I recently had a two week break between jobs and happened to pick up Picketty's "Capital in the 21st Century". It's a bit of a slog of a book, partly because o

I recently had a two week break between jobs and happened to pick up Picketty's "Capital in the 21st Century". It's a bit of a slog of a book, partly because of the reiteration of numbers and historical contexts, but I think there's nothing in there that shouldn't be above the capabilities of the hacker news crowd if they have the time/tenacity. Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that it's better name would probably be "Capital across 3 centuries with a weird period of two world wars and a depression". You don't have to agree with the last chapter or two, but it really does provide a great historical introduction and overview and discussion around what's actually happened in economies over the last few hundred years, if not being a bit number/graphy. Not only will it give you some context for what the industrial revolution and historical economies/societies were like, but you'll also understand why the 20th century was different, rather than typical, and why certain generations have some of the beliefs they do about how tech/capital/economics/society works. To bring it back into direct relation to the article title: the industrial revolutions weren't exactly the greatest time for the common man, and what we might think of as gains to such was actually the optimism and atypical effects of rebuilding after the period of 1910-1940s...