

Would You Rather Be Middle Class in 2011 or Rich in 1973? - caixa
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=8736

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forensic
If I can have dinners at expensive restaurants, yachts, manors, apartments
throughout the world, unlimited access to high class prostitutes, the respect,
deference, fear, and love of the masses who stand in awe of my wealth...

rich in pretty much ANY time.

No matter what year it is it's always better to be on top. That's where most
of the human pleasure comes from.

Xboxes and iPhones are really no substitute for being on top of society.

~~~
endtime
Sorry, but you sound like a shallow prick and possibly a sociopath.

If I can see my (future) children grow up happy and healthy, keep learning my
whole life, earn my living solving interesting problems, etc., that's not just
quantitatively worth more than a yacht; it's qualitatively a better life.

To answer the actual question, of 1973 vs. today, I'd take today. The Internet
is, frankly, awesome. Not having the entire world living in fear of nuclear
winter is also kind of nice. I don't think cryo firms like Alcor existed in
1973. Those are just a few things off the top of my head; I'm sure I could
come up with a much longer list given time.

~~~
flashgordon
Well I would have thought rich in 1973 would have been a no brainer. Not
because of affording expensive things yada yada (ok thats a huge bonus too but
not for me). But because having the (relative) wealth would mean having the
luxury of choosing my job without having to worry about how the bills were
being paid. Having the dough to invest in my passions (assuming one had them).
Having the dough to invest in technology at the early stages! I mean yeah the
internet is great now. But you could just as well ask, would you rather be
rich now or middle class in 40 years time?

~~~
endtime
Definitely middle class in 40 years. I suspect 2051 will be as far ahead of us
now as 2011 would be to someone in the 1940's or so.

~~~
flashgordon
I suppose it could be worse. We could be "poor" in 40 years time! Again I mean
poor in the vaguest sense. Which makes you wonder. What would the _bums_ be
like in 40 years?

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diego
Relative wealth is what gets you the most mating opportunities and gives your
genes a competitive advantage, to put it in a pseudo-academic language.
Geoffrey Miller's The Mating Mind is way more interesting and deeper than this
article if you are interested in the subject. Spent is even more about
relative wealth as a fitness signal, but a bit fluffier.

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Vivtek
Rich in 1900 is my choice. I'll bet the food then _rocked_ \- I'll just take
one year's income at face value and the house I'm living in now, without 111
years of intervening decay. The rich industrialist who lived here in 1900 will
have to find new digs.

But no contest. I'd turn back that clock right now.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
What kind of food do you think you'd get in 1900 that you couldn't get today?

~~~
CamperBob
It would be like going to Mexico and drinking the local water. You'd have no
immunity to whatever bugs were commonly in food at that (pre-refrigeration)
time.

~~~
WildUtah
Nobody drinks the local water in Mexico, including Mexicans. It's the food
that carries novel fauna.

And it isn't the food that would get you. It's the smallpox.

------
jerf
"more authentic pleasures like books, films, music, and jet travel to exotic
spots (without T&A frisking at airports)"

Yeah, but... 2011 is a win on every front there except the last. (And that may
be debatable; you better like your exotic spots _very_ exotic.) If you do not
confine yourself to pre-1970s books, firms, and music _right now_ , it's
because you like the stuff that came later better, no matter how nostalgic you
think you are. You may think there's more garbage in 2011 but there's a lot
more good stuff, too, and a lot more well-populated niches.

I mean, sure, wealthy in 1973 over middle class today in the broad sense, but
not for that reason. And I _will_ take middle-class 2011 over rich 1900. I'm
not sure where the exact cross-over is, but it's certainly within that bound.

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NickPollard
Maybe it's just the fact that I'm a hacker and a child of the digital age, but
I'd take the ability to have a 1ghz computer in my pocket connected to the
entire world for a couple of hundred bucks, against paying thousands of
dollars for a machine that probably can't even do truetype rendering.

~~~
jhamburger
It depends on whether this is a time-travel question, or a 'when would you
rather be born' question. You wouldn't miss things that you don't know exist.

~~~
orangecat
_You wouldn't miss things that you don't know exist._

I "miss" not having a heads-up display in my glasses or contacts or optic
nerve, and not being able to prevent my body and mind from failing due to
aging. I'd choose middle class in 2049 over rich in 2011 for the same reasons
that I'd choose 2011 over 1973.

~~~
jhamburger
Yes but you're talking about life-altering technology...That's the author's
whole point, most of that stuff already happened by 1973. That's why he'd take
1973 instead of 1900 or whenever. We mostly live the same way now as we did in
1973, just with more gadgets. If you said "I miss not having holographic
phones and VR porn" that would be a better example.

~~~
colomon
All I can say is, your life must be a hell of a lot different than mine.

My job (writing programs used by people around the world, all from my home
office in small city Michigan) could not have existed in 1973. Indeed, my
house probably has computing power equivalent to that of a good-sized
university of the time. A sizable percentage of the food I eat was not
available anywhere outside of a Chinatown then. My favorite genre of games,
role-playing games, had not yet been invented. Nor had the high blood pressure
pills I take. The surgery I had at new year's would have meant days rather
than hours in the hospital.

And my son could never have been born. Life-altering? Hell yes.

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rbanffy
Rich in '73 is such an obvious choice...

~~~
caixa
I'm not sure if my being born in the late 1980s would make me more or less
likely to choose 1973 over 2011. On the one hand it would take some getting
used to a world without computers and the like, having never experienced that
before. On the other, it would be more like travelling to a new place than
going back in time, which at least sounds more exciting.

My question is - how far back would you go?

~~~
rbanffy
> My question is - how far back would you go?

If seriously confronted with this proposition, I would probably not take the
risk. My father died of cancer, as did one of my aunts (from my mother's
family), so, I would be weary of being too far from more modern treatments
and/or diagnostics. It would be tempting, of course, to be able to witness
some key events in our industry first hand (maybe even nudge them in a better
direction). I would, certainly, be at the homebrew computer club meeting when
Woz presented his Apple I. About a year later I would talk Woz into (or help
him with - I still remember 6502 well enough) integrating floating point into
Apple's BASIC. Then, I would try to persuade the IBM execs not to ditch
CP/M-86 for PC-DOS. And then I would call it a day and head back to a much
nicer 2011.

I could also lobby for Thorium reactors in the 50's...

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fuzzythinker
Would you rather be middle class in 2040 or rich in 2011?

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cabalamat
Rich in '73 -- I'd invent Smalltalk before Alan Kay did.

~~~
codebaobab
Too late. :) He already had Smalltalk-72 under his belt by then.

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johngalt
Seems like a false comparison:

1973->2011 = 38years

1900->1973 = 73years

Although it does make me aware of an interesting question. Obviously I'd
rather be rich last year over middle class this year. How about five years
ago? Ten? A hundred?

As fun as questions like this are, we don't get to make that choice. Might as
well just focus on getting rich now :-/

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gte910h
You've not taken into account the social changes:

You'd hate the way people talk and act in 1973.

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aristidb
"But I suppose everyone thinks their youth was some sort of Golden Age."

------
joubert
Do I die in 1974?

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Luc
I would have loved to have been rich, or even middle class, at the start of
the home computer revolution.

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tastybites
Rich in 1973, because people who were rich in 1973 are, by and large, even
richer in 2011.

~~~
something
they're also a lot closer to dead.

~~~
tastybites
So be will you, in 2031.

------
Charuru
I'd rather be in the lowest 10% 100 years from now.

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johnohara
Here's an interesting document from the US Census Bureau:

<http://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-097.pdf>

In 1973, 628,000 families made less than $1000.00 per year. That's $.48 per
hour for a 40-hour week. 8.1 million (14.1%) families made less that $5000
that year.

In 2011, annual unemployment benefits for an individual can reach about
$20,000. In 1973, that amount would rank in the upper 18% of all family
incomes.

Making $50,000+ in 1973 would rank in the top 1%.

~~~
georgecmu
You're comparing apples to oranges. At a very minimum, you must adjust for
inflation. Most people here, though, are more interested in how much you can
get for a dollar today vs in the past.

