That bad huh. How about the common wealth which didn’t exist then for everybody, if not only for the rich? Good sanitation? Food which you can count on not to send you to the grave except by gross overindulgence? Telephones? Internet? Television?
The assumption here is you’d go back then ripped from here and missing all of ones endless frivolities. The reality of then was, particularly if you’d just emigrated, that you’d arrived in a near utopia of wonders.
The idea of dying younger in the sweat and grime of 1916 America, or succeeding in same, is a tad more of a healthy life trip than sitting on a couch noshing sugared human feed, watching the 2 dimensional shrine waiting for the infarction to come...
Sanitation, food safety, medicinal advances, all these thing are good examples but the examples the author uses are poor choices: radio, television, skype, cell phones, wifi, computers, contact lenses. These are certainly wonderful advances but hardly on the same level. Then there are the examples which are actually sign of our decadence: hair restoration, breast augmentation, liposuction, rock and roll, electric guitars, reggae, exotic food, recorded music.
Gee, let’s see ... nah, I wouldn’t want to be wealthy if breast augmentation hadn’t been invented. Right.