“The fact that there were no such restaurants would not bother you because in 1916 you had never heard of those dishes, so you would not know what you were missing.”
What, people can’t read? If someone was rich in 1916/17, they might very well have heard of such dishes because of their travels, talking to other people who had traveled, etc. Other people might have known about the dishes simply by reading about them in publications.
Geo. Will tries again to write something worth reading, and fails.
Money is power. A billion dollars is an awful lot of it, in 1916 or now.
In 1916 the top tax rate was 15%, most people only paid 2%, and you could order guns in a catalog and have them sent through the mail.
In 1916, you weren’t forced to pay for welfare for 50% of the country.
I’m sure there are plenty more benefits....
If you’re an old man and your hobbies are eating out and watching entertainment George Will is right. If you’re a normal person who enjoys life, he’s wrong.
I saw something like this piece several months ago. I think the author is off-base. Being able to get many modern things (sometimes only in very small quantities) is not a sign of wealth on our part as individuals. It is a sign of the collective wealth of our society reflected in diversified specialization. A “billionaire” a century ago might not have had as easy access to Chinese food as we do but if he wanted he could have imported a Chinese cook and an entire staff to serve it to him 365 days a year. I can’t do that. Yes, his railway car had no air conditioning and my car does. The difference is he could own the entire railway and literally shift rail traffic to make his trip easier. I can’t get other cars off the road and I sure as hell don’t own the road. That’s the difference between being a REAL owner of wealth and being a mere taster of wealth.
George Will is dead to me. He has nothing to say that I would waste 2 minutes reading.
George Will wasting ink and server space again.....................
Two words:
Evelyn.
Nesbit.
His point is invalid.
Otherwise titled: “Why You Should Be Happy In Your Peasantry”
Different times, different standards. No Netflix, no tv, no radio.
But there were lots of theaters, circuses, church activities and socials, close knit families, long novels, concerts in parks, etc. There was a social life when you weren’t working. That was the generation of my parents/aunts/uncles. I looked up my relatives in the 1920 census. Most were (as Will states) boarders, renting rooms from other folks. My aunt who graduated from college in 1910 helped her siblings obtain rooms and later helped them with mortgages to buy homes since it was virtually impossible to get one from a bank during the Depression.
All of them had complaints about the hard work on farms growing up and about making a living during the Depression, but they survived.
Thurston Howell was a billionaire before the crash. Then he was just a millionaire. (According to Lovey.)
Personally, I would have been dead at 27 (appendix) or crippled at 40 (heel spurs), or dead again at 68 (parathyroid). If through some miracle I survived those things, I would have rotten teeth and be subsisting on gruel.
Even the smallest medical issue back then could lead to death. Calvin Coolidge’s son died in 1924 at the age of 16, while his farther was President. The cause: a blister he got on his foot playing tennis became infected. Think about that...the best medical care available and he dies from a blister on his foot.
All the money in the world could not persuade me to want to go back in time.
Imagine the quality of life another 100 years from now, if you’re an optimist.
I would be the richest man if I had electricity and A/C on a hot muggy day!
Is fast food and TV, movies, and professional sports just replacements for bread and the circus?
We may live longer now, but are we healthier?(Both physically and morally)
Stupid article. We had international travel back then, and long before.
“Intellectually, your 1916 range of cultural choices would be paltry compared with today’s”
Kim Kardashian’s rear end could not be reached for comment.