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"Today, of Americans officially designated as "poor," 99 per cent have electricity, running water, flush toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 per cent have a televis

"Today, of Americans officially designated as "poor," 99 per cent have electricity, running water, flush toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 per cent have a television, 88 per cent a telephone, 71 per cent a car and 70 per cent air conditioning. Cornelius Vanderbilt had none of these." --Matt Ridley in "The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves"

slumdev 7y ago
I don't like this trope because it obscures the one thing that wealthy people know and non-wealthy people don't. Money is time. It's not gadgets or electricity or running water or toilets. It's time for yourself, your family, your religion (if you have one), and whatever hobbies make you tick. If you're on the hook to do someone else's bidding for 8+ hours a day, you are not wealthy, no matter how much they're paying you. Today's poor are worse-off than those in times past regardless of whatever trinkets they have. In almost every culture and occupation throughout history up to the industrial revolution, working people have never spent 8+ hours a day, year round, in servile labor. It's absurd. Regardless of how many Scooby Snacks you're so generously awarded by today's silicon robber barons, you will be poor until you stop measuring your life in trinkets and start measuring it in time.
- jcranberry 7y ago
  I'm not sure I buy that. Would you consider doctors significantly poorer than most other professions? Or surgeons at the least.
  - slumdev 7y ago
    Doctors are a rare breed. Now that the money isn't what it used to be (for most specialties, and in proportion to the cost of education), very few go into it as a "lifestyle profession". It attracts only the workaholics. Same with law.
    - jcranberry 7y ago
      That matches up with my experience with them.
    - randomsearch 7y ago
      Hopefully, the word you’re looking for is “vocation”.
  - cygx 7y ago
    Depends on how much they enjoy their work.
  - normalnorm 7y ago
    The easiest way to miss a point (on purpose or not), is to take a metaphor literally. I see a lot of this here on HN, and I think it is a common vice among people with strong knowledge in the hard sciences but with a rather narrow scope of interests outside of it. I believe that the point was that sovereignty over how one spends one's time is more important than material possessions, beyond what is strictly necessary. Surgeons can save a lot of money and retire early, probably are less restricted by managers than the typical wage slave, have a very meaningful job (something quite rare these days), etc. Most people's lives today are not like this. They are stuck in a hamster wheel that they cannot jump out of without becoming homeless.
    - jcranberry 7y ago
      You make it sound as if even if not intentional, misunderstanding someones point in this way is as a result of negligence ("vice"). If you express yourself in metaphor, it is reasonable for someone to ask you to expand upon or specify your views, so they can build a more accurate model of what you're trying to express. This could be because of simply not understanding fully what's being said, or being unwilling to assume that what they mean is what you think they mean.
      - normalnorm 7y ago
        Asking for clarification is one thing, immediately providing a counter-example to the most literal interpretation is another.
- IanCal 7y ago
  I really think it's pushing it to describe the ability to safely store food without it going off and access to clean fresh water as trinkets as though they are silly little things rather than massive impacts on quality of life.
- thfuran 7y ago
  >In almost every culture and occupation throughout history up to the industrial revolution, working people have never spent 8+ hours a day, year round, in servile labor. It's absurd. In almost every culture throughout history up to the industrial revolution, almost everyone worked in agriculture. I'd gladly trade 8 hours a day working mostly on interesting problems comfortably in an air-conditioned office for somewhat fewer hours of manual labor outdoors.
  - slumdev 7y ago
    How many software engineers genuinely work on interesting problems? How many spend their days rolling Yet Another CRUD App(tm) gilded with the latest fad? How many "solve" the same problem, over and over and over, with only a small twist--different platforms, different languages, different architectures, different industries, etc.?
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    But you can if you want to! Or are you saying you would gladly trade for equal pay vs sitting at a desk? I read things like this, and think, so you have never done any manual labor, nor your parents or grandparents or relatives? Not your chores as a teenager, your first job, or anything? Is there nobody in your extended family who spent their retirement years in agonizing pain from the effects of lifting things all their life? Nobody who died early from an accident on the job?
    - thfuran 7y ago
      I wouldn't make the trade in that direction.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  Would you rather be middle class now or stupendously rich 100 years ago? Does your answer change if you get sick?
- wpasc 7y ago
  Most people today get more time through advances in healthcare because a simple infection won't kill you. We get more time through almost instant answers to many of life's question (search engines). We get time back through instant communication. I don't disagree with parts of what you say. However, the idea that today's poor are worse-off I think is wholeheartedly, incredibly wrong. Does society have issues today? Of course! There are an incredible number of issues. But I believe that the data support that on virtually every metric we look at, we are living in the best time because through technology and social progress. Have some of these advances come at a cost, of course. Do some of these advances have hidden costs and maybe they're not so great? of course. Are there rent-seeking assholes who have pseudo-stolen wealth from many, of course. Still, I'm not sure you can make a credible argument that poor today are worse off on any large time scale.
- randallsquared 7y ago
  > In almost every culture and occupation throughout history up to the industrial revolution, working people have never spent 8+ hours a day, year round, in servile labor. It's absurd. If we're talking about pre-industrial-revolution, but post-agriculture, I would expect that mandatory labor took up more than ~2000 hours a year, and probably much more. Farmer workers famously work very long hours even now: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+hours+do+farmers+work https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+hours+do+farmers+wo... For a review of a (somewhat speculative) look at the transition to agriculture and how it enabled mandatory work: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/14/book-review-against-the-grain/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/14/book-review-against-th...
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
  > Today's poor are worse-off than those in times past regardless of whatever trinkets they have. In almost every culture and occupation throughout history up to the industrial revolution, working people have never spent 8+ hours a day, year round, in servile labor. Every single analysis of that ignores women. Women in the past spent basically all their time cooking and washing. Washing clothes before washing machines was an arduous, laborious task. In addition, without reliable birth control, family sizes were larger so a women had more children to take care of. Now women have the opportunity and control to not be consigned to a life of house work. Hans Rosling has a great TED talk on how socially transformative the washing machine was: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing...
pizzaparty2 7y ago
They also have drastically worse living conditions than everyone they see on a daily basis. This includes bad housing (often infested), lower quality more fattening and processed food, little exercise, reduced access to medical care, understimulation, a reduced sense of their role in the community, reduced freedom and energy. We've all heard the idea that everything is better for a poor person now than a king 1000 years ago but that idea measures embarrassingly revealing notions about human wellness held by the person doing the measuring. I don't think we are measuring the right things is what I'm saying.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  One great thing about internet is that it allows us to move the spotlight in geography. It's very telling, reading this, that (at least Western/North) Europe (and Japan and some other rich countries) are a much different place for "the poor" than the USA. > bad housing (often infested) That would generally be illegal and can be a penal offense (landlord goes to jail if conditions are unacceptable). Longer commutes, less comfortable, etc. are more striking differences. > lower quality more fattening and processed food That one is definitely true; cultures where cooking is well-spread and usually the cheapest way to eat (buy raw stuff, prep it yourself) are better off in that regard though. I'm not sure the 1% in America eat much better than the average French or Japanese or Swedish citizen for instance (although the USA is going fast towards a healthier culture, it's changing big time for the better). > little exercise That doesn't have anything to do with wealth but rather mindset. Also consider that poor people generally have to perform many more manual tasks themselves (e.g. no elevator, no fancy suitcase on-wheels, making furniture and DIY repairs because it's cheaper, generally walking A LOT MORE, etc). > reduced access to medical care While there is definitely inequality between public and private hospitals in terms of care (personel per patient, spaces, equipment, etc), the vast majority of people in rich countries are taken care of medically to a statistically decent level. The stats are along the lines of "90+% won't die of minor/preventable things that can be spotted early on like pre-cancerous masses; however once a fatal disease kicks in you'll live about twice longer as a rich 1% than the bottom 50%". There's still much progress to do, but nobody gets left behind if we can help it. > understimulation Definitely. No difference here whatsoever. > a reduced sense of their role in the community Can't argue against this psycho-social fact, it's been measured. It's however somewhat easier in economies where unemployment is a "structural" choice (too long to develop, but it means oscillating between 5-15% whereas other economic structures, other countries, would usually be between 2-8%). It's a mild consolation though, if at all. > reduced freedom and energy This is definitely true. Although, don't neglect the survival instinct. I'm living proof that hitting rock bottom in any domain of your life is a strong, strong incentive for change — and when you're there you suddenly hear all the great who basically arose from ashes. > We've all heard the idea that everything is better for a poor person now than a king 1000 years ago but that idea measures embarrassingly revealing notions about human wellness held by the person doing the measuring. I think the king comparison is indeed a very disingenuous way to make the argument. It lacks the nuance. The real fact is that we are all much better off today than 1000 years ago, it's a general progress. The rich didn't have TVs either in the 1920s before it was invented... So all the 'mainstream' things don't count much in relative wealth. Even 'bigger' 'better' ($2000 iPhone XS-XXL!21+Max versus decent $150 Android is less important than getting your smartphone-induced adrenaline fix). TL;DR / conclusion: if our relative wealth is obviously the more socially salient in our perception, it's also good to remind ourselves that in absolute wealth terms, we are very fortunate to be born in our time compared to about all of known history. Personally, I'm an optimistic kinda person so I always wonder if we're not just before the next great leap forward.
msla 7y ago
They also have a world without smallpox, a world where polio is coming decidedly close to extinction, and a world where cutting your foot on a piece of glass isn't going to mean you die of sepsis. We could lose those things, but we can also keep them, and we definitely never had them before.
- pizzaparty2 7y ago
  because they didn't have glass?
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    Tetanus used to be a thing that killed people at random. I remember that being vividly captured in one of "The Great Brain" series of children's books that I read as a kid.
nabla9 7y ago
People are belittling relative poverty and think that only absolute poverty should be addressed. I hope this this view comes from ignorance and not from cruelty. We are social animals. Relative poverty reduces opportunities and ability to participate in the society. Relative poverty affects health and even decreases cognitive capabilities. 1776 Adam Smith in "The Wealth of Nations" framed poverty as relative powerty. >... By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. In Scotland, custom has rendered them a necessary of life to the lowest order of men; but not to the same order of women, who may, without any discredit, walk about barefooted. In France they are necessaries neither to men nor to women, the lowest rank of both sexes appearing there publicly, without any discredit, sometimes in wooden shoes, and sometimes barefooted. Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people. All other things I call luxuries, without meaning by this appellation to throw the smallest degree of reproach upon the temperate use of them. Beer and ale, for example, in Great Britain, and wine, even in the wine countries, I call luxuries. A man of any rank may, without any reproach, abstain totally from tasting such liquors. Nature does not render them necessary for the support of life, and custom nowhere renders it indecent to live without them.
- Symmetry 7y ago
  It's not that relative poverty isn't important so much as that it's a zero-sum game. If you raise one person's social status relative to a second, you're lowering that second person's relative to the first's. By contrast, with the comfort wealth brings we first of all can raise everyone's comfort and secondarily moving money from the rich to the poor increases the poor's comfort more than it damage's the rich's comfort. You possibly can do something about the pain caused by relative status by making the opulence of the wealthy less visible to the poor but I think that brings complications that make the whole enterprise doubtful.
mkane848 7y ago
This is one of those quotes that sounds really clever if you don't think about it at all

slumdev 7y ago

I don't like this trope because it obscures the one thing that wealthy people know and non-wealthy people don't. Money is time. It's not gadgets or electricity or running water or toilets. It's time for yourself, your family, your religion (if you have one), and whatever hobbies make you tick. If you're on the hook to do someone else's bidding for 8+ hours a day, you are not wealthy, no matter how much they're paying you. Today's poor are worse-off than those in times past regardless of whatever trinkets they have. In almost every culture and occupation throughout history up to the industrial revolution, working people have never spent 8+ hours a day, year round, in servile labor. It's absurd. Regardless of how many Scooby Snacks you're so generously awarded by today's silicon robber barons, you will be poor until you stop measuring your life in trinkets and start measuring it in time.

jcranberry 7y ago
I'm not sure I buy that. Would you consider doctors significantly poorer than most other professions? Or surgeons at the least.
- slumdev 7y ago
  Doctors are a rare breed. Now that the money isn't what it used to be (for most specialties, and in proportion to the cost of education), very few go into it as a "lifestyle profession". It attracts only the workaholics. Same with law.
  - jcranberry 7y ago
    That matches up with my experience with them.
  - randomsearch 7y ago
    Hopefully, the word you’re looking for is “vocation”.
- cygx 7y ago
  Depends on how much they enjoy their work.
- normalnorm 7y ago
  The easiest way to miss a point (on purpose or not), is to take a metaphor literally. I see a lot of this here on HN, and I think it is a common vice among people with strong knowledge in the hard sciences but with a rather narrow scope of interests outside of it. I believe that the point was that sovereignty over how one spends one's time is more important than material possessions, beyond what is strictly necessary. Surgeons can save a lot of money and retire early, probably are less restricted by managers than the typical wage slave, have a very meaningful job (something quite rare these days), etc. Most people's lives today are not like this. They are stuck in a hamster wheel that they cannot jump out of without becoming homeless.
  - jcranberry 7y ago
    You make it sound as if even if not intentional, misunderstanding someones point in this way is as a result of negligence ("vice"). If you express yourself in metaphor, it is reasonable for someone to ask you to expand upon or specify your views, so they can build a more accurate model of what you're trying to express. This could be because of simply not understanding fully what's being said, or being unwilling to assume that what they mean is what you think they mean.
    - normalnorm 7y ago
      Asking for clarification is one thing, immediately providing a counter-example to the most literal interpretation is another.
IanCal 7y ago
I really think it's pushing it to describe the ability to safely store food without it going off and access to clean fresh water as trinkets as though they are silly little things rather than massive impacts on quality of life.
thfuran 7y ago
>In almost every culture and occupation throughout history up to the industrial revolution, working people have never spent 8+ hours a day, year round, in servile labor. It's absurd. In almost every culture throughout history up to the industrial revolution, almost everyone worked in agriculture. I'd gladly trade 8 hours a day working mostly on interesting problems comfortably in an air-conditioned office for somewhat fewer hours of manual labor outdoors.
- slumdev 7y ago
  How many software engineers genuinely work on interesting problems? How many spend their days rolling Yet Another CRUD App(tm) gilded with the latest fad? How many "solve" the same problem, over and over and over, with only a small twist--different platforms, different languages, different architectures, different industries, etc.?
- perl4ever 7y ago
  But you can if you want to! Or are you saying you would gladly trade for equal pay vs sitting at a desk? I read things like this, and think, so you have never done any manual labor, nor your parents or grandparents or relatives? Not your chores as a teenager, your first job, or anything? Is there nobody in your extended family who spent their retirement years in agonizing pain from the effects of lifting things all their life? Nobody who died early from an accident on the job?
  - thfuran 7y ago
    I wouldn't make the trade in that direction.
goatinaboat 7y ago
Would you rather be middle class now or stupendously rich 100 years ago? Does your answer change if you get sick?
wpasc 7y ago
Most people today get more time through advances in healthcare because a simple infection won't kill you. We get more time through almost instant answers to many of life's question (search engines). We get time back through instant communication. I don't disagree with parts of what you say. However, the idea that today's poor are worse-off I think is wholeheartedly, incredibly wrong. Does society have issues today? Of course! There are an incredible number of issues. But I believe that the data support that on virtually every metric we look at, we are living in the best time because through technology and social progress. Have some of these advances come at a cost, of course. Do some of these advances have hidden costs and maybe they're not so great? of course. Are there rent-seeking assholes who have pseudo-stolen wealth from many, of course. Still, I'm not sure you can make a credible argument that poor today are worse off on any large time scale.
randallsquared 7y ago
> In almost every culture and occupation throughout history up to the industrial revolution, working people have never spent 8+ hours a day, year round, in servile labor. It's absurd. If we're talking about pre-industrial-revolution, but post-agriculture, I would expect that mandatory labor took up more than ~2000 hours a year, and probably much more. Farmer workers famously work very long hours even now: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+hours+do+farmers+work https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+hours+do+farmers+wo... For a review of a (somewhat speculative) look at the transition to agriculture and how it enabled mandatory work: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/14/book-review-against-the-grain/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/14/book-review-against-th...
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
> Today's poor are worse-off than those in times past regardless of whatever trinkets they have. In almost every culture and occupation throughout history up to the industrial revolution, working people have never spent 8+ hours a day, year round, in servile labor. Every single analysis of that ignores women. Women in the past spent basically all their time cooking and washing. Washing clothes before washing machines was an arduous, laborious task. In addition, without reliable birth control, family sizes were larger so a women had more children to take care of. Now women have the opportunity and control to not be consigned to a life of house work. Hans Rosling has a great TED talk on how socially transformative the washing machine was: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing...

pizzaparty2 7y ago

They also have drastically worse living conditions than everyone they see on a daily basis. This includes bad housing (often infested), lower quality more fattening and processed food, little exercise, reduced access to medical care, understimulation, a reduced sense of their role in the community, reduced freedom and energy. We've all heard the idea that everything is better for a poor person now than a king 1000 years ago but that idea measures embarrassingly revealing notions about human wellness held by the person doing the measuring. I don't think we are measuring the right things is what I'm saying.

K0SM0S 7y ago
One great thing about internet is that it allows us to move the spotlight in geography. It's very telling, reading this, that (at least Western/North) Europe (and Japan and some other rich countries) are a much different place for "the poor" than the USA. > bad housing (often infested) That would generally be illegal and can be a penal offense (landlord goes to jail if conditions are unacceptable). Longer commutes, less comfortable, etc. are more striking differences. > lower quality more fattening and processed food That one is definitely true; cultures where cooking is well-spread and usually the cheapest way to eat (buy raw stuff, prep it yourself) are better off in that regard though. I'm not sure the 1% in America eat much better than the average French or Japanese or Swedish citizen for instance (although the USA is going fast towards a healthier culture, it's changing big time for the better). > little exercise That doesn't have anything to do with wealth but rather mindset. Also consider that poor people generally have to perform many more manual tasks themselves (e.g. no elevator, no fancy suitcase on-wheels, making furniture and DIY repairs because it's cheaper, generally walking A LOT MORE, etc). > reduced access to medical care While there is definitely inequality between public and private hospitals in terms of care (personel per patient, spaces, equipment, etc), the vast majority of people in rich countries are taken care of medically to a statistically decent level. The stats are along the lines of "90+% won't die of minor/preventable things that can be spotted early on like pre-cancerous masses; however once a fatal disease kicks in you'll live about twice longer as a rich 1% than the bottom 50%". There's still much progress to do, but nobody gets left behind if we can help it. > understimulation Definitely. No difference here whatsoever. > a reduced sense of their role in the community Can't argue against this psycho-social fact, it's been measured. It's however somewhat easier in economies where unemployment is a "structural" choice (too long to develop, but it means oscillating between 5-15% whereas other economic structures, other countries, would usually be between 2-8%). It's a mild consolation though, if at all. > reduced freedom and energy This is definitely true. Although, don't neglect the survival instinct. I'm living proof that hitting rock bottom in any domain of your life is a strong, strong incentive for change — and when you're there you suddenly hear all the great who basically arose from ashes. > We've all heard the idea that everything is better for a poor person now than a king 1000 years ago but that idea measures embarrassingly revealing notions about human wellness held by the person doing the measuring. I think the king comparison is indeed a very disingenuous way to make the argument. It lacks the nuance. The real fact is that we are all much better off today than 1000 years ago, it's a general progress. The rich didn't have TVs either in the 1920s before it was invented... So all the 'mainstream' things don't count much in relative wealth. Even 'bigger' 'better' ($2000 iPhone XS-XXL!21+Max versus decent $150 Android is less important than getting your smartphone-induced adrenaline fix). TL;DR / conclusion: if our relative wealth is obviously the more socially salient in our perception, it's also good to remind ourselves that in absolute wealth terms, we are very fortunate to be born in our time compared to about all of known history. Personally, I'm an optimistic kinda person so I always wonder if we're not just before the next great leap forward.

msla 7y ago

They also have a world without smallpox, a world where polio is coming decidedly close to extinction, and a world where cutting your foot on a piece of glass isn't going to mean you die of sepsis. We could lose those things, but we can also keep them, and we definitely never had them before.

pizzaparty2 7y ago
because they didn't have glass?
- perl4ever 7y ago
  Tetanus used to be a thing that killed people at random. I remember that being vividly captured in one of "The Great Brain" series of children's books that I read as a kid.

nabla9 7y ago

People are belittling relative poverty and think that only absolute poverty should be addressed. I hope this this view comes from ignorance and not from cruelty. We are social animals. Relative poverty reduces opportunities and ability to participate in the society. Relative poverty affects health and even decreases cognitive capabilities. 1776 Adam Smith in "The Wealth of Nations" framed poverty as relative powerty. >... By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. In Scotland, custom has rendered them a necessary of life to the lowest order of men; but not to the same order of women, who may, without any discredit, walk about barefooted. In France they are necessaries neither to men nor to women, the lowest rank of both sexes appearing there publicly, without any discredit, sometimes in wooden shoes, and sometimes barefooted. Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people. All other things I call luxuries, without meaning by this appellation to throw the smallest degree of reproach upon the temperate use of them. Beer and ale, for example, in Great Britain, and wine, even in the wine countries, I call luxuries. A man of any rank may, without any reproach, abstain totally from tasting such liquors. Nature does not render them necessary for the support of life, and custom nowhere renders it indecent to live without them.

Symmetry 7y ago
It's not that relative poverty isn't important so much as that it's a zero-sum game. If you raise one person's social status relative to a second, you're lowering that second person's relative to the first's. By contrast, with the comfort wealth brings we first of all can raise everyone's comfort and secondarily moving money from the rich to the poor increases the poor's comfort more than it damage's the rich's comfort. You possibly can do something about the pain caused by relative status by making the opulence of the wealthy less visible to the poor but I think that brings complications that make the whole enterprise doubtful.

mkane848 7y ago

This is one of those quotes that sounds really clever if you don't think about it at all