4 ms·

Was life in the early 20th century better with quack medicine, volatile food prices, and no old-age health care or social security? Yes, it is correct to say t

Was life in the early 20th century better with quack medicine, volatile food prices, and no old-age health care or social security? Yes, it is correct to say that a great amount of the US population struggled until the mid 20th century. Most of that wealth was concentrated in the hands of a very small and privileged few. For an argument about relativity, a reliance on GDP is an amusing false equivalence.

randyrand 10y ago
If you compare the US today to the US 300 years from now, even I will likely be considered struggling. Yet, I don't feel like I'm struggling. Is it really fair to say I'm struggling just because I don't meet the standard of living of 300+ years from now? That seems like the same idea as saying that much or the majority of the US was struggling in 1900.
- randyrand 10y ago
  In trying to make sense of it I would say this: There are 2 requirements to not be struggling. 1. basic needs. Food, shelter, water. 2. not being substantially poorer than the people you see and interact with. Given that most of the world is past number 1, all the rest they'd need to do is have financial equality (hard, IMO), or ensure that only few have wealth and are segregated (easier, IMO). The last thing you'd want is poor, middle, and rich in 1/3, 1/3 , 1/3 quantities all interacting with each other. Just yesterday there was a study that made rounds how having the Economy Class airplane passengers walk past the First Class causes turmoil. That's a perfect example of what not to do.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    300 years from now you could fall from the roof of your home, break your spine in three places, be instantly teleported to a hospital and be right as rain and home before supper. Whereas my grandmother died quickly and needlessly 20 years ago from a minor biopsy infection. Moving goalposts doesn't change lives. As standards of living improve, people's perceptions of what they ought to have changes as well. Your saying what people should or should not constitute as suffering will have very little effect given that people tend not to listen when they suspect they are being talked down to.
    - randyrand 10y ago
      > should or should not constitute as suffering Struggling is not really all that subjective, IMO. It's something we've all felt (emphasis on emotion) and can quickly relate to and reasonably collectively define. My point is we should not try and constitute something other than struggling as struggling. Struggling is already a reasonably well defined emotional state, there's no need to try and equivocate other things with struggling. More directly, We should not conclude that poor and few means implies struggling. All too often we conclude that richer means less struggling, and that by increasing wealth we can make the world a better place.
randyrand 10y ago
> "For an argument about relativity, a reliance on GDP is an amusing false equivalence." yes, that was the point I was trying to make. GDP per capital say little about how much people are actually struggling - an emotional state, not necesssarily a financial one. yet people always equivocate 'poor' with 'struggling'.

randyrand 10y ago

If you compare the US today to the US 300 years from now, even I will likely be considered struggling. Yet, I don't feel like I'm struggling. Is it really fair to say I'm struggling just because I don't meet the standard of living of 300+ years from now? That seems like the same idea as saying that much or the majority of the US was struggling in 1900.

randyrand 10y ago
In trying to make sense of it I would say this: There are 2 requirements to not be struggling. 1. basic needs. Food, shelter, water. 2. not being substantially poorer than the people you see and interact with. Given that most of the world is past number 1, all the rest they'd need to do is have financial equality (hard, IMO), or ensure that only few have wealth and are segregated (easier, IMO). The last thing you'd want is poor, middle, and rich in 1/3, 1/3 , 1/3 quantities all interacting with each other. Just yesterday there was a study that made rounds how having the Economy Class airplane passengers walk past the First Class causes turmoil. That's a perfect example of what not to do.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  300 years from now you could fall from the roof of your home, break your spine in three places, be instantly teleported to a hospital and be right as rain and home before supper. Whereas my grandmother died quickly and needlessly 20 years ago from a minor biopsy infection. Moving goalposts doesn't change lives. As standards of living improve, people's perceptions of what they ought to have changes as well. Your saying what people should or should not constitute as suffering will have very little effect given that people tend not to listen when they suspect they are being talked down to.
  - randyrand 10y ago
    > should or should not constitute as suffering Struggling is not really all that subjective, IMO. It's something we've all felt (emphasis on emotion) and can quickly relate to and reasonably collectively define. My point is we should not try and constitute something other than struggling as struggling. Struggling is already a reasonably well defined emotional state, there's no need to try and equivocate other things with struggling. More directly, We should not conclude that poor and few means implies struggling. All too often we conclude that richer means less struggling, and that by increasing wealth we can make the world a better place.

randyrand 10y ago

> "For an argument about relativity, a reliance on GDP is an amusing false equivalence." yes, that was the point I was trying to make. GDP per capital say little about how much people are actually struggling - an emotional state, not necesssarily a financial one. yet people always equivocate 'poor' with 'struggling'.