You Are Richer than John D. Rockefeller Was

Foundation For Economic Education ^ | 04/23/2017 | Donald J. Boudreaux

[SeekAndFind]

This Atlantic story reveals how Americans lived 100 years ago. (HT Warren Smith) By the standards of a middle-class American today, that lifestyle was poor, inconvenient, dreary, and dangerous. (Only a few years later – in 1924 – the 16-year-old son of a sitting U.S. president would die of an infected blister that the boy got on his toe while playing tennis on the White House grounds.)

You could, however, afford the state-of-the-art phonograph of the era. Obviously, you could not download music.

So here’s a question that I’ve asked in one form or another on earlier occasions, but that is so probing that I ask it again: What is the minimum amount of money that you would demand in exchange for your going back to live even as John D. Rockefeller lived in 1916? 21.7 million 2016 dollars (which are about one million 1916 dollars)? Would that do it? What about a billion 2016 – or 1916 – dollars? Would this sizable sum of dollars be enough to enable you to purchase a quantity of high-quality 1916 goods and services that would at least make you indifferent between living in 1916 America and living (on your current income) in 2016 America?

Think about it. Hard. Carefully.

If you were a 1916 American billionaire you could, of course, afford prime real-estate. You could afford a home on 5th Avenue or one overlooking the Pacific Ocean or one on your own tropical island somewhere (or all three). But when you traveled from your Manhattan digs to your west-coast palace, it would take a few days, and if you made that trip during the summer months, you’d likely not have air-conditioning in your private railroad car.

And while you might have air-conditioning in your New York home, many of the friends’ homes that you visit – as well as restaurants and business offices that you frequent – were not air-conditioned. In the winter, many were also poorly heated by today’s standards.

To travel to Europe took you several days. To get to foreign lands beyond Europe took you even longer.

Might you want to deliver a package or letter overnight from New York City to someone in Los Angeles? Sorry. Impossible.

You could neither listen to radio (the first commercial radio broadcast occurred in 1920) nor watch television. You could, however, afford the state-of-the-art phonograph of the era. (It wasn’t stereo, though. And – I feel certain – even today’s vinylphiles would prefer listening to music played off of a modern compact disc to listening to music played off of a 1916 phonograph record.) Obviously, you could not download music.

There really wasn’t very much in the way of movies for you to watch, even though you could afford to build your own home movie theater.

Your telephone was attached to a wall. You could not use it to Skype.

Your luxury limo was far more likely to break down while you were being chauffeured about town than is your car today to break down while you are driving yourself to your yoga class. While broken down and waiting patiently in the back seat for your chauffeur to finish fixing your limo, you could not telephone anyone to inform that person that you’ll be late for your meeting.

There was no American-inspired, British-generated rock’n’roll played on electric guitars. And no reggae.

Even when in residence at your Manhattan home, if you had a hankering for some Thai red curry or Vindaloo chicken or Vietnamese Pho or a falafel, you were out of luck: even in the unlikely event that you even knew of such exquisite dishes, your chef likely had no idea how to prepare them, and New York’s restaurant scene had yet to feature such exotic fare. And while you might have had the money in 1916 to afford to supply yourself with a daily bowlful of blueberries at your New York home in January, even for mighty-rich you the expense was likely not worthwhile.

Your wi-fi connection was painfully slow – oh, wait, right: it didn’t exist. No matter, because you had neither a computer nor access to the Internet. (My gosh, there weren’t even any blogs for you to read!)

Even the best medical care back then was horrid by today’s standards: it was much more painful and much less effective. (Remember young Coolidge.) Antibiotics weren’t available. Erectile dysfunction? Bipolar disorder? Live with ailments such as these. That was your only option.

You (if you are a woman) or (if you are a man) your wife and, in either case, your daughter and your sister had a much higher chance of dying as a result of giving birth than is the case today. The child herself or himself was much less likely to survive infancy than is the typical American newborn today.

Dental care wasn’t any better. Your money didn’t buy you a toothbrush with vibrating bristles. (You could, however, afford the very finest dentures.)

Despite your vanity, you couldn’t have purchased contact lenses, reliable hair restoration, or modern, safe breast augmentation. And forget about liposuction to vacuum away the results of your having dined on far too many cream-sauce-covered terrapin.

Birth control was primitive: it was less reliable and far more disruptive of pleasure than are any of the many inexpensive and widely available birth-control methods of today.

Of course, you adore precious-weacious little Rover, but your riches probably could not buy for Rover veterinary care of the sort that is routine in every burgh throughout the land today.

You were completely cut off from the cultural richness that globalization has spawned over the past century. There was no American-inspired, British-generated rock’n’roll played on electric guitars. And no reggae. Jazz was still a toddler, with only a few recordings of it.

You could afford to buy the finest Swiss watches and clocks, but even they couldn’t keep time as accurately as does a cheap Timex today (not to mention the accuracy of the time kept by your smartphone).

Honestly, I wouldn’t be remotely tempted to quit the 2016 me so that I could be a one-billion-dollar-richer me in 1916. This fact means that, by 1916 standards, I am today more than a billionaire. It means, at least given my preferences, I am today materially richer than was John D. Rockefeller in 1916. And if, as I think is true, my preferences here are not unusual, then nearly every middle-class American today is richer than was America’s richest man a mere 100 years ago.

Republished from Cafe Hayek.

[Mr. Douglas]

And to add to that, capitalism makes it expensive only at the outset, as you pointed out in your “10 to 15 years ago” comment. And sometimes it makes it, in the end, practically free. Thanks to the internet, I have very little need to see a General practitioner. I can heal myself (and have) with some savvy internet surfing. I actually correctly diagnosed a problem I had, using the internet, that a GP had misdiagnosed. It cost $6 to fix my problem...

[Celerity]

Via anecdote, the scenario always appears to hit home. To be more visceral.

But the statistics are a different story. Everyone suffered great losses in family. From sickness and from injury (An amish guy out near me recently lost a baby because he backed over him with the tractor, for instance. That sounds horrible, but over the past 6 months 3 kids also died in drunk driving accidents while strapped into their safety seats.)

[Celerity]

Stuff doesn’t make wealth. My wife and I now have 4 cars. This was a sign of wealth not too long ago. (Especially since among them is a BMW and a Mercedes). Our cars are basically worthless.

Today’s version of wealth is cloudy and confusing. Wealth comes in few forms:

Real Property. Land, homes. And in differing degrees of arrability and appeal.
Power. Being so busy running major projects that you need staff to run your affairs at your whim.

The rest is chaff. Our lives are full of chaff.

[null and void]

Are you forgetting that in 1916, there was no FR?

[Carthego delenda est]

[TiGuy22]

I’ve heard lefties say all this we have today occurred after the income tax and redistribution/welfare/government programs started...

[txhurl]

They added on a garage. I’d like to see the interior.

[Frederick303]

There were a few intangible’s that they missed though:

1) A husband was assumed by law to be head of household, that was the natural Christian order and the law reflected that. Today ...not so much and the social situation reflects that, no to anyone’s advantage.

2) The idea that a mans house was his castle was still observed in 1916 law, there were actual areas the state was kept out of life. Police did not have SWAT teams, nor did overwhelming security state that exists today stick its nose in every bodies business. The idea that someone would be stripped searched to travel across the country in a public conveyance did not exist.

3) Because of the 90 % European stock and a resultant monoculture , in 1916 a women was much safer from a whole range of crimes than today. Many urban areas are no-go regions for folks who do not represent that particular sub culture.

4) The Justice system had not been corrupted as it is today, in those days it reflected the agreed upon values of the predominate WASP culture. Murder somebody and get caught, 30~40 days later you were likely dead. Do an extremely heinous crime and the law would pretty much allow the crowd to deal with it in the same time interval.

5) the Culture had not been debased in 1916. The idea in 1916 was entirely towards refining culture, actors were somewhat shady folks, certainly not looked to for setting standards like today. If there was light music available in public it was likely moonlight sonata or some popular ditty that was inoffensive. Today the popular music is pretty dreadful, such songs and “bitch better have my money” being the norm. How has it come to pass that degraded negro music has displaced the European classical music and its derivatives?

6) Christianity was not under attack, in an attempt to push all sort of deviant lifestyles.

Of course the above can be looked at as double edged swords, some folks would take exception to the above list. Nonetheless on reflection I think we would be better of today were the culture more in line with 1916 than with 2017, at least in most areas. So while there is no doubt we are materially much better of in 2016 than in 1916, on a cultural, legal, religious and a significant number of non-material aspects, US society is worse than in 1916.

[radiohead]

Read ‘Spoon River Anthology,’ short poems about people in the local cemetery. Many of them died young from infections that are easily treated today or from tetanus, which is generally avoided.

It’s sad to think of the young lives cut short by the little accidents of life that we don’t give two thoughts about today.

[Mr. Douglas]

Your post addresses many of the reasons I moved from Seattle to rural KY. And the intangibles are really everything. As I’ve said for decades, if I were a Gazelle, I’d choose the freedom and danger of the Serengeti to three squares a day in a zoo.

Our modern world is, in many ways, the latter.

[Mr. Douglas]

My wife and I like to visit the small and old cemeteries around here. There are many that have, sometimes, ten or more graves from the SAME FAMILY, all of infants that died within the first year, or even week, of infancy.

But in those days there was also a stronger Christian conviction that this life is only temporary and quality was more important than length. People accepted that life was risk, but temporary anyway.

It is that mindset that would cause people to homestead the west, living hours (or even days) from the nearest other non-indians. And evry now and then, the indians, like a drug cartel, would come through and wipe them out.

Modern Americans can’t even imagine the mind set of such people who would take such risk. Most can’t, anyway. It’s why I get annoyed by people that judge our forefathers based on modern sensibilities.

[txhurl]

6) Christianity was not under attack, in an attempt to push all sort of deviant lifestyles.

---

In fact it was Rockefeller’s peers and their children who were the corrupting influence on the upper middle/middle class and had to be censored.

[PGR88]

I would go back - but would take a large box of antibiotics with me.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Well said. It all depends on what your criteria are, as to whether life was better 100 years ago.

I’ve had similar discussions with people about how life was in the ‘50s. And in those discussions, invariably someone brings up how Jim Crow was still in existence then, and how women weren’t found in professional careers in big numbers as they are now. They would talk of social pressure especially for women, to get married and have children. They talk of how homosexuality was in the closet. They mentioned how people lived in fear due to the cold war and threat of nuclear war.

In any discussions such as this article, it all depends on your criteria, as to what your comparison to today and the old days will be.

On the one hand, we have much better healthcare available, much greater comfort in everyday life due to air conditioning, much less air pollution in our cities. On the other hand, we have a debased culture in which big numbers of children are not being raised with important values, and are not being raised in an intact family unit.

So who can say are we better off now? It depends on what criteria you are measuring.

[hanamizu]

My wife and I like to visit the small and old cemeteries around here.

---

...and sometimes you’ll see whole families wiped out in 1919—the Spanish Flu.

[Junior_G]

The author conveniently ignores the fact that as a billionaire you could bed pretty much any woman you desired. For that reason alone, this analysis is worthless.

[txhurl]

I just found the 24/7 Downton Abbey Roku channel; I’m catching up and it’s quite realistic and representative of the era.

Didn’t follow it as I assumed it’d be unending leftist propaganda; it’s not.

[NCLaw441]

Looking at things from today, the choice seems obvious, but keep in mind, if you lived back then you would not KNOW what was to be invented In the future. Surely if I lived in 1916 knowing what exists today I’d never consider choosing to live without what we take for granted today. But those folks didn’t know about any of this.

[dangerdoc]

I went the other direction, left the sticks for piped natural gas, and good running water.

I now live on the edge of a city with open lands minutes away, kind of split the difference.

[subterfuge]

Loved the Travis McGee series. Every title had a color in it. Oh, and Travis McGee is a FReeper.