7 ms·

Person A says prosperity not increased for the middle-class since the 1970's, person B says it has. Do they have to rely on historical data, or is there some e

by MarkMc 8y ago

Person A says prosperity not increased for the middle-class since the 1970's, person B says it has. Do they have to rely on historical data, or is there some experiment they could perform to determine who is right? For example, suppose I offered 10 people the opportunity to live like people lived in the 1970's. I would subsidise their housing and education costs, but they would pay more for clothes and food and air travel and phone calls. They would not have the internet and would only have a black-and-white TV with 4 stations and a gramophone record player for entertainment. If nobody accepted such an offer, would that settle the argument?

close04 8y ago
Pretty sure you couldn't convince a teenager to give up Snapstagram or Instabook or whatever is the next thing. Must be that these bring prosperity to their lives :). I think we have to go to even more basic questions: what do people think about when they say prosperity? Having more money? But is it having more money than today's average or having more money than they used to have? One thing's for sure, I wouldn't say more tech = more prosperity. By this definition alone almost every person is the world lives a more prosperous life by virtue of having a $20 burner phone that they didn't have in the '80s. No, prosperity is "financial success" and that's related to the people around you and to some basic standard, a baseline of the times you're living in.
- taway_1212 8y ago
  > No, prosperity is "financial success" and that's related to the people around you and to some basic standard If that's the case, then prosperity is purely relative term (as I suspect the "basic standard" will be redefined every decade or so) and hence can never improve. To me, what you're describing sounds more like inequality than prosperity.
ForHackernews 8y ago
I would absolutely consider that offer. I get cheap housing, healthcare, and education and as an added bonus I get rid of social media and my nagging smartphone? (Btw, TV was in color by the 70s and literal gramophones were long gone)
austhrow743 8y ago
Knowing things exist and not having them and them not existing in the first place are two very different things.
- chronial 8y ago
  It's like the difference between prosperity and happiness.
  - bumholio 8y ago
    It's also like the difference between poverty and ignorance.
- Retric 8y ago
  Exactly, failing to keep up with the Jones has real impact on happiness. Absolute vs relative prosperity is like buying a top of the line new computer in 1995 or a used computer today built in 2010 that is vastly more powerful yet can’t run a lot of current software well. One issue is we are constantly bombarded with things we don’t have. Basic cable has far more channels than existed in 1960 but the menu constantly shows every channel you don’t have while making menus harder to use.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Exactly, failing to keep up with the Jones has real impact on happiness. Absolute vs relative prosperity is like buying a to of the line new computer in 1995 or a used computer today built in 2010 that is vastly more powerful yet can’t run a lot of current software well. A computer you bought in 2010 would be more than capable of running most modern non game software well. https://www.computerhope.com/history/2010.htm https://www.computerhope.com/history/2010.htm In fact, I was using a Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Dell (circa 2009) running Windows 10 as my Plex Server until last week. It was only slow when trying to do something interactively while Plex was transcoding. It also ran PlexConnect to serve a Plex client to my 3rd gen AppleTV. The 1st gen iPad was also released that year. I still have one (not my main iPad). I reset it last year. It can still be used for most of the streaming services - Netflix, Hulu, etc.
todd8 8y ago
I was in college in the 70s, so yeah, it was a fun time for me when I think back on it. Who wouldn’t want to hear Aerosmith live in a club with maybe 80 people there before their first album. But I walked to class cold and wet on many days. Gortex hadn’t been invented and I couldn’t afford a car. When I got my first real job I bought a car, but I carried a toolbox in the trunk. Cars broke down frequently and with no cell phones you were on your own if the car stopped running. A car accident could kill you in a 35 mph crash. I also carried a state highway map and a city map of around 100 pages in a spiral bound book because there was no GPS. The best medicine available seems primitive by comparison to today. I had classmates that wore leg braces due to childhood polio. People were still dying from rabies, TB, and even Smallpox. There were cholera pandemics. No MRI, no CAT scans. I was studying programming. I had to walk to campus at night to punch cards. No internet, no terminal, just a place to drop off cards so that you could pick up your output in the morning. I was middle class in the 70s so I had it much better than many others. Most of us grew up with a single wired phone in the house, only one full bathroom, one black and white TV that received three channels, no DVD, no CDs. A VCR player in 1975 was big and heavy and cost over $5000 in today’s dollars so none of us owned one. Ubiquitous discrimination, bigotry, and prejudice made it harder for many to be middle class like I was. Even in the 1970s, life was still much much better for me than my parents that had grew up on small farms during the dustbowl days of the Great Depression.
- wozniacki 8y ago
  Perhaps the deficit of happiness can be better explained by one of Peter Thiel's most excellent reductionist observations: The countercultural in the '60s was the hippies. You know, we landed on the moon in July of 1969. Woodstock started three weeks later, and with the benefit of hindsight, that’s when progress ended, and the hippies took over the country. [1][2] Perhaps, for too long, the left has engulfed and held hostage our cultural ideas of progress and advancement. And perhaps that has imbued us with a certain stripe of ideological stagnation not just in the way we perceive modernity but in also the debilitating influence on how we perceive actual technological progress itself and its relevance to the overall happiness of our society. Perhaps our dominant leftist culture's 'ideological stagnation index' is the unmeasured metric that could explain why we feel the way we feel despite technological progress. Thiel on the same topic: Today the counterculture is to believe in science and technology. You know, our society, the dominant culture doesn’t like science. It doesn’t like technology. You just look at the science-fiction movies that come out of Hollywood — Terminator, Matrix, Avatar, Elysium. I watched the Gravity movie the other day. It’s like you would never want to go into outer space. You would just want to be back on some muddy island. And so I think we’re in a world where actually believing that a better future is possible that you can have agency and work towards a better future, that is actually radically countercultural.[1] [1] Glenn Beck and Peter Thiel On How To Change What's Politically Cool http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX-FuM&t=3m22s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX-FuM&t=3m22s [2] Technology Stalled in 1970 http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/530901/technology-stalled-in-1970/ http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/530901/technology-stalled...
sixstringbudha 8y ago
> I offered 10 people the opportunity to live like people lived in the 1970's Do I also get a dozen brothers and sisters? Eat food, drink water and breath air without having to constantly worry about being them polluted or toxic? > would only have a black-and-white TV with 4 stations and a gramophone record player.. Sure. I would rather have a gramaphone record player or cassete player (which is more like 70s i think) that played ABBA or BoneyM than a 4k lcd tv that plays Lady gaga or Justine beiber or what ever crap that is "trending" today.
- wavefunction 8y ago
  The 70s had a fair amount of pollution and crime above what we experience now. I'm guessing the OP didn't graduate with decades of student loans though. Or a five year loan for that car of theirs.
- maccard 8y ago
  > Eat food, drink water and breath air without having to constantly worry about being them polluted or toxic? Sorry but you have a very rosy view of the 1970s. Would you drink this water [0]? Or fill your car with leaded Gas [1]? Use asbestos in your building [2]? DDT on your fresh food? [3] Air quality around the world is vastly superior to the 70s (people are still suffering because of it [4]). > than a 4k lcd tv that plays Lady gaga or Justine beiber or what ever crap that is "trending" today. It's your choice. Your 4k TV today can still play Abba or boney M, and many other bands you couldn't afford. A record cost $3 in 1970, which adjusted for inflation is about $19. For the same (adjusted) cost as an album a month in 1970 you can have access to basically every artist from the 70s (Spotify) along with most TV shows (nrtflix/) and still have enough change for a beer to go with it. Nobody is forcing you to leave your TV tuned into listen to Bieber. There was also a deluge of crap in the 1970s that you just weren't exposed to. There is also plenty of great music being produced now that can easily be found. [0] https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/3769068219/in/album-72157620856436476/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/3769068219/... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestosis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestosis [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT [4] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2076728-people-today-are-still-dying-early-from-high-1970s-air-pollution https://www.newscientist.com/article/2076728-people-today-ar...
collyw 8y ago
Really you would need people to live each of the lives and get them to judge afterwards rather than just ask what they would prefer when they only really have experience of teh current version.

by MarkMc 8y ago

close04 8y ago

Pretty sure you couldn't convince a teenager to give up Snapstagram or Instabook or whatever is the next thing. Must be that these bring prosperity to their lives :). I think we have to go to even more basic questions: what do people think about when they say prosperity? Having more money? But is it having more money than today's average or having more money than they used to have? One thing's for sure, I wouldn't say more tech = more prosperity. By this definition alone almost every person is the world lives a more prosperous life by virtue of having a $20 burner phone that they didn't have in the '80s. No, prosperity is "financial success" and that's related to the people around you and to some basic standard, a baseline of the times you're living in.

taway_1212 8y ago
> No, prosperity is "financial success" and that's related to the people around you and to some basic standard If that's the case, then prosperity is purely relative term (as I suspect the "basic standard" will be redefined every decade or so) and hence can never improve. To me, what you're describing sounds more like inequality than prosperity.

ForHackernews 8y ago

I would absolutely consider that offer. I get cheap housing, healthcare, and education and as an added bonus I get rid of social media and my nagging smartphone? (Btw, TV was in color by the 70s and literal gramophones were long gone)

austhrow743 8y ago

Knowing things exist and not having them and them not existing in the first place are two very different things.

chronial 8y ago
It's like the difference between prosperity and happiness.
- bumholio 8y ago
  It's also like the difference between poverty and ignorance.
Retric 8y ago
Exactly, failing to keep up with the Jones has real impact on happiness. Absolute vs relative prosperity is like buying a top of the line new computer in 1995 or a used computer today built in 2010 that is vastly more powerful yet can’t run a lot of current software well. One issue is we are constantly bombarded with things we don’t have. Basic cable has far more channels than existed in 1960 but the menu constantly shows every channel you don’t have while making menus harder to use.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Exactly, failing to keep up with the Jones has real impact on happiness. Absolute vs relative prosperity is like buying a to of the line new computer in 1995 or a used computer today built in 2010 that is vastly more powerful yet can’t run a lot of current software well. A computer you bought in 2010 would be more than capable of running most modern non game software well. https://www.computerhope.com/history/2010.htm https://www.computerhope.com/history/2010.htm In fact, I was using a Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Dell (circa 2009) running Windows 10 as my Plex Server until last week. It was only slow when trying to do something interactively while Plex was transcoding. It also ran PlexConnect to serve a Plex client to my 3rd gen AppleTV. The 1st gen iPad was also released that year. I still have one (not my main iPad). I reset it last year. It can still be used for most of the streaming services - Netflix, Hulu, etc.

todd8 8y ago

I was in college in the 70s, so yeah, it was a fun time for me when I think back on it. Who wouldn’t want to hear Aerosmith live in a club with maybe 80 people there before their first album. But I walked to class cold and wet on many days. Gortex hadn’t been invented and I couldn’t afford a car. When I got my first real job I bought a car, but I carried a toolbox in the trunk. Cars broke down frequently and with no cell phones you were on your own if the car stopped running. A car accident could kill you in a 35 mph crash. I also carried a state highway map and a city map of around 100 pages in a spiral bound book because there was no GPS. The best medicine available seems primitive by comparison to today. I had classmates that wore leg braces due to childhood polio. People were still dying from rabies, TB, and even Smallpox. There were cholera pandemics. No MRI, no CAT scans. I was studying programming. I had to walk to campus at night to punch cards. No internet, no terminal, just a place to drop off cards so that you could pick up your output in the morning. I was middle class in the 70s so I had it much better than many others. Most of us grew up with a single wired phone in the house, only one full bathroom, one black and white TV that received three channels, no DVD, no CDs. A VCR player in 1975 was big and heavy and cost over $5000 in today’s dollars so none of us owned one. Ubiquitous discrimination, bigotry, and prejudice made it harder for many to be middle class like I was. Even in the 1970s, life was still much much better for me than my parents that had grew up on small farms during the dustbowl days of the Great Depression.

wozniacki 8y ago
Perhaps the deficit of happiness can be better explained by one of Peter Thiel's most excellent reductionist observations: The countercultural in the '60s was the hippies. You know, we landed on the moon in July of 1969. Woodstock started three weeks later, and with the benefit of hindsight, that’s when progress ended, and the hippies took over the country. [1][2] Perhaps, for too long, the left has engulfed and held hostage our cultural ideas of progress and advancement. And perhaps that has imbued us with a certain stripe of ideological stagnation not just in the way we perceive modernity but in also the debilitating influence on how we perceive actual technological progress itself and its relevance to the overall happiness of our society. Perhaps our dominant leftist culture's 'ideological stagnation index' is the unmeasured metric that could explain why we feel the way we feel despite technological progress. Thiel on the same topic: Today the counterculture is to believe in science and technology. You know, our society, the dominant culture doesn’t like science. It doesn’t like technology. You just look at the science-fiction movies that come out of Hollywood — Terminator, Matrix, Avatar, Elysium. I watched the Gravity movie the other day. It’s like you would never want to go into outer space. You would just want to be back on some muddy island. And so I think we’re in a world where actually believing that a better future is possible that you can have agency and work towards a better future, that is actually radically countercultural.[1] [1] Glenn Beck and Peter Thiel On How To Change What's Politically Cool http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX-FuM&t=3m22s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX-FuM&t=3m22s [2] Technology Stalled in 1970 http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/530901/technology-stalled-in-1970/ http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/530901/technology-stalled...

sixstringbudha 8y ago

> I offered 10 people the opportunity to live like people lived in the 1970's Do I also get a dozen brothers and sisters? Eat food, drink water and breath air without having to constantly worry about being them polluted or toxic? > would only have a black-and-white TV with 4 stations and a gramophone record player.. Sure. I would rather have a gramaphone record player or cassete player (which is more like 70s i think) that played ABBA or BoneyM than a 4k lcd tv that plays Lady gaga or Justine beiber or what ever crap that is "trending" today.

wavefunction 8y ago
The 70s had a fair amount of pollution and crime above what we experience now. I'm guessing the OP didn't graduate with decades of student loans though. Or a five year loan for that car of theirs.
maccard 8y ago
> Eat food, drink water and breath air without having to constantly worry about being them polluted or toxic? Sorry but you have a very rosy view of the 1970s. Would you drink this water [0]? Or fill your car with leaded Gas [1]? Use asbestos in your building [2]? DDT on your fresh food? [3] Air quality around the world is vastly superior to the 70s (people are still suffering because of it [4]). > than a 4k lcd tv that plays Lady gaga or Justine beiber or what ever crap that is "trending" today. It's your choice. Your 4k TV today can still play Abba or boney M, and many other bands you couldn't afford. A record cost $3 in 1970, which adjusted for inflation is about $19. For the same (adjusted) cost as an album a month in 1970 you can have access to basically every artist from the 70s (Spotify) along with most TV shows (nrtflix/) and still have enough change for a beer to go with it. Nobody is forcing you to leave your TV tuned into listen to Bieber. There was also a deluge of crap in the 1970s that you just weren't exposed to. There is also plenty of great music being produced now that can easily be found. [0] https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/3769068219/in/album-72157620856436476/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/3769068219/... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestosis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestosis [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT [4] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2076728-people-today-are-still-dying-early-from-high-1970s-air-pollution https://www.newscientist.com/article/2076728-people-today-ar...

collyw 8y ago

Really you would need people to live each of the lives and get them to judge afterwards rather than just ask what they would prefer when they only really have experience of teh current version.