davidthefat wrote:Marx Chaotix wrote:I'm not trying to compare it to 3rd world countries and of COURSE it's not nearly as bad. I'm simply showing everybody just how bad our standards of living are becoming compared to previous times. Everybody always goes on about how much worse things are getting so I thought maybe it'd help a few people out to give them a picture of just exactly how bad things are.
I personally think it has gotten up compared to the Great depression and before the whole industrialization.
I'd bet you're wrong when talking strictly about poverty and what you're able to purchase. It's definitely up in the US from the early 70s though.
You may have an argument for quality of life... although I'm not sure working 14 hour days during the summer and then not working much during the winter (to conserve energy since it's cold) was necessarily a lively existence. There's no doubt that it probably wasn't as stressful, but having several kids since two or three are likely to die, since you're barely producing enough food for your family, hardly seems like a high quality of life to me. Yeah, I don't think that argument would hold much. There's no doubt that many people's lives probably sucked during the early days of the industrial revolution (and the argument that they had a choice doesn't hold much ground, particularly in Britain where it took route, since parliamentary land reforms forced large numbers of people off the land that they previously had a right to work through historic deeds with the feudal landlords... although it did coincide with increased efficiencies in crop production). At the same time, people weren't starving as frequently (although I'm not sure you could say that mortality rates were positively affected right away since debilitating injuries and subsequent inability to make a living were simply a way of life). Out of it came increased transportation, material goods, and massive increases in crop production. Also, working conditions did improve (better safety, higher pay, shorter days, lower child mortality, better food, etc) AND productivity continued to improve (keep this point in mind since the former can not continue to increase in a sustainable manner without the latter, despite what many unions would like to believe).
Food for thought.
