"If a 50mm lens isn't 80mm on a 1.6 cropped sensor camera then what is it??"
Simple answer it's still a 50mm lens. The image as not been enlarged in any magical way, all that happens is the field of view reflects the smaller sensor. i.e cropped. That's why it's called a cropped sensor.
If you look on Wikipedia you will see a diagram showing the difference.
If you crop a full frame image to the the cropped sensor size you will see an identical image.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_factor