[Chauncey Gardiner]

And there was no such thing as retirement for most. And let’s not forget the ‘poor house’.

[cymbeline]

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.