this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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And we live in a time and place where most of our base needs are easily met. Mind has far more time to ponder.
Compared to the middle ages, yes. But we‘re not better off than in the 60s I believe.
Middle class white people in America aren't, but pretty much the entire rest of the world is.
Can you give an example for that? I‘d like to understand what you refer to.
The quality of life worldwide has steadily been increasing since industrialization.
The quality of life of middle class white Americans has remained pretty much unchanged since the end of the second world war.
Im not going to get examples, but that's what my point was.
I‘m sorry but this is not correct. People used to live in one worker households and got by. The housing prices (only thing I could find) in the US has tripled since the sixties which is an increase of 7% pa.
GDPs are rising fast but wages are not keeping up. Here‘s a source for europe: https://www.ft.com/content/0a245c28-6cc3-11e9-80c7-60ee53e6681d
It’s not like poor white people are having ouwie now. The 1% are 10000%ing their income while the rest goes home empty.
You're talking about incomes, I was talking about quality of life.
You don't need to convince me we're underpaid. You would need to convince me that our quality of life is worse than our parents was, though.
As someone with a special interest in psychology I would say that being faced with inequality compared to our parents, we‘re definitely off to a bad start.
Our outlook on the future is fundamentally worse. The planet is fucked, most of us will never own a house, stuff is getting more and more expensive while we‘re being exploited at work. All while we‘re told the world is so much better than it was.
Those of us with the awareness to recognize that we are not seeing an improvwment are the ones that are worse off. I reckon it is another reason why social media and other distractions are rising and stress diseases are insanely high.
TL;DR: You can be factually better off while being constantly reminded how bad the situation really is and feel worse. We’re in a psychological crisis.