poor being relative historically sounds consistent with things I've read from Thomas Sowell. I remember him using Air Conditioning as an example... """Looking

poor being relative historically sounds consistent with things I've read from Thomas Sowell. I remember him using Air Conditioning as an example... """Looking back over the years, as old-timers are apt to do, I see huge changes, both for the better and for the worse. In material things, there has been almost unbelievable progress. Most Americans did not have refrigerators back in 1930, when I was born. Television was little more than an experiment, and such things as air-conditioning or air travel were only for the very rich. My own family did not have electricity or hot running water, in my early childhood, which was not unusual for blacks in the South in those days. It is hard to convey to today's generation the fear that the paralyzing disease of polio inspired, until vaccines put an abrupt end to its long reign of terror in the 1950s. Most people living in officially defined poverty in the 21st century have things like cable television, microwave ovens and air-conditioning. Most Americans did not have such things, as late as the 1980s. People whom the intelligentsia continue to call the "have-nots" today have things that the "haves" did not have, just a generation ago.""" https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/12/16/farewell https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/12/16/farewell