchens, four bathrooms, and six bedrooms for $70k in the hood. Gentrification happened and it's worth a million now.

I make double what my mom makes, and with the combined salaries of my wife, we still rent.

People insisting trickle down economics worked, when, in fact, it tricked up into the pockets of Bezos and the Waltons.

I don't think the McAllisters were in union jobs. I think they were pretty high up the tier of management.

People talk about union jobs going away, but don't forget, non-unionized middle management has totally been gutted by outside consultants over the same time period. So the changes in the workforce have hurt the earning power of both the line workers and the middle managers who used to make up the middle class.

Union membership in the US was at 16% in 1991. Obviously that's better than today's 10%, but that spread is hardly big enough to be the difference between the presumed worker's paradise of the early '90s and the dystopian nightmare of 2025.

Well let’s change that!

It was also the 90s. To anyone who didn't live it I can not overstate how many benefits the McCallister adults had. Not even from the government just the world. The Soviet Union had just collapsed, China hadn't risen yet and Europe had just finally recovered from WWII. America was at the end of being uncontested internationally for 50 years and had another decade to go before it all starts to crumble. Being middle class in the United States meant you had a good paying job, not the single bread winner jobs of decades before but wayyy better than what most people are offered now. It was a very different time.

However, the uncle was the one that paid for the vacation, as he had even more money.

I feel like I saw some BTS story about how the Home Alone canon was that it was in repayment for another vacation Kevin's dad paid for.

Edit: I had it flipped. Kevin's dad, Peter, paid for the trip in Home Alone 2 to take everyone to Florida.

According to everything I read his father was listed as a prominent man in business, but the script doesn't go further than that. Yes, the script says the mother was a fashion designer, but doesn't say for what company, or anything more specific than that.

Yup. Every time this post comes up I’m reminded that people don’t know the plot very well and are still unaware of their gender bias.

I mean, that's fine. But also it implies significant generational family wealth.

The point is that Kevin's family is loaded. Dad's likely an investment banker, mid-level corporate executive, white shoe lawyer, or other high income profession. And he comes from a family with similar wealth and status, such that they can afford to shell out five figures on an extended vacation abroad.

I think this is alluded to in the class character of Kevin himself, who seems fairly comfortable playing the spoiled rich kid, but is initially terrified and disoriented when presented with people living in poverty.

That doesn't explain the house and so many children though.

Dang thats really close to Lake Michigan.

Pinball is life. Forrest Gump got it wrong. Life is not like a box of chocolates. It is like a pinball game. You're bouncing around like crazy and then suddenly it all ends when you go down the drain...

The post-WW2 greatest generation lifestyle was something else. Not to say that all WW2 veterans were well-off (WW2 veterans had a LOT of PTSD and many never recovered from wartime trauma), but increased housing development meant cheap houses for many people. A lot of houses of that time left a lot to be desired in modern terms (like some bathrooms had slots to put used safety razors in, but had no way of emptying them out...), but far more people than ever were actually able to afford homes.

The implausible part about Homer's job wasn't the salary, it was the fact that he was in charge of safety at a nuclear plant despite being completely unqualified. Lenny and Carl both have Masters' Degrees in Nuclear Science.

But Al Bundy was constantly out of money and he did not own the house. His paycheck went straight to Peg who wasted it on fashion, on herself and useless stuff. The children had to steal food because Peg or Al never cooked at home. At some point Al made a joke that life won't get worse if anyone sues them for money, because he already has 2 mortgages on the house, his car is junk and he has no valuables and no savings to take away.

TBH that would explain the Trump Cameo. It's all about who you know.

From what I remember, only a few of the kids on the trip were his, the rest were cousins. His wealthy(er) brother was the one flying them to Paris at his expense. Also he was the one sitting on a ridiculously 3 story brownstone in Manhattan. I don't believe we meet the brother in the films. Kevin's mom was supposed to have been the substantial breadwinner in the house as a fashion designer.