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Agreed. Whenever I hear some big successful entrepreneur saying how everything is better now then it used to be (and sincerely believe this to be the case) - Th

Agreed. Whenever I hear some big successful entrepreneur saying how everything is better now then it used to be (and sincerely believe this to be the case) - They are proving themselves to be completely out of touch with reality. Sure, today's working class can get access to more goods and services than ever before but when it comes to things that actually matter like our time and our ability to feel fulfilled in our work; we have never been so poor. People today are unhappy. Our working conditions are deteriorating and we are starting to feel like slaves. Our rents or mortgages are massive and we cannot afford to lose our jobs. People are no longer allowed to be themselves because saying the wrong thing to the wrong person might have serious negative repercussions for their careers and livelihoods. People are turning to video games and drugs to give themselves the feeling of fulfilment that they desperately need. Based on US statistics I'm like in the top 5% of household income bracket but I feel like a slave at work - I seriously wonder how people in the bottom 95% must feel! The distribution of income seems so unnatural: http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/ http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/ I bet the distribution of wealth is even worse.

dpweb 11y ago
>> Based on US statistics I'm like in the top 5% of household income bracket but I feel like a slave at work This tells you everything you need to know about happiness. How hard and how many years a person fought to get to the top 5% may have very different views about how happy they are.
tn13 11y ago
Would love to see any data on that. I think people are probably taking all the good stuff for granted and developing a sense of entitlement and that is probably a problem.
- marincounty 11y ago
  I would like to see data too, but any data would be attacked, or politicized. I couldn't agree more with the OP. Jobs are hard to get. Even chit jobs are not the chit, I grew up with. They are just Terrible. Even immigrants are leaving them. Unions are declining for numerious reasons. Realeste will be unobtainable for many of us. To top it off--we are being regulated, and fined like no other generation I can remember. Banks, landlords, schools, employers are taking every cent they can from us. Police are basically revenue collectors in my neighborhood. I don't see people out socializing at night. They safely go to the coffee shop, and just go home. Let's go fishing--no, the oceans gave been decimated. Let's go for a drive--well there's global warming. Let's just have sex, well some us still do that, but it's so clinical, and in the back of my mind, "Do I really want a kid from this person who's still trying to live up to the standards his/her mother's, mother grew up in?" (In that last sentence, you can reverse mother/father, and the meaning is the same.) Do I trust my fellow man in business, and moral issues; not like I used to. It's just too cut throat, and I have seen people do horrid things to their brother in order to get ahead financially. So no, I don't see a lot of happy people. As to the "good stuff". We don't have a draft. We have access to cheap stuff made in China. Cars are supposedly a bit safer, but I'll take a older vehicle that I can work on over a proprietary computer on wheels. They figured out the genome, but I trust my doctor less than I ever did before. I ran out--honestly.
  - gherkin0 11y ago
    > Even chit jobs are not the chit, I grew up with. They are just Terrible. Even immigrants are leaving them. Chit jobs?
  - derekp7 11y ago
    Lets not forget extra expenses that you can't opt out of. You can technically opt out of cell phone and internet, but for me I wouldn't be able to be on call for work so no job. Not to mention how much modern society has shifted to assume everyone has these luxuries. Then there is various forms of insurance. It used to be, if car insurance was too high people could opt out, now your only choice is to opt out of driving (not possible except in some cities). Oh, and that 30 year mortgage you took out? Requires house insurance. Which was $300 a year (on a $180K house) just a few years ago -- now it is over $1600 on the same house (with a market value of $130K). But I can't cancel it, because mortgage requires it. Now the place you work at (which was a 5 minute drive) decided to consolidate to corporate headquarters 30 miles away. Let's not even mention what happens if you need surgery (even with good insurance).
    - ericd 11y ago
      Did you put down less than 20% as a down payment? I was under the impression that PMI was only required if one put less than that down?
      - hospes 11y ago
        I think he is referring to homeowners insurance. Unlike driving a car, you can legally own a home without homeowners insurance. However, if you finance your home with a mortgage, your lender most likely will require you to have home insurance coverage to protect your home in case of damage caused by unforeseen circumstances (fires or natural disasters). Last time I checked homeowners insurance prices were something between 0.5-1% of the home value annually. It sounds ridiculous but it does not cover flood, you need separate insurance for that. Edit: Lender will require this insurance until home is 100% paid off.
jrcii 11y ago
> People today are unhappy. I look around on the subway in the morning and almost everyone has this glum, unhappy expression on their face.
- iofj 11y ago
  Have you ever taken the bus/train in 1980 ? 1990 ? Was it different ? In my opinion : no.
jayess 11y ago
"People today are unhappy. Our working conditions are deteriorating and we are starting to feel like slaves. Our rents or mortgages are massive and we cannot afford to lose our jobs. People are no longer allowed to be themselves because saying the wrong thing to the wrong person might have serious negative repercussions for their careers and livelihoods. People are turning to video games and drugs to give themselves the feeling of fulfilment that they desperately need." When has this not been the case? "The good ole days"?
- dota_fanatic 11y ago
  As a child in the middle class, there was a widespread sense of progress and opportunity in life ahead. If you were a good person, and followed the Way: study hard, stay on the good side of the law, get a degree from a respectable college, ..., then the good life was waiting for you: land, house, career, stability, recreation, community, romance, health, etc. After all, this is America, the greatest nation ever with the greatest kind of government ever. And! through the glory that is science and invention, the intellectual giants of today are the peons of tomorrow's intellectual giants, you just wait because it's going to be awesome. Your middle class existence now won't even compare to your life in the future, because you can't even imagine what will be in play. (Remember, I was a kid.) Well, decades later, by so many measures, many things are pretty amazing, if you are wealthy or are willing to live as an ascetic and are smart enough to be in a field that at least somewhat resembles its former self's wages. Modern computing devices, building materials, medicine, tools, educational resource availability, and international travel & communication are here, and they are great! Soon, even the automation of truly tedious, mind-crushingly boring and dangerous but needed tasks that are non-trivial, like driving, will be accomplished. (all the people who have staked their lives on this work whom are no longer needed, please, just don't look at them, they'll figure it out. No problem, Okay?) Where is all the wealth? Where is the growing middle class? Where are the new cities? Where is the new infrastructure? Where is the game-changing innovation, lifting humanity and life on Earth higher and higher, spawned from the vast business landscape, fomenting living centers all across the nation, an America of much greater population size and no obesity epidemic? Where is the efficiency? You want a home? You're ready to contribute to society, you're smart, you're burning to make your mark and live? Well, you didn't do it right, so do it right this time and save and be smart and someday you'll be able to afford a home next to a job. A place to grow a family in, in safety and stability. Maybe you'll still be living in your parent's home when they die of old age.
stevetrewick 11y ago
>Our working conditions are deteriorating My paternal grandfather, in common with many of his generation was sent to work in a coal mine at the age of 14. Had he not died from a dust induced respiratory disease a few years back I can well imagine him dying from laughter on reading such a ridiculous statement.
- maerF0x0 11y ago
  Todays work places are nearly devoid of physical risks and yet rife with psychological and spiritual ones. Sure, RSI maybe the biggest physical risk. But think of the damage caused by unkind work environments, constant fear of losing one's job, the demand to work 45,55,or 65+ hours per week. Having to work those hours despite the research indicating its idiotic. etc. etc. People are unhappy because their workplace (and maybe society in generaly) is full of happiness landmines that didnt exist before.
  - stevetrewick 11y ago
    You're right of course, silly me. Stupid things like being surrounded by things exploding and the constant possibility of being trapped underground in complete darkness with no possibility of rescue just pale in comparison to your 40 hours in an office with distasteful wallpaper. The horror. Happiness land mine wise, I am deeply unconvinced. Nothing new under the sun in that department.
    - petegrif 11y ago
      Being facetious doesn't advance your argument. You are of course right that appalling working conditions are not new. The labor movement was a response that such conditions. But the key point being made is not that conditions today are in all regards worse than all conditions in the past but rather that despite all our much vaunted progress and productivity gains many people don't experience the benefits and are in fact working in toxic work conditions that are profoundly stressful. And that point is, I believe, not especially difficult to substantiate.
6502nerdface 11y ago
> The distribution of income seems so unnatural Actually, what's striking to my mind is how mysteriously consistent the income distribution is with the same family of power law distributions (Zipf-Mandelbrot, Pareto, etc.) that describes such other, disparate, natural phenomena as the frequencies of words in natural languages [1], the sizes of cities [2], the sizes of asteroids [3], the abundances of species [4], the sizes of grains of sand on a beach [5], the magnitudes of earthquakes and avalanches [6], and many other things in the world. Anyway, my point is simply that the shape of the income distribution should not be so surprising, or strike us as "unnatural", given how often we observe the same shape of distribution for all kinds of things, both in economics and in the natural world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%E2%80%93Mandelbrot_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%E2%80%93Mandelbrot_law [2] http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~xgabaix/papers/zipf.pdf http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~xgabaix/papers/zipf.pdf [3] http://250words.com/2014/07/the-mathematics-of-asteroids-earthquakes-and-literature-3-ways-power-laws-impact-life/ http://250words.com/2014/07/the-mathematics-of-asteroids-ear... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_abundance_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_abundance_distributio... [5] http://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0412004.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0412004.pdf [6] https://books.google.com/books?id=x8nSBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq=%28%22zipf%22+OR+%22zipf-mandelbrot%22%29+grains+sand&source=bl&ots=wV4dBlO4ny&sig=91Mpei81vhas9ktZL5FxZzKrb9A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiqrbmCs-TKAhXD6x4KHf8SCuAQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=%28%22zipf%22%20OR%20%22zipf-mandelbrot%22%29%20grains%20sand&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=x8nSBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA57&lpg=P...
- curuinor 11y ago
  A challenge: find a symbolic system which does not obey a Zipfian distribution or has a heavy tail. You will fail. Programming included.
  - 6502nerdface 11y ago
    There are plenty. For example, phoneme distributions and syllable distributions (as opposed to word distributions) are known not to follow Zipf's law. Are the sizes of cities and asteroids "symbolic systems"? Anyway, my point (consistent with yours in fact) is simply that the shape of the income distribution should not be so surprising, or strike us as "unnatural", given how often we observe the same shape of distribution for all kinds of things, both in economics and in the natural world.
jordanb 11y ago
> we have never been so poor. I agree with the thrust of your post: the working class is rich in palliatives and bromides and poor in things that actually make life better, but I do take a small issue with your superlative. I'm certainly glad I'm not a 19th century meatpacker.
- ap22213 11y ago
  Or a 21st century poultry processing plant worker. I think his point is that those jobs still exist, the working poor are still suffering as much as they always have been, and that there's been a recent reversal in progress. My ancestors worked in shitty conditions that destroyed their bodies to see that their descendents could have a better life. And, here we are, and their descendants are living relatively as terribly as they did.
mac01021 11y ago
You may feel like a slave, but you can retire after 5 years of working. Even the other 95% of us have almost always have been poorer than we now are. Here in the suburban northeast a person can work about 40 hours per week at any restaurant or department store or do almost any other kind of normal menial labor to bring home something like $20k per year. On that income, they can live a much better life than almost anyone ever did 50 years ago. Sure, they'll spend half of their income on housing, never be able to afford much time off from work, and may never travel anywhere by air, but people have always lived like that. Meanwhile they benefit from ever improving medical technology and the boundless educational opportunities afforded by the worldwide web. People may be incapable, for psychological or emotional reasons, of taking proper advantage of the exceptionally good circumstances they find themselves in. That doesn't make them poor in my book.
- Margh 11y ago
  I mostly agree with your comment except for > benefit from ever improving medical technology As I understand it (not a US citizen) most of this technology comes with a mortgage sized debt if you aren't insured? If so I think this reinforces the GP's case.
  - mac01021 11y ago
    I'm not an expert on this, but google searches yield the following prices for various medical undertakings in US Dollars: ---- MRI: ~$2.5k Laparoscopic surgery: $2k -$5k One day of hospital inpatient care: ~$2.2k Heart bypass: ~$100k 3 months chemotherapy: $20k-$30k ---- I'll let you judge for yourself whether these are outrageous and crippling or not. I'll only add that, from my limited experience here in CT, the hospital will waive most of your bill if you show financial need. I'm not sure if the state picks up the tab or if the hospital just eats the cost when this happens, but I've seen the waiving of medical fees firsthand. I have no experience with the big expensive ones like chemo or heart bypass.
    - devishard 11y ago
      Yes, the waiving of medical fees sometimes happens, but "financial need" is a pretty high bar to meet. I was saddled with around $10K of medical debt after a bike accident a few years back when I was unemployed because a) I had made $70K the previous year and b) they don't consider student loan payments when calculating income. And that was with insurance (a high deductible combined with some things not being covered because they were out-of-network; the accident occurred on a different coast from any in-network-provider).
musgrove 11y ago
How old are you? Your memory of "how things used to be" may not go back far enough. I have photos of my grandmother in school in 1930's Georgia with people that didn't have enough money for shoes. They made their own clothes. No one was getting an advanced education but those that could pay cash and afford to not be working to help support the family in the meantime. Most people rarely travelled more than several hundred miles from their home in their lifetime. Women and blacks were treated like second-class citizens, if that. Life expectancy was what we call middle aged now. It wasn't uncommon to sleep several people in a bed, head to toe, in houses that were, by today's standards, shacks. And on and on. So, what are you comparing, exactly, and how are "big successful entrepreneurs" devoid of reality? Because they're not considering your personal level of happiness?
- spronkey 11y ago
  So you're saying that in 80 years, we shouldn't have advanced massively as a society? Well the news is in, and we have. But only for those at the top. People at the bottom still work dangerous jobs. Things like mining might be safer than they were before, but they are still very dangerous professions; and these days the job security is worse than it was in the 1930s in such industries. There's also the constant assimilation of jobs by automation. Many people in first world countries still can't afford shoes, while the richest 1% today are in real terms far wealthier than any 1% has been in the last 100 years. Devoid? Perhaps not. Completely out of touch with reality? Absolutely.
astrostl 11y ago
Would you prefer to have been randomly born at any other time than today? That's my heuristic.

dpweb 11y ago

>> Based on US statistics I'm like in the top 5% of household income bracket but I feel like a slave at work This tells you everything you need to know about happiness. How hard and how many years a person fought to get to the top 5% may have very different views about how happy they are.

tn13 11y ago

Would love to see any data on that. I think people are probably taking all the good stuff for granted and developing a sense of entitlement and that is probably a problem.

marincounty 11y ago
I would like to see data too, but any data would be attacked, or politicized. I couldn't agree more with the OP. Jobs are hard to get. Even chit jobs are not the chit, I grew up with. They are just Terrible. Even immigrants are leaving them. Unions are declining for numerious reasons. Realeste will be unobtainable for many of us. To top it off--we are being regulated, and fined like no other generation I can remember. Banks, landlords, schools, employers are taking every cent they can from us. Police are basically revenue collectors in my neighborhood. I don't see people out socializing at night. They safely go to the coffee shop, and just go home. Let's go fishing--no, the oceans gave been decimated. Let's go for a drive--well there's global warming. Let's just have sex, well some us still do that, but it's so clinical, and in the back of my mind, "Do I really want a kid from this person who's still trying to live up to the standards his/her mother's, mother grew up in?" (In that last sentence, you can reverse mother/father, and the meaning is the same.) Do I trust my fellow man in business, and moral issues; not like I used to. It's just too cut throat, and I have seen people do horrid things to their brother in order to get ahead financially. So no, I don't see a lot of happy people. As to the "good stuff". We don't have a draft. We have access to cheap stuff made in China. Cars are supposedly a bit safer, but I'll take a older vehicle that I can work on over a proprietary computer on wheels. They figured out the genome, but I trust my doctor less than I ever did before. I ran out--honestly.
- gherkin0 11y ago
  > Even chit jobs are not the chit, I grew up with. They are just Terrible. Even immigrants are leaving them. Chit jobs?
- derekp7 11y ago
  Lets not forget extra expenses that you can't opt out of. You can technically opt out of cell phone and internet, but for me I wouldn't be able to be on call for work so no job. Not to mention how much modern society has shifted to assume everyone has these luxuries. Then there is various forms of insurance. It used to be, if car insurance was too high people could opt out, now your only choice is to opt out of driving (not possible except in some cities). Oh, and that 30 year mortgage you took out? Requires house insurance. Which was $300 a year (on a $180K house) just a few years ago -- now it is over $1600 on the same house (with a market value of $130K). But I can't cancel it, because mortgage requires it. Now the place you work at (which was a 5 minute drive) decided to consolidate to corporate headquarters 30 miles away. Let's not even mention what happens if you need surgery (even with good insurance).
  - ericd 11y ago
    Did you put down less than 20% as a down payment? I was under the impression that PMI was only required if one put less than that down?
    - hospes 11y ago
      I think he is referring to homeowners insurance. Unlike driving a car, you can legally own a home without homeowners insurance. However, if you finance your home with a mortgage, your lender most likely will require you to have home insurance coverage to protect your home in case of damage caused by unforeseen circumstances (fires or natural disasters). Last time I checked homeowners insurance prices were something between 0.5-1% of the home value annually. It sounds ridiculous but it does not cover flood, you need separate insurance for that. Edit: Lender will require this insurance until home is 100% paid off.

jrcii 11y ago

> People today are unhappy. I look around on the subway in the morning and almost everyone has this glum, unhappy expression on their face.

iofj 11y ago
Have you ever taken the bus/train in 1980 ? 1990 ? Was it different ? In my opinion : no.

jayess 11y ago

"People today are unhappy. Our working conditions are deteriorating and we are starting to feel like slaves. Our rents or mortgages are massive and we cannot afford to lose our jobs. People are no longer allowed to be themselves because saying the wrong thing to the wrong person might have serious negative repercussions for their careers and livelihoods. People are turning to video games and drugs to give themselves the feeling of fulfilment that they desperately need." When has this not been the case? "The good ole days"?

dota_fanatic 11y ago
As a child in the middle class, there was a widespread sense of progress and opportunity in life ahead. If you were a good person, and followed the Way: study hard, stay on the good side of the law, get a degree from a respectable college, ..., then the good life was waiting for you: land, house, career, stability, recreation, community, romance, health, etc. After all, this is America, the greatest nation ever with the greatest kind of government ever. And! through the glory that is science and invention, the intellectual giants of today are the peons of tomorrow's intellectual giants, you just wait because it's going to be awesome. Your middle class existence now won't even compare to your life in the future, because you can't even imagine what will be in play. (Remember, I was a kid.) Well, decades later, by so many measures, many things are pretty amazing, if you are wealthy or are willing to live as an ascetic and are smart enough to be in a field that at least somewhat resembles its former self's wages. Modern computing devices, building materials, medicine, tools, educational resource availability, and international travel & communication are here, and they are great! Soon, even the automation of truly tedious, mind-crushingly boring and dangerous but needed tasks that are non-trivial, like driving, will be accomplished. (all the people who have staked their lives on this work whom are no longer needed, please, just don't look at them, they'll figure it out. No problem, Okay?) Where is all the wealth? Where is the growing middle class? Where are the new cities? Where is the new infrastructure? Where is the game-changing innovation, lifting humanity and life on Earth higher and higher, spawned from the vast business landscape, fomenting living centers all across the nation, an America of much greater population size and no obesity epidemic? Where is the efficiency? You want a home? You're ready to contribute to society, you're smart, you're burning to make your mark and live? Well, you didn't do it right, so do it right this time and save and be smart and someday you'll be able to afford a home next to a job. A place to grow a family in, in safety and stability. Maybe you'll still be living in your parent's home when they die of old age.

stevetrewick 11y ago

>Our working conditions are deteriorating My paternal grandfather, in common with many of his generation was sent to work in a coal mine at the age of 14. Had he not died from a dust induced respiratory disease a few years back I can well imagine him dying from laughter on reading such a ridiculous statement.

maerF0x0 11y ago
Todays work places are nearly devoid of physical risks and yet rife with psychological and spiritual ones. Sure, RSI maybe the biggest physical risk. But think of the damage caused by unkind work environments, constant fear of losing one's job, the demand to work 45,55,or 65+ hours per week. Having to work those hours despite the research indicating its idiotic. etc. etc. People are unhappy because their workplace (and maybe society in generaly) is full of happiness landmines that didnt exist before.
- stevetrewick 11y ago
  You're right of course, silly me. Stupid things like being surrounded by things exploding and the constant possibility of being trapped underground in complete darkness with no possibility of rescue just pale in comparison to your 40 hours in an office with distasteful wallpaper. The horror. Happiness land mine wise, I am deeply unconvinced. Nothing new under the sun in that department.
  - petegrif 11y ago
    Being facetious doesn't advance your argument. You are of course right that appalling working conditions are not new. The labor movement was a response that such conditions. But the key point being made is not that conditions today are in all regards worse than all conditions in the past but rather that despite all our much vaunted progress and productivity gains many people don't experience the benefits and are in fact working in toxic work conditions that are profoundly stressful. And that point is, I believe, not especially difficult to substantiate.

6502nerdface 11y ago

> The distribution of income seems so unnatural Actually, what's striking to my mind is how mysteriously consistent the income distribution is with the same family of power law distributions (Zipf-Mandelbrot, Pareto, etc.) that describes such other, disparate, natural phenomena as the frequencies of words in natural languages [1], the sizes of cities [2], the sizes of asteroids [3], the abundances of species [4], the sizes of grains of sand on a beach [5], the magnitudes of earthquakes and avalanches [6], and many other things in the world. Anyway, my point is simply that the shape of the income distribution should not be so surprising, or strike us as "unnatural", given how often we observe the same shape of distribution for all kinds of things, both in economics and in the natural world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%E2%80%93Mandelbrot_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%E2%80%93Mandelbrot_law [2] http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~xgabaix/papers/zipf.pdf http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~xgabaix/papers/zipf.pdf [3] http://250words.com/2014/07/the-mathematics-of-asteroids-earthquakes-and-literature-3-ways-power-laws-impact-life/ http://250words.com/2014/07/the-mathematics-of-asteroids-ear... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_abundance_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_abundance_distributio... [5] http://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0412004.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0412004.pdf [6] https://books.google.com/books?id=x8nSBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq=%28%22zipf%22+OR+%22zipf-mandelbrot%22%29+grains+sand&source=bl&ots=wV4dBlO4ny&sig=91Mpei81vhas9ktZL5FxZzKrb9A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiqrbmCs-TKAhXD6x4KHf8SCuAQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=%28%22zipf%22%20OR%20%22zipf-mandelbrot%22%29%20grains%20sand&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=x8nSBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA57&lpg=P...

curuinor 11y ago
A challenge: find a symbolic system which does not obey a Zipfian distribution or has a heavy tail. You will fail. Programming included.
- 6502nerdface 11y ago
  There are plenty. For example, phoneme distributions and syllable distributions (as opposed to word distributions) are known not to follow Zipf's law. Are the sizes of cities and asteroids "symbolic systems"? Anyway, my point (consistent with yours in fact) is simply that the shape of the income distribution should not be so surprising, or strike us as "unnatural", given how often we observe the same shape of distribution for all kinds of things, both in economics and in the natural world.

jordanb 11y ago

> we have never been so poor. I agree with the thrust of your post: the working class is rich in palliatives and bromides and poor in things that actually make life better, but I do take a small issue with your superlative. I'm certainly glad I'm not a 19th century meatpacker.

ap22213 11y ago
Or a 21st century poultry processing plant worker. I think his point is that those jobs still exist, the working poor are still suffering as much as they always have been, and that there's been a recent reversal in progress. My ancestors worked in shitty conditions that destroyed their bodies to see that their descendents could have a better life. And, here we are, and their descendants are living relatively as terribly as they did.

mac01021 11y ago

You may feel like a slave, but you can retire after 5 years of working. Even the other 95% of us have almost always have been poorer than we now are. Here in the suburban northeast a person can work about 40 hours per week at any restaurant or department store or do almost any other kind of normal menial labor to bring home something like $20k per year. On that income, they can live a much better life than almost anyone ever did 50 years ago. Sure, they'll spend half of their income on housing, never be able to afford much time off from work, and may never travel anywhere by air, but people have always lived like that. Meanwhile they benefit from ever improving medical technology and the boundless educational opportunities afforded by the worldwide web. People may be incapable, for psychological or emotional reasons, of taking proper advantage of the exceptionally good circumstances they find themselves in. That doesn't make them poor in my book.

Margh 11y ago
I mostly agree with your comment except for > benefit from ever improving medical technology As I understand it (not a US citizen) most of this technology comes with a mortgage sized debt if you aren't insured? If so I think this reinforces the GP's case.
- mac01021 11y ago
  I'm not an expert on this, but google searches yield the following prices for various medical undertakings in US Dollars: ---- MRI: ~$2.5k Laparoscopic surgery: $2k -$5k One day of hospital inpatient care: ~$2.2k Heart bypass: ~$100k 3 months chemotherapy: $20k-$30k ---- I'll let you judge for yourself whether these are outrageous and crippling or not. I'll only add that, from my limited experience here in CT, the hospital will waive most of your bill if you show financial need. I'm not sure if the state picks up the tab or if the hospital just eats the cost when this happens, but I've seen the waiving of medical fees firsthand. I have no experience with the big expensive ones like chemo or heart bypass.
  - devishard 11y ago
    Yes, the waiving of medical fees sometimes happens, but "financial need" is a pretty high bar to meet. I was saddled with around $10K of medical debt after a bike accident a few years back when I was unemployed because a) I had made $70K the previous year and b) they don't consider student loan payments when calculating income. And that was with insurance (a high deductible combined with some things not being covered because they were out-of-network; the accident occurred on a different coast from any in-network-provider).

musgrove 11y ago

How old are you? Your memory of "how things used to be" may not go back far enough. I have photos of my grandmother in school in 1930's Georgia with people that didn't have enough money for shoes. They made their own clothes. No one was getting an advanced education but those that could pay cash and afford to not be working to help support the family in the meantime. Most people rarely travelled more than several hundred miles from their home in their lifetime. Women and blacks were treated like second-class citizens, if that. Life expectancy was what we call middle aged now. It wasn't uncommon to sleep several people in a bed, head to toe, in houses that were, by today's standards, shacks. And on and on. So, what are you comparing, exactly, and how are "big successful entrepreneurs" devoid of reality? Because they're not considering your personal level of happiness?

spronkey 11y ago
So you're saying that in 80 years, we shouldn't have advanced massively as a society? Well the news is in, and we have. But only for those at the top. People at the bottom still work dangerous jobs. Things like mining might be safer than they were before, but they are still very dangerous professions; and these days the job security is worse than it was in the 1930s in such industries. There's also the constant assimilation of jobs by automation. Many people in first world countries still can't afford shoes, while the richest 1% today are in real terms far wealthier than any 1% has been in the last 100 years. Devoid? Perhaps not. Completely out of touch with reality? Absolutely.

astrostl 11y ago

Would you prefer to have been randomly born at any other time than today? That's my heuristic.