Shadowing Practice: 1955 vs 2025, who actually had it better? - Learn English Speaking with Video
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This is me if I lived in 1955.
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Here I am in 1975 and 1995, 2015, and then today.
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I'm going to put myself in the shoes of a middle
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income earner in all of these decades to answer a very important question about the United States.
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Is the average American better off today than they were all these decades ago?
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Does the typical American make more money, have a better chance of owning a home?
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It's an important question because this graph shows that our economy has grown immensely since the 50s.
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I mean, we've got the largest economic pie on Earth.
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And even when you account for inflation and the fact that our population has grown, you still see immense growth.
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I mean, look at this.
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We've added tons of prosperity in this country that theoretically, every person is entitled to some part of.
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Or, as some economists put it, has our country produced shared prosperity?
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When I think about how well the economy delivers, I think about how well it delivers for the people, for the workers and their families.
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How well are they receiving that prosperity?
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I'm going to show you how all of this economic prosperity we've created has been shared or not shared.
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And in all of this, I want to get to the bottom of perhaps one of the most important questions in our country, which is, is everyone able to move up?
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If they work hard enough or if they get educated, can you climb the economic ladder here?
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Are you going to do better than your parents?
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Can you reach higher levels of income?
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Can you change your relative position?
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The American dream, we sometimes call it.
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A quote, dream of a better, richer, happier life for all citizens of every rank.
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Is that still alive?
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And if not, why?
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I believe that answering these key questions is incredibly important for the future of this country, which is why we've been deep in all of the data,
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and I'm going to try to lay it out as clearly as possible by traveling through time.
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As always, all of the assertions in this video are fact-checked and linked in our sources.
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So with that, let's start traveling back in time.
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You can't repeat the patterns.
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Why, of course you can.
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Okay, so I'm traveling back towards the 1950s.
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As we move through time, I'm going to be keeping an eye on this main graph.
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This graph is kind of our anchor.
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It will be showing how the economy has grown over time.
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And again, it's adjusted for prices and population growth.
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When this graph goes up, it means that there's more economic prosperity to go around.
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We're gonna see how it gets divided up.
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And for each decade I'm gonna be looking at these four economic indicators.
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Am I making more money?
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Can I afford a house?
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Is this economic growth being shared equally by everyone?
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And how likely am I to be making more than my parents?
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Oh look, we're arriving to the 1950s.
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So it's the 1950s here in America, and I, the middle income earner, have just returned from fighting in the most devastating war of human history.
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But we Americans came out on top and our economy is booming.
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I work in this car factory, it's one of the many factories
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that was converted from making weapons to now making valuable stuff that we're shipping around the world.
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Our country is getting rich.
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I am making an average income, so my income right now is $4,400.
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In today's money, that's more like $41,000.
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We're going to adjust everything for modern dollars, in this case, $2023 prices are higher these days, so our money is more valuable to make it all make sense.
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Okay, wait, pause.
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I'm not gonna do that every single time, like, talk about the inflation.
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I'm just gonna say everything from now on in modern dollars.
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It'll allow us to compare a lot easier between the decades.
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Okay, with that, let's get all the magic going again.
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Pretty cool, right?
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Let's meet my family.
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So my wife doesn't work.
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Only a third of women did back then.
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And really, she doesn't need to.
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My factory job supports the whole family.
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And look, I own that home.
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I paid $84,000 for this thing, again in modern dollars.
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That's actually not that much more than my yearly salary.
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This is considered very affordable.
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And a major reason why is because the government is helping me pay for a lot of this.
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And they've got the cash to do it.
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I mean, look at the top tax rate for the rich.
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So a booming economy and all this tax revenue means that the government is helping build all of these suburban homes,
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and is giving us veterans good deals on mortgages so that we can get in on the prospering US economy
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start building wealth by owning a home.
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How a returning serviceman who was starting his own business would get a financial boost from the government.
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How money would be advanced to buy property or a home.
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We're coming out of World War II.
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There are absolutely lots of public programs.
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Policymakers today and back then had a lot to do with how typical workers and their families were doing.
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Okay, so the economy is booming.
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Let's see how all of this prosperity is being shared.
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And for that, I'm going to show you this amazing graph.
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I love this graph.
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We're going to see it over the decades and it tells a very useful story.
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This is my income, the median earner.
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Here's the income of the top earners.
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And this line is the low income in America.
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And down here is like years.
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Okay, watch what happens.
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Ready, go.
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Look at this.
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Look what's happening.
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All three of these income brackets are increasing their income at the same rate.
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We are all getting in on this prosperity.
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We are sharing the spoils of a booming economy.
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Nice.
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In the roughly two, three decades after World War II, we saw what I would consider broadly shared prosperity.
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As the economy grew, as workers became more productive, workers across the board were actually seeing gains in their living standards.
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This is a great indicator that income equality in the United States is good and healthy.
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Okay, last thing for the 1950s, let's check in on the American dream.
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Can I move up the ladder?
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There's a really nice data set for this that says that I am nearly 100% likely to earn more than my parents.
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There is upward motion in the economy.
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The American dream is alive, at least for me.
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Which is an important caveat here.
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Women were mostly left out of this economic version of the American dream, and so are people who weren't white.
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Like black Americans, 10% of the population, over a million of whom fought in the war,
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but upon returning were met with these custom maps that were drawn to determine where they could and could not buy homes.
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They were largely left out of all of this government help
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that allowed me to get education and buy a home and build wealth.
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But if you're just looking at the numbers, the 1950s was a really good time for the median income earner.
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You could have a family, work in a factory, and be loaded with opportunities to move up the economic ladder, thanks to a booming economy and a bunch of government programs.
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So now let's move forward in time to the 1970s.
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Welcome to the 1970s.
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A lot has changed.
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The economy is producing a lot more prosperity to go around, as you can see by this graph.
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And we'll see how that's all being distributed in a second.
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But first, let's check in on my pay.
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I'm still working in a factory.
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I now earn about $66,000.
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That's an improvement from the 50s.
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Or should I say we, like millions of other women, my wife has entered the workforce.
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They still only earn 60% of what men do, but look, they're breaking into the workforce.
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Nearly half of all women are gonna be working by the end of the decade.
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Partly as a push for freedom and economic autonomy, but partly as a necessity.
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It's becoming harder for a family to be supported by a single earner.
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The result is that our income is better off than it was in the 50s.
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but things are also kind of expensive right now.
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Inflation is up, partly because there's war in the Middle East and they're cutting us off oil.
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So there's long lines at these gas stations and everything is more expensive.
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Anyway, check out my house.
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I had to pay $230,000 for this house.
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Housing is getting more expensive and the government is raising the interest rate to slow down inflation, which is making my monthly payment a little more expensive.
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Home purchasing is becoming a little less accessible to the median, but I still have this cool house.
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Okay, let's go back to this super useful graph that tells us how the economic spoils are being shared.
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Remember, that's me, the median income earner.
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And look, my income continues to grow at the same rate as the high income and low income earners in our country.
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The growing economy is being shared by these different income groups.
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It's actually pretty impressive how like tight everything is moving together as the economy grows.
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Oh, and look, they've started collecting data on how much more CEOs are making than the typical employee.
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Looks like by the middle of the decade, It's about 26 times more.
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Wait, are CEOs making too much?
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Is that bad?
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What do you think?
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I don't know, let's keep an eye on this chart as time continues
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and we can assess if we think this is unfair.
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Okay, but what about the American dream?
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How easy it is to make more than your parents?
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Well, if I'm an adult in the 1970s, it means I was born in the 1950s, which according to this data set means I'm 80% likely to earn more than my parents.
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I mean, pretty good.
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The American dream seems to be doing pretty well.
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So I would say that economic life in the 1970s is better for the median earner than it was in the 50s.
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And something that we're not covering here
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because we're looking at the cold hard data is
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that there's also a revolution happening that's making it more equal and more fair for minority groups in the United States.
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So these are good trends.
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Let's see how they continue as we move on to the 1990s.
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Guess you guys aren't ready for that yet.
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Boy, your kids are gonna love it.
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To get to the 90s, we have to go through the 80s and look at all of this economic growth.
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The president has been very busy slashing taxes, getting rid of regulation and social programs and rejiggering the economy to benefit businesses,
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making it harder for workers to like gather and get leverage over their employers.
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And look, we are arriving to the 1990s.
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What a great decade.
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Let's leave my room full of maps and get back into the 1990s.
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The big standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union is over and people are stoked.
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We enter the 1990s with this little recession.
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We're getting ready for a big surge of more growth thanks to the rise of the internet.
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Remember, I am still playing the role of the middle income earner, okay?
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So it's not like I was like born back in the 50s and I've been growing up.
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I am a young adult who was the middle income earner.
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How am I doing?
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So I still work at a factory.
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America is still a manufacturing powerhouse here in the 90s, though that is literally right about to change.
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I wish I could warn myself.
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My household brings in $176,000 a year, which is definitely better than the 50s and 60s, but you can kind of see that things are flattening out.
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And in fact, I'm not making that much more than I was in the late 70s.
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Check out my cool 90s house.
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Costs me $273,000.
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That's almost four times our yearly income.
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Way more expensive than in the 50s.
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Housing is getting a little less affordable.
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Okay, the economy is doing well.
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How are we sharing all of this economic prosperity?
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Remember we started back in the 50s and we saw how the high income, the low income, and me, the middle income, we all saw similar growth in our income gains.
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We all got in on economic growth equally.
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That continued through the 70s.
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But wait, look what happens right here.
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Whoa, they're diverging.
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It's around the 1980s when you see the top earners start to pull away from the rest of us.
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Their income is going up faster than mine, and my income is going up a little faster than the low-income population.
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Okay, that's unsettling.
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I liked it more when they were all kind of like on top of each other, growing at the same rate.
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We'll keep an eye on this graph, but there's a bunch of other graphs starting to come out.
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Another divergence happening on how productive the economy is versus how much I get paid.
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They're both going up at the same time.
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I'm more productive, I get paid more.
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Cool.
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But around the same time, the same split happens.
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My pay starts the flatline even as productivity continues to go up.
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So then there's this period
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that starts around 1979 in the early 80s where we see this pulling apart between economic growth
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and what typical workers and their families receive from that economic growth.
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So who's getting in on all this extra productivity?
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This growth that's happening in our economy, if not me.
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Well let's check in on those CEOs.
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So remember back in the 70s, CEOs were making like 25 times more than the typical worker.
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Kind of seems like a lot.
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Let's see what happens here.
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Oh my god look at this.
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Okay, whoa, by the end of the 90s, CEOs are making almost 400 times the typical worker.
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And I thought 20 times was a lot.
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Those at the top are receiving much larger shares of
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that growing economy than those at the middle or at the bottom of the wage distribution.
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So that pulling apart, that increasing economic inequality is apparent no matter how you look at it.
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That high is going increasingly to the very top.
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Okay, okay, but isn't inequality often seen as a byproduct of rapid economic growth?
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Could this be a good thing for our economy?
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Yes, people are getting really rich really fast, but it's because they're innovating and making our economy more productive.
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And plus, everything I've shown you is before taxes, guys.
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So like, the rich pay a lot of taxes.
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Okay, so let's see what happens to the income of the rich people after taxes.
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Here we go.
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Oh, okay.
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Well.
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Well, the taxes didn't do that much.
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There's something going on here.
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The rich are getting really rich really fast.
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I mean, what these lines all show is that 1980 was kind of this inflection point in our economy,
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where the top earners kind of started to get in on most of the prosperity.
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And yes, there are economists who argue that inequality isn't bad for an economy.
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It actually spurs growth and investment into the economy and eventually that raises all boats.
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It trickles down.
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And advocates for this way of thinking say that we shouldn't focus on inequality but instead on poverty reduction.
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Okay, poverty reduction, how we doing?
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Poverty plummeted after World War II, but you can see that at this time, like 1980, when inequality starts to get really bad,
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poverty basically stays the same.
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Goes up for big series of years.
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So this is concerning, and this is my interpretation of the data.
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I'm sure some of you have very different interpretations and I would love to see you down in the comments.
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Anyway, let's check in on the American dream.
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America is all about big risks big rewards so yeah inequality is happening
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but like if you can go from rags to riches maybe that's very American and okay.
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If I was born in 1970s I'm now an adult in the 1990s
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and the data says that 59% of us born to the middle income will out earn our parents.
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So that means that 40% of my peers here in the middle income will earn the same or less than their parents,
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even as we are seeing all of this economic growth.
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I mean you can see this trend here.
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The American dream of being able to move up the ladder is becoming less
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and less a reality for a bigger and bigger portion of the population.
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Okay, so that was a big change from all the trends.
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Let's see what happens next.
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People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.
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Okay, we're moving into the new millennium.
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America's fighting a couple of wars.
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The economy is actually doing pretty well until, whoops, whoa, the bankers got a little loosey-goosey for a couple of years making obscene amounts of money
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and crashing the entire world economy.
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But okay, Let's move on from the biggest recession of our time.
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We're arriving to the 2010s.
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This is a world that most of us are familiar with.
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Let's see how the median income earner fares.
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I don't work in a factory anymore.
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All of those jobs have dried up and been shipped to Asia.
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So I now work as a middle manager at an insurance company, and my household income is $81,000 a year.
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Which is, wait a minute, same as 1997, but wait, during this same 13-year period from 1997 to 2010, the economy grew by this much.
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I mean, that line's going up.
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The economy's making more stuff.
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There's more prosperity.
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Even when you adjust for inflation per capita, the economy grew.
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There should be more to go around.
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But my household pay is the same as it was 13 years previous.
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Why?
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Well, we'll see in a second.
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But first, let's talk about my house.
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I always love talking about my house.
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Look at this beauty.
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I can still afford a house.
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In fact, here in like post-recession America, housing prices are actually pretty low.
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The bubble burst.
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Interest rates had to go down to stimulate the economy.
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And so home purchasing was actually pretty accessible for a few years.
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But don't worry, housing prices will be back on the rise in a second.
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And in fact, they'll start rising faster than my income, making housing less and less affordable.
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And homeownership still seems to be available mostly for certain groups and not as much for others.
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In fact, that hasn't changed much since the segregation days.
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Meanwhile, I think I know what's going to happen to this graph.
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Yep, the rich are just getting richer faster than my income is going up.
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And my income is kind of stagnating.
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Okay, what about the CEOs?
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Do they pay a price for the big bubble person?
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Nope, they didn't pay.
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I mean, they kind of did up and down, but they're still, by the end of the decade, getting paid hundreds of times more than me.
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Maybe they think they are hundreds of times more productive and they deserve it.
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I mean, you get the point on the inequality stuff.
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This is what we've been hearing about for a long time.
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All of these graphs have the same shape.
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This great divergence that happens in the 80s where the economy is growing, but the wages for the average person just kind of flatten
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while the top earners just sort of get in on all of that prosperity.
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Okay, but the American dream.
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You can climb the ladder, right?
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So if you were born in the 1980s, which I was, you're now an adult in the 2010s, and it looks like for the median earner,
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the majority of us will earn the same or less than our parents.
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Yeah, this is a problem, and probably doesn't seem fair to a lot of people.
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But wait, there's hope.
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Star Trek, Terminator, Time Cop, Time After Time, Quantum Leap, Wrinkle in Time, Somewhere in Time, Hot Tub Time Machine.
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Hot Tub Time Machine.
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Okay, I'm back.
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2025, that's when I'm making this video.
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So that's modern day for me.
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We went through a pandemic, the economy kind of got freaked out for a little bit
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and the median income earner actually started to see some gains after years and years of flatlining.
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So you do see some potential movement here, some hope.
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But let's get back to the original question that we started this video with.
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Is the average American better off now than they were back in the 50s over these decades that we talked about?
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In a lot of ways, the answer is yes.
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Especially if you are a woman or not white, then the answer is yes, at least in terms of economic opportunity.
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But what we've seen on this journey is
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that the American economy has produced an incredible amount of prosperity and growth over these last seven decades.
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And that was shared broadly by all of us for a time.
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But in the last 30, 40 years, The data is very clear that the fruits of the economic growth these days have not been broadly shared.
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One group is collecting most of the growth.
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And I didn't even talk about wealth, like the stuff you just own and how that makes money.
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We were talking just about income on this.
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Now, this isn't the first time that we've been in this situation.
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The top 10% collected almost half of all the income way back in the early 1900s before World War II.
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But we changed that.
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Look.
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And the income starts to be distributed more equally.
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But this graph tells the same story.
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Look, 1980, boom, here it goes.
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We're back.
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We're back to where we were.
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Now, does this mean that our economy is broken?
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No, actually, our economy is not broken.
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It is working exactly how it was designed to work.
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And this and this and this and this, It's the result of changes to the rules,
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policies that end up determining who gets the money and who doesn't.
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These policies are made by people that we elect.
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And if we don't think that this is fair, we have the power to pressure them to design a system that is fair.
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Now, the medium income earner doesn't have nearly as much power these days.
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The top income earners
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and the corporations have really gotten their foot in the door for the people who have the power to set the rules.
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So it's harder than ever, but this still is a democracy.
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If we don't think a system is fair, we still have the power to pressure our politicians to change it.
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And it's not actually just about income inequality.
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Yes, that has risen.
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The rich get richer much faster.
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It's also about the American dream, this idea of being able to move up.
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If you get educated, if you work hard, as inequality has gone up, the American dream has gone down.
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These graphs are built on robust data, And this is the story that it tells.
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The rungs of the economic ladder have gotten wider and wider apart.
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And that American dream, ironically a term coined by a rich investment banker born into a rich family in New York City,
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that dream is looking more and more like a myth.
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I can't repeat the past.
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No. Why, of course you can. Of course you can.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 380 sentences and 4326 words to shadow. The speech runs for 24:05. The speaker talks fast, about 180 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| graph noun | /ɡɹæf/ | A data chart (graphical representation of data) intended to illustrate the relationship between a set (or sets) of numbers (quantities, measurements or… |
| prosperity noun | /pɹɑˈspɛɹ.ɪ.ti/ | The condition of being prosperous: having good fortune and a fortune. |
| inequality noun | /ˌɪn.ɪˈkwɑ.lɪ.ti/ | A condition or state (of social, cultural, or legal matters) that is not equal; especially, such a condition that is thereby also unfair. |
| median noun | /ˈmiː.di.ən/ | A line segment joining the vertex of triangle to the midpoint of the opposing side. |
| earn verb | /ɝn/ | To gain (success, reward, recognition) through applied effort or work. |
| boom verb | /bum/ | To make a loud, hollow, resonant sound. |
| ladder noun | /ˈlæd.ɚ/ | A frame, usually portable, of wood, metal, or rope, used for ascent and descent, consisting of two side pieces to which are fastened rungs (cross strips or… |
| productive adjective | /pɹəˈdʌk.tɪv/ | Capable of producing something, especially in abundance; fertile. |
| inflation noun | /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/ | An act, instance of, or state of expansion or increase in size, especially by injection of a gas or liquid. |
| poverty noun | /ˈpɑːvɚti/ | The quality or state of being poor; lack of money |
| sponsor noun | /ˈspɒn.səː/ | A person or organization with some sort of responsibility for another person or organization, especially where the responsibility has a religious, legal, or… |
| household adjective | /ˈhaʊshoʊld/ | Belonging to the same house and family. |
| equally adverb | /ˈiːkwəli/ | In an equal manner; in equal shares or proportion; with equal and impartial justice; evenly |
| arrive verb | /əˈɹaɪv/ | To reach; to get to a certain place. |
| partly adverb | /ˈpɑɹtli/ | In part, or to some degree, but not completely. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go up verb | To move upwards. | |
| get in on verb | To gain participation in an activity, especially an attractive one. | |
| move up verb | To promote, put onto a higher level. | |
| check in on verb | To pay a visit in order to monitor the health, security or safety of (someone or something). | |
| go around verb | To move or spread from person to person. | |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). | |
| pull apart verb | To become separated as a result of pulling. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 91 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, we're, we've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, myth /mɪθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: inflation /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/, recession /ɹɪˈsɛʃn̩/, reduction /ɹɪˈdʌk.ʃən/, interpretation /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/, regulation /ˌɹɛɡjʊˈleɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: prosperity /pɹɑˈspɛɹ.ɪ.ti/, inequality /ˌɪn.ɪˈkwɑ.lɪ.ti/, affordable /əˈfɔɹ.də.bəl/, interpretation /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/, accessible /əkˈsɛs.ɪ.bəl/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like graph, prosperity, inequality.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been growing · we've been hearing |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has grown · We've added · we've created |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is entitled · has been shared · being shared |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | country, which is · people who weren · inflation, which is |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.