> "most prosperous time in history"
That is no longer true, at least not here in the US. the most recent adult generation is now the 2nd or 3rd most prosperous generation and not by such a large margin as everyone thinks. The thinking goes that since GDP per capita is up and productivity is high, that we are much wealthier but it's not true.
Even GDP per capita adjusted for PPP can't adequately measure wealth because it uses the wrong basket of goods. if you have a million dollars and you can afford 1000 iphones but a house costs 5 million, then your not wealthy.
Wealth is being able to afford the basics of life: Shelter, food and water and by extension: transportation (because you need to get to a job), education (because employers now require it, regardless of whether its useful), and medical insurance because you don't want to loose your shelter.
Those 6 things are just as expensive as ever, if not more expensive than ever and the average person is less able to afford them, at least in the coastal cities. Calculate how many hours of work per week it takes to afford shelter. people work longer hours than ever, and nearly 50% of their salary now goes just towards shelter which equates to 20 to 25 hours a week of work just to afford shelter. Was that the case 500 years ago?
Yes we've come a long way from 500 years ago, undoubedly we can afford much more food with much greater variety than ever. we eat like kings, dress like kings. But, still live in shelters we can barely afford.
And the richest person in the world 30 years ago couldn't afford a single iPhone because it didn't exist.
Shelter 500 years ago was barely better than a single-room, unheated hut. And you probably didn't even own it. You were a serf beholden to a feudal lord. (And that feudal lord didn't even have air conditioning)
And your food was whatever you could grow. In a good year maybe you made a little more than you needed. In a bad year you starved to death.
Even the bottom 1% in the US today have access to far better healthcare than the richest 1% 150 years ago. Antibiotics didn't even exist.
All 6 of the things you mentioned are far better off for almost anyone living today.
Also maybe wages have stagnanted in the US for this generation, but keep in mind the wealth improvements in the rest of the world have been staggering. Billions of people in India or China have been lifted out of poverty.
Focusing on the plight of college educated, middle class young adults seems pretty bizarre when compared with the far greater suffering of so many.
Sure strive to make things better... But if your worst trouble in life is having to work 20 hours a week to live in a comfortable apartment in the most expensive and exclusive city in the country... I'd say things were going pretty well for you.
You've made huge miscalculations about human nature, and what we find fulfilling. Trivial conveniences and endless novelty don't make for a better quality of life, it just makes people fat, depressed, insecure and addicted to drugs.
Having a high quality of life has more to do with matters of identity. People will happily suffer through anything if they feel it's meaningful. Mountain climbers and professional athletes live physically punishing, high risk lifestyles, but they aren't miserable, because what they do is meaningful to them. Being at the top of Maslow's heirarchy of needs looks a lot like being at the bottom.
This should come as no surprise, we've been living in small groups of Hunter gatherers since before we were human. It's what we're designed for.
> Also maybe wages have stagnanted in the US for this generation, but keep in mind the wealth improvements in the rest of the world have been staggering. Billions of people in India or China have been lifted out of poverty.
So, your premise here seems to be that even though your own life may be going downhill as long as everyone else is doing better you shouldn't bother with exploring the reasons behind or even trying to fix your own backwards slide. Is that correct?
It's about keeping things in perspective. Sure explore the reasons or try to fix the backward slide, but maybe we should have a basic posture of gratitude. I suspect most of us have it pretty good in life.
Also the consequences for policies are not always easy to predict. As an example, making college free seems great for the children of the upper middle class. But what about the majority of people who don't go to college?
Every time I see someone bring up that others have it worse, everyone else has seen huge improvement, etc I've always gotten the impression that they are somehow trying to minimize the issues people are talking about as not being worthy of consideration because of the other. From your reply it seems like I may be missing something because I can't see how anyone's level of gratitude or acknowledgement/lack of acknowledgement re the improving status of others is relevant to the concerns they have regarding their own situation or productive in resolving said concerns. And thus, I usually conclude that the only reason it is brought up is to minimize whatever issue the original poster brings up.
But I'm really curious as to what the underlying reasoning here is. I can sort of understand when it comes down to obvious luxuries, so long as those luxuries are not in fact mandatory for being a productive member of the corresponding society (eg complaining about not being one of the 100 people to have one of those newfangled telephones vs complaining about not having a telephone in an age where having a telephone is the default expectation).
How would having a basic posture of gratitude aid someone in resolving issues they face that deal with what may be seen as luxuries in areas that are improving but which may be necessities in their own area? What relevance does the improvement of others have to resolving or mitigating the backwards slide of another? Is it not better for everyone to be experiencing improvement? Is there some fundamental mechanism that requires some areas backslide in order for others to improve?
I'm genuinely curious - you aren't the first person I have met that makes the assertions you have, and I have experienced the same sense of bafflement every time.
having to live in the "most expensive and exclusive city in the country" is not a plus.
I'd take shelter over Iphone any day of the week.
Most of All 6 of the things I mentioned haven't improved much in the last 50 years (Granted Food & Water are already very very good).
Using the US as an example: Housing, Medical and Education are all far less affordable and accesible today. All rising far faster than inflation.
Even our ability to transport people effectively from home to work and back has not improved much. The cost is just as high as ever. Cars/public transportation aren't able to move any faster than they could in the 70s (safety reasons, etc) and as the housing situation worsens, people's commutes get longer and longer. Thus the time it takes to arrive at ones destination hasn't improved. And it doesn't help that we seem to be moving the homes and works further and further apart (due to the cost of housing).
The improvements we're making these days are increasingly minor. Compare a car from today vs one from 20 years ago. there's not a whole lot of difference in terms of impact to you as a human being. even safety improvements are becoming increasingly incremental as we fight for every last 1000th of a percent of improvement.
Limiting your analysis to “coastal cities” is where I think you go astray. I grew up in the DC suburbs, in Northern Virginia, in a 3BR, 1,100 square foot house that my parents bought for $175,000 ($350,000 adjusted for inflation). Today, that same house is almost $700,000. My parents couldn’t have afforded to buy it today. But it’s also a totally different kind of town. Back in the early 1990s, the town I grew up in was squarely middle class, devoid of trendy restaurants, high end retail, etc. There was no Northern VA tech scene, no Dulles Technology corridor. It might as well have been suburban Ohio. Outside Georgetown, DC itself was a sleepy commuter city full of chain restaurants that closed at 6 pm. There was no Hermès. The Michelin guide didn’t even review restaurants in the city back then. That’s all changed completely.
So I don’t feel like comparing the price of housing back then and today is fair. You’re buying a completely different product for your money. Today, a similar place to what Northern VA was like back then would be like Crofton, MD (not to far from where I live in Annapolis). You can easily buy a house like the one I grew up in for a price similar to what my parents paid in 1989 (adjusted for inflation obviously).
People can't arbitrarily choose where they want to live. People have to go where the jobs are, otherwise there's no money to pay for the house.
Having more unaffordable overly fancy michelin star restaraunts nearby doesn't reduce the hardship of not being able to afford shelter. And who needs high end retail when you can't even afford a place to live? How many gucci bags does it take to keep you happy when your stuff is out on the street and you have no place to plug-in your 1200$ iphone?
now you might be thinking, we already have shelter and we're not at risk. but the vast majority of people are just a few months away of no paycheck from absolute homelessness. even engineers, often don't have more than a years worth of runway saved up.
This is a really tricky position to take. How exactly do you measure the benefit of video chat with your grandkids every week, no matter how far away you live? Ubiquitous access to the internet?
This hit home for me when I watched the movie Brooklyn. A hundred years ago, when you emigrated from Europe to America, you often left elderly family behind. You knew there was a high probability you would never see or speak with these relatives again. Your parting could very well be a final goodbye. Technology has certainly closed that gap in a very positive way.
A hundred and twenty years ago, when you emigrated from Europe to America, you wrote back home and told them that steak was the most popular breakfast in America and that coffee was a luxury good in Europe because America was drinking most of the world's supply.
where do you plug in the laptop to make that video chat, when you have no house to stay in?
All our modern day luxuries are contingent upon access to basic shelter. That shelter is harder to get than it has been for a long time: at least in the coastal cities - where most of the jobs are.
Even GDP per capita adjusted for PPP can't adequately measure wealth because it uses the wrong basket of goods. if you have a million dollars and you can afford 1000 iphones but a house costs 5 million, then your not wealthy.
Wealth is being able to afford the basics of life: Shelter, food and water and by extension: transportation (because you need to get to a job), education (because employers now require it, regardless of whether its useful), and medical insurance because you don't want to loose your shelter.
Those 6 things are just as expensive as ever, if not more expensive than ever and the average person is less able to afford them, at least in the coastal cities. Calculate how many hours of work per week it takes to afford shelter. people work longer hours than ever, and nearly 50% of their salary now goes just towards shelter which equates to 20 to 25 hours a week of work just to afford shelter. Was that the case 500 years ago?
Yes we've come a long way from 500 years ago, undoubedly we can afford much more food with much greater variety than ever. we eat like kings, dress like kings. But, still live in shelters we can barely afford.