gp actually answered that with "especially if you want to live like it is the 1940s".
There is a quiet denial about how luxurious modern living is. People just flat-out underestimate how much work it takes to keep the infrastructure of the modern world in place and humming - traditional infrastructure, IT grids, distribution of goods and services (particularly maintaining an enormous fleet of wheeled vehicles).
I know a lot of people who are poorer than I am but spend more, because they just don't clamp down on things like car usage, sending money to their children, pets and ordering a daily coffee. The only thing that will force them to live a simple lifestyle is literally having no money.
Sometimes people maneuver into a position where they have no choice, because they make bad long-term lifestyle choices early on, but so far the evidence is that human demand for stuff and services is infinite. People use their spare hours to gather and consume more.
> There is a quiet denial about how luxurious modern living is.
Absolutely! I genuinely marvel every time I go into a supermarket. I can buy a huge variety of delicious foods from all the corners of the globe. 200 years ago a king couldn't eat this well.
Also, I have literal robots doing my housework! A robot cleans the floor. A robot cleans the dishes. A robot cleans my clothes. It's nice to take a step back and appreciate all this.
But they could eat very much better -- all free-range, well made, top quality cuts (not hastily made, lower tier BS, with all kinds of additives to increase self-life or make it appear more appealing in the shelves), made fresh on their own premises or bought from the best artisans.
And of course all prepared at their whim by their army of personal chefs, and served by an army of servers.
And they had all the time they liked to enjoy those things, with friends and family, not having to gulp them down between 60-hour work weeks...
>There is a quiet denial about how luxurious modern living is
There's also a big denial about how luxurious 1940s living was compared to 1840s or the palaeolithic ages...
...and that's just as well, because it's not really relevant. Living standards and necessities are determined socially, in comparison with what others of the same era have (and expect people to have), not with comparison to the past.
Someone that lives in nice large cave in Malibu with rocks for furniture and self-made pottery, and a stock of food he has hunted himself, would be considered well-off in the cavemen era, but homeless today.
Leaving aside how arguable it is, this definition of living standards is not relevant to this subthread, which is about the claim that prosperity has not been increasing for decades, followed by an unfavorable comparison to the 40s/50s. By such a useless definition, the claim is tautological: of course prosperity can't have increased of living standards are defined as being eternally static. Incidentally, it's a subthread you started and a claim you made, so it's a little bizarre to see the goalposts being moved so dramatically.
> Living standards and necessities are determined socially, in comparison with what others of the same era have (and expect people to have), not with comparison to the past.
By this definition aggregate living standards can never improve (nor decline) over time.
Ah yes. The poor are poor because of poor morals, instead of you, who is of good moral standing.
The poor are poor due to lack of money. This is caused by increasing costs of healthcare, education and houses, you know those basic things needed to live. And by a capitalistic class taking about 95% of all gains from productivity increases. Saying millions of people are poor because because of bad morals is disgusting and completely false.
Ugh, poor money management skills have nothing to do with morals. It's fine to say someone has poor money management skills just like it's fine to say someone has poor C++ coding skills.
Creating a budget and sticking to it requires behavioral changes that take time to sink in.
It's extremely unlikely that you make the perfect amount of money to cover your exact needs that result in you being broke. It's much more likely that people adapt to a system of spending all money that comes in on whatever 'priority item' pops into their mind because they lack the skill and/or discipline of budgeting. This is evident in higher income people as well that suffer from lifestyle creep.
Again, this has nothing to do with morals. It's just a statement about the appalling lack of financial education in the vast majority of the US population.
I agree with your core thesis, but it could probably have been expressed better. In the USA there's a moral system that some people have that equates wealth to virtue. In my experience, it leads to conclusions that are generally dehumanizing and unempathetic of others, which is definitely not a long term sustainable foundation for a free society.
There is a quiet denial about how luxurious modern living is. People just flat-out underestimate how much work it takes to keep the infrastructure of the modern world in place and humming - traditional infrastructure, IT grids, distribution of goods and services (particularly maintaining an enormous fleet of wheeled vehicles).
I know a lot of people who are poorer than I am but spend more, because they just don't clamp down on things like car usage, sending money to their children, pets and ordering a daily coffee. The only thing that will force them to live a simple lifestyle is literally having no money.
Sometimes people maneuver into a position where they have no choice, because they make bad long-term lifestyle choices early on, but so far the evidence is that human demand for stuff and services is infinite. People use their spare hours to gather and consume more.