[NeedMoreTea]

Things are also moving the other way at unprecedented speed - the expensive ones: housing, medical care, education. None of which is discussing the comparative inequality of the two periods.

Are you saying inequality is required for that list of innovations? If so, on what grounds?

We came up with contraceptive pills, eradication of polio, visited the moon, transformation of aviation and personal transportation, domestic appliances - including TVs, washing machines, dish washers went from unaffordable luxury to in every home. Doesn't seem like the pace of innovation has increased, just moved to a different field compared with the period of lowest US inequality. If anything it's slowed markedly.

So why didn't these innovations need inequality?

Nit: antibiotics were commonly available 60 years ago, they just weren't yet abused by stupid uses in agriculture.

[atemerev]

Most of these things were coming as a side effect of the huge Cold War era military industrial complex. We’ll get it back soon enough.

Additionally, yes, the US society in the 50s-80s was pretty egalitarian and full of opportunities — as long as you were white, male and heterosexual.

[coldtea]

>Additionally, yes, the US society in the 50s-80s was pretty egalitarian and full of opportunities — as long as you were white, male and heterosexual.

It was full of opportunities for all kinds of people, not just "white, male, and heterosexual". That's when the civil rights movement and the feminist movement flourished too and ensured the rights for women and blacks.

People born after some age seem to remember some bizarro version of history, when it was all oppression with no redeeming qualities, and if you were a woman or black etc you were as good as dead. People think we made some huge strides in the 00s, probably because they have no experience of the 60s to 90s. That main strides have been done for gay/lesbian rights (and even those were increasingly more permissible after the 70s and the sexual revolution).

Though all of the above are beyond the point. As if to have those other things (affordable housing, college and healthcare) that the 50s-80s enjoyed, you need to also have racism and sexism... How does that compute?

[brain5ide]

Not that it's required, but it's the effect of progress. Individual progress requires focus. With these new options being available every single day, those that have scarce resources have more and more problems with optimising the for their best outcome.

On a poker table, one that has more chips, has advantage over one that has less. Doesn't make it unfair.