Posted on 04/24/2017 6:52:02 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I used to tell my daughters in the 1980’s that the average american eats better food than the rich did a century ago.
I read the article and ..
... I’ll take it.
The author misunderstands just about every topic they speak of, and only arrange it in a self-centric cloud of bullshittery.
Skype ? Who gives a flying ****.
Travel times ? Being late for appointments ? If you were living in the east, and had an appointment in the west, and the trip took 96 hours you wouldn’t leave 97 hours before you were due. Letters and messengers would be exchanged and you would get to town a day or two before the appointment.
They traveled without stress and without pressure to be anywhere. Their lives were not measured in billable hours. In fact, before the unions came along “working hours” didn’t really exist and the truly successful found ways to make a big impact in the least amount of time possible.
Trust me, dingbat, it was better.
Disease ? Of course there was less treatment back then, and people died from things easily. But if 10% of the population carried simple disease, today it’s about 80% (and feels like 100% in the winter) that carry diseases that are treatable. And still about the same percentage carrying untreatable disease.
Some people have no business proselytizing about statistics. Like I have no business correcting people’s grammar.
Thanks to the internet and modern over the counter “cures”, it is amazing how little one actually needs a general practitioner these days.
And regarding the toe, I had no idea what a godsend modern anti-bacterial creams are.
OTOH my Dad (her son) traveled the world both for business and pleasure.And I've traveled to even more places than my Dad...every continent but Antarctica (and Antarctica's on my bucket list).
The idea that the American middle class of today lives better,in many important ways,than did the Rockerfellers of 100 years ago is very compelling in my mind.
Has the author ever heard of inflation?
I doubt the guy would be broke if he was alive today. Maybe disgustingly old, but not broke.
I watched a show called “1900 house” a few years ago and one tidbit I got out of it was that back around 1900, most people in London cleaned their clothes using a big pot of boiling water, and every year about 10,000 kids were killed from various forms of contact with it.
So yeah, life may have been more risky in a lot of ways, and medicine is a lot better today, but that is only a tiny piece of the picture. Huck Fin (and kids he was actually based on) seemed to do just fine. And some didn’t.
What I kept thinking about, though, as I read the article, was about my moving from Seattle to Kentucky six years ago. I tell people how much I love it here, but if there was no such thing as air conditioning, there is no way I’d have moved here.
Hawaii is nice without air conditioning.
And can you imagine what a John Rockefeller or a JP Morgan would pay in 1900 for the equivalent of a “smart phone”?
This is all because of Capitalism. Not Socialism or a “third way.” Capitalism. Capitalism pulled more people out of poverty than any economic system in human history. Capitalism gave smart phones to the poor. Capitalism gave what would have been cutting edge medical treatments from 20 years ago to the poor today. The only “problem” with Capitalism is that what is new is expensive. If you want a cutting edge medical treatment today, you pay for it. And many people can’t afford it. But if you are willing to live with what was cutting edge 10 or 15 years ago, you can get it cheaply and easily.
I think his point was that no matter how much money you had back then, money could not save you from many things, like sweltering weather, rusty dental tools, infection, etc. But it could get you a huge house and land on which to die. :)
And there was no such thing as retirement for most. And let’s not forget the ‘poor house’.
My great Grandparents (father's side) had 8 kids.Two lived to see their 20th birthday...my Grandfather (who died at age 53,having battled TB his whole life) and another son who died at age 22.
All four of my Dad's kids are at least 60 and are in good health.
“a big pot of boiling water, and every year about 10,000 kids were killed from various forms of contact with it.”
But what does that look like today ?
Injuries are more treatable today, and quality medical care is certainly closer. But still - the facts. Kitchen stoves are STILL the same dangerous design they have been since their invention. Hot plates, electrical burns, etc.
And speaking of electrical burns, RF Burns (Which are truly a horror) and shocks affect far more people than scalds. Should these be included in this statistic ?
The idea that the American middle class of today lives better,in many important ways,than did the Rockerfellers of 100 years ago is very compelling in my mind.
As long as they didn’t know about what we have today, they were relatively satisfied and happy. I heard one guy say that if someone had given one of our forefathers a cabin in the woods with a nice outhouse they would have been in want of nothing else.
But now even the poor expect a lot more, and we actually look down on those that choose to live in such conditions.
People without any real grasp of history or the past times have no idea.
I blame this on librarians.
Librarians now weed collections assiduously.
Nothing that hasn’t been checked out in a few years stays. Except what they deem important.
So no more browsing and finding books and series from other times and other days. Now you have to know about it and search the web.
I will give you two examples of two series I happened upon.
One when I was very young. the Travis McGee detective series. A series about characters in South Florida prior to the boom. Wonderful descriptions of what life was life then and entertaining stories to boot.
One series about by Lawrence Sanders called The XX Deadly Sin. XX= different numbers 1 thru 7. Fascinating series with a protagonist who was a NYC police captain in the 70s-80s. An incredible description of what life was like then, detailed about clothing, values, and the zeitgeist of the times.
Books, even pulpy ones, give us information to fill out our understanding of our history and our values.
Were people just as happy back then? I don’t know.
Here’s something said by H. L. Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
I cannot imagine living in 1916 with any amount of money. I think of the heavy wool clothing, the lack of air conditioning, the prevalence flies due to the ubiquity of horse manure, the absence of window screens, the home refrigerator, rubber-soled shoes, peanut butter, the list goes on.
I only skimmed the article, but my thoughts are similar to yours. Rockefeller had four houses that I know of—and likely owned a few more. He had thousands of acres of real estate all over the place. His private mansion had 40 rooms, and crawled with servants. Iirc, the ‘family estate,’ was even bigger. The FL mansion was right on the beach.
Rockefeller had a vallet, a butler, and enough lesser servants to attend a small army. He was the country’s first billionaire [that was in 30s money; it would be worth exponentially more now.)
I’m not materialistic enough to want that lifestyle. Otoh, I’m sane enough to know Rockefeller was richer than I am.
This view explains why the government thinks it can tax me so much... I’m a multi-millionaire!
So many fallacies. The one that always gets me is the ‘improvement’ in the infant mortality rate snce 1950’s- all of it resulting from the killing of children by abortion.
Good article. I think about this concept all the time, and imagine how it will be many years into the future, too.
Capitalism gave people REGULAR phones too.
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