Watch a few episodes of the UK Who Do You Think You Are tv show and what comes across in many of these people's ancestral stories is that some people had it all

Watch a few episodes of the UK Who Do You Think You Are tv show and what comes across in many of these people's ancestral stories is that some people had it all (and it didn't always work out for them), women had no right to own a damn thing, and that many, many people suffered and died because there was no welfare state in Europe pre WWII. The lives of ordinary people were often awful and governed by pure chance. The welfare state is one of the greatest achievements of human-kind.