Do you really want the 'good ol' days'?

Sometimes I wonder if Americans really would like to go back to the "good ol' days" we remember so fondly, often through rose-tinted glasses.

Or, is it just the idea of a slower, less hectic time that people want?

Maybe that's all we want, because I can't see most people willingly going back to life the way it was 50, 75, or 100 years ago. There are individuals who have jumped off the grid and gotten back to the land because they were fed up with life today, and others who haven't gone that far but are trying to have a simpler life. But it's hard to picture our society as a whole doing that.

There are politicians and profiteers who wouldn't mind resetting our country's clock to the turn of the century — the 20th century, that is. Maybe even the late 19th century. Before the 40-hour work week, before women's suffrage, before Social Security, before a minimum wage, before retirement pensions, before civil rights changes, before companies and corporations were regulated.

I wonder how many people truly would like to return to those days.

Let's put our imaginations to work and think about how different life would be without any of those. Sure, folks got along — most of them, at least — but what if we'd never had them?

Get rid of the 40-hour week, go back to only having Sundays off and working 10- to 12-hour days six days a week, 52 weeks a year. (Of course, with today's demands 10- or 12-hour days aren't unusual in some businesses.) Naturally, that would be without insurance, or a retirement plan, or any benefit other than having a paying job. And for most folks the pay would be $1 or $2 a day, maybe $20 a week in a high-paying job.

Speaking of retirement, there wouldn't be any pensions or Social Security. You'd just keep working, or if you did retire and had not saved enough to live on (or didn't live with your children) you'd just be poor, maybe even destitute and having to live in a county home, or "the poor farm," as some were called.

Health insurance wasn't very common in those days, and we wouldn't have Medicare for older folks, which means everyone would have to foot their own medical bills. Or go without health care unless you had a doctor who would accept chickens, livestock or vegetables in trade, which most folks tended to have back then.

You'd still have to pay property taxes on what you own; after all, taxation goes back to biblical times and earlier. There might not be an income tax, which could be a plus. But, then again, there might be fewer or no government services we're used to having such as road and bridge construction and maintenance, although here in Arkansas adult males in the counties were required once a year to work on county roads.

There would be little or no police protection, fire protection (although volunteer fire departments have been around for ages), municipal water and sewer services, food inspections to assure we have safe food, or public health services.

There likely would be fewer parks or public recreation areas. Of course, having to work six days a week there probably wouldn't be a big need for those.

We'd have little if any wildlife and fishery management to keep from depleting game and fish, which would be important since country folks would need to hunt and fish to help put food on their tables.

Life could be simpler in some ways, but it would be hard, and not just because there wouldn't be the luxuries we take for granted (electricity, air conditioning, TV, radio, computers). How many people now could get along without Social Security, Medicare, health insurance, a livable wage, a retirement pension, the public infrastructure and services we use every day?

How many people would be willing to give those up entirely? Imagine life without those How many of you would have the life you do now without any of those?

Are those the good ol' days people are longing for?