[bPspGiJT8Y]

I'd like to believe this too, but given that medieval peasants and antique slaves worked more or less the same hours as we do I'm quite pessimistic. Whenever we automate something they just come up with a new bullshit job that adds nothing to the standards of living, instead of reducing the workload for everyone.

[kortilla]

The standards of living are far better now than they were 80 years ago.

[lm28469]

When people didn't have ipad pros but could afford rent/mortgage and 3 kids on a single paycheck ?

We're flooded in useless shit but can't afford the basics. So yes, underfloor heating, smart light bulbs and google maps are great but is it really all there is to life

[retrac]

The real cost of food has steadily decreased for the last 200 years. (Much of the decrease was before 1980, though.) Here in Canada, one hour of labour at minimum wage, will buy you a 10 kilogram bag of flour, or 4 litres of cooking oil. That's enough calories for days. That is insane buying power compared to the historical norm, right into the 20th century.

This is the cost of food as % of household income in the USA over the last century: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/foodnew.jpg

My grandfather was born in western Europe, in what is today one of the wealthiest countries in the world. He was one of 14 children (of whom 8 survived), born to an illiterate peasant on a rural farm. This was pretty normal. You may have a retroactively gentrified image of what America was like in the 1940s - nearly half of homes didn't have an indoor toilet or electricity at the start of that decade.

[lm28469]

Ok but again, housing is the exact opposite:

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...

and worker productivity vs income:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tobias-Arbogast/publica...

I'm 200% positive that both my grandparents and great grandparents had it better in pretty much every aspect (job security, housing, future perspectives) than we currently do. We have unlimited bread and circuses but scratch the surface and we're worse in every other aspects: I couldn't afford 14 kids even if 10 died instantly.

[nojvek]

Housing is insanely expensive. in US, healthcare costs are through the roof as well.

The only way I see long term housing becoming affordable is heavy taxes on single family homes as investment properties. Also open up zoning and allow builders to build.

Also naturally less kids, means less humans, means less demand.

[kortilla]

Unless your great grandparents were born after world war 2, they had it worse in every aspect. People starved in the Great Depression. The only people who starve today are those who refuse to ask for help.

Infant mortality back then was atrocious, my grandpa had two (out of 13) siblings die at birth. He grew up working on the small family farm that was the family’s primary food source with the little excess produced sold to buy supplies for it. A bad harvest meant the whole family starving for months. Healthcare was essentially non-existent.

Step into the 50s during the baby boom and the huge economic boon that came from the post war rebuild and things started to look up, but they were still crap compared to today.

The houses they could so easily afford looked quaint but were absolutely trash quality on average. The ones left today are the nicest from that era. The average ones were gone by the 70s. That’s available today too, go get a manufactured home and it will be roughly the same quality but with better insulation, plumbing and electrical.

>I couldn't afford 14 kids even if 10 died instantly.

You absolutely could if you fed, housed, treated, and schooled them the way they were back when this was common.

Job security was also terrible back then. There was a reason unions were more popular.

You’re really getting a rose colored view of the past and I’m not sure where it’s from.

[BehindBlueEyes]

There are people starving now in my community in Canada and it's not a problem of pride or asking for help... It is due to multiple issues interacting and compounding. Limited pools of volunteers for the food bank to be open, lack of funding for non profits that help with food security, increased costs of food due to remoteness, lack of appropriate housing and transport esp. for elders who end up isolated, kids bullying each other when accepting free meals at school (that was solved by making meals free for all at least) etc. I myself only started scratching the surface of the problem really.

[BehindBlueEyes]

Sure, but what quality of food? It's not affordable if you pay for it later with health issues.

[fennecfoxy]

Just need to finally tax the rich, all major human affecting industries made publicly owned or heavily regulated; water, food, housing, internet, healthcare, etc.

I just wish people would vote for this.

[Jensson]

80 years ago was ww2, not the 60's.

[lm28469]

I couldn't afford my great grandparents house on either side of the family, I'm in tech and don't have kids (they had 5 and 2). I can't even qualify for a mortgage for an equivalent house today in the same city

[kortilla]

Get off your fucking ass and move like everyone back then did. They didn’t all sit around and cry that they couldn’t afford to live in Manhattan where their great grandparents lived.

[Paul-Craft]

Listen up, you little shit, why don't you back the fuck down and have a little fucking respect for your fellow commenter?

See how you like it? Assume good faith and have some goddamn manners.

[Drakim]

Imagine if the standards of living goes up even more, we have x50 better medicine, huge houses for everybody, fine silken clothes, wall-sized TVs, and gourmet truffle soup every day of the week. But everybody is still working long hours, and only get to see their kids in the morning and a few hours before bedtime.

But no worries, even more improvements are on the horizon. Within 20 years, you'll get all that, but it's gold plated, and encrusted with diamonds too. People live until they are 200, houses rotate to always face the sun, and TVs are now so big they wrap 360 degrees around the entire room's walls. But you still gotta spend most of your waking hours in an office, copying numbers from one excel to another.

Is that really that good of an improvement? Do we measure quality of living purely in material wealth, and not in the time we get to spend with loved ones, or our passions?

In the distant past, a huge proportion of our lives was spent just making sure you had food to survive on. The part where we "spend a huge portion of our lives" seems to stick, even though food is no longer scarce.

[voisin]

I don’t disagree with your statements, but anyone at anytime can choose to opt for more time and less gold plating. There are lots of people making these choices - check out the r/FIRE, r/LeanFIRE, r/FatFIRE communities on Reddit.

Check out the book “Your Money or Your Life” https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/78428.Your_Money_or_Your...

[lm28469]

> I don’t disagree with your statements, but anyone at anytime can choose to opt for more time and less gold plating.

"Anyone" unless you're part of the bottom 80% earners, unless FIRE means being homeless you'll need more money than what most people can attain if they saved 100% of their paycheck for 30 years

[Jensson]

You can live on half the space as average people and eat half as expensive food, that lets you FIRE on an average wage. Doing that puts you much closer to typical living standards 60 years ago where people ate home cooked food and lived in much smaller homes.

[lm28469]

> You can live on half the space as average people and eat half as expensive food, that lets you FIRE on an average wage

Not even close, unless your version FIRE is retiring at 63 instead of 67 and still get 80% of your pension

Average salary in germany: 42k gross, 23k net

Renting a small place : 500 euros (let's say it includes heating, electricity/gas)

Let's say you only eat potatoe and drink rain water: 3 * 1kg * 2 euros/kilos = 180 euros

Good job, after 15 years you have 210k euros you can retire at ~35 years old. This money will allow you to buy a flat in a ghost town and to continue your potatoe fuelled life until you die of old age at ~90

Now remember you have to pay water/electricity/gas, health insurance, property tax, &c.

[llamaimperative]

But nowhere close to as good as they hypothetically should be given the explosion in productivity.

[llamaimperative]

Land and therefore the cost of everything that depends on it (i.e. everything) just gets more expensive.