[rwallace]

Okay, but if you define the essentials that way, not one person who ever lived before the mid-twentieth century or thereabouts was ever able to obtain the essentials for any price. (The standard of healthcare you get today by never seeing a doctor in your entire life, just taking into account the protection you get from other people having been vaccinated against the deadliest infectious diseases, is better than anything that used to be available to kings and presidents.)

So if you want a better standard of living than Caesar or Charlemagne or Washington could have dreamed of, you have to work, yes. Is that shocking or unreasonable? I doubt the men I just named would have thought so.