I wish articles like these would also discuss what would be superior about being the rich guy in 1916. I tend to agree with the overall point, but it's so one-s

I wish articles like these would also discuss what would be superior about being the rich guy in 1916. I tend to agree with the overall point, but it's so one-sided it makes me suspicious. It's absolutely true that my medical care, personal entertainment, and climate control options are way better than his were. But it's not quite as one-sided as this article makes it sound. For example, I have to spend a decent chunk of my time working for other people, otherwise I'll lose all those fancy modern things I so enjoy. What is it worth to be able to do what you want, when you want, all the time? For example, I own (one third share of) an airplane that's far better, in the aspects I care about, than anything that existed in 1916. I also flew it less than half a dozen times in the past year because it's hard to find the time among all the other stuff I have going on. Is it better to have a vastly superior airplane I get to fly a few times a year, or to have a state-of-the-art 1916 airplane I can fly whenever I feel like it? I don't think the answer is obvious. What's better, the ability to call people on the other side of the planet for essentially free, or the ability to hang out on the beach for weeks or months at a time? Again, this is not obvious. Or just to get down to the very basics, what's better: lots of technological toys, and medical care that will probably keep you in good health for decades if it doesn't bankrupt you first, or the near certainty that no matter what you do, your financial future and that of your immediate descendants is certain? The comparison makes me think of slaveowners handing out little baubles and telling their slaves, "see how good you have it?" while growing fat off the fruit of their labor. Some lower-middle-class American has a nicer car than existed in 1916 and a smartphone and good heat and air conditioning at home, woohoo! Never mind that he needs the phone so his manager can call him in at a moment's notice, needs the car to get there quickly because he'll be fired if he's late, and is one paycheck away from losing that nicely heated and cooled home, while the company he works for makes more in profit from his work than he does. What is financial security worth? How much is it worth to have control over your own life? Maybe it really is better to have modern technology instead, but it should be addressed. Aside from these concerns, the article also suffers from terrible temporal provincialism. It spends several paragraphs talking about how much richer we are today because we have rock and roll and modern movies. I'm pretty sure that 1916 had great music, and even if it didn't have the technology to reproduce that music with high quality, who cares when you can afford to just pay top-quality musicians to come play it live? And I'm pretty sure that 1916 had great stage plays too, and like music, the technological weaknesses in reproduction are easily erased with money.