"Yeah, hello, Peter. What's happening? Listen, um, I'm going to need you to go ahead and come in on Saturday. So, if you could be here around 9, that would be great. Mmhkay? Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. I'm also going to need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too."

Not really true but it’s a nice story

It's a nice story and it's true.

Weekends, sick days, vacation days, being paid in legal tender and not company scrip, maternity leave, safety regulations, disabled affordance, banning child labor, civil rights and womens' rights (while they lasted) and the minimum wage. All due to socialist activism and a non-zero amount of violence.

Hold your socialist jihad propaganda a bit off, sundays were definitely off days for festivities, visiting church etc. Definitely all over Europe, its still frowned upon in many places to do any amount of ie house work during sundays.

Banning child labor is literally the "I'm helping" meme but for government.

Child went away mostly on its own (as did labor by the disabled) because industrialization made all that non-competitive compared to a normal adult operating some machine. Then, once child labor was relegated to a few niches of limited overall economic importance the government showed up and banned it to win a few brownie points from some jerks.

Child labor isn't a success of some socialists 100yr ago. It's a success of some propagandists 100yr ago.

When I was a kid “child care” was either your grandparents or the neighborhood kid watching 6 screaming toddlers at once.

I’m pretty sure that doesn’t cost more than college today :).

Our standards have just risen massively.

Many parents would probably love to have grandparents close enough and willing to watch the kids while they work.

It sounds crazy now, but prior to the 1970s, sometimes even the mother might primarily provide the child care.

Do you really think that dropping of your kids at a flu factory is a higher standard than having caring relatives (often even one of the parents themselves) available to give them a good childhood?

We wouldn’t expect productivity to keep growing from one innovation. Growth requires new innovations every year. So in the absence of innovations productivity would stop increasing.

> So in the absence of innovations productivity would stop increasing.

But isn't the premise of "progress" a continuing improvement of things? At what point does it change to "stagnation"?

Maybe a lot of applications of computer technology merely represent civilizations' most intricate and expensive hobby?

According to USDA average spending on restaurants is around $4k/yr. So close to 10% of average income.

Does that have any bearing on the experiences of those in the lower four wealth quintiles though ?

The trouble with averages is they don't always say much that is accurate about most people .. it all rests on distributions.

Right, you need the median numbers. HNW people are likely skewing the mean.

You could still do that if you are ok living at 1950 standard of living. Average income back then was $26k in today’s dollars. Even low paying jobs today are better than that.

I’m sure you will say something about housing costing more, which it does. But also many things cost less, such as food and clothing.

point me at the apartments or houses you can afford today on a single, minimum-wage income with 40 hours a week. I dont care if its 1950s standard vs todays standard.

Median income is vastly higher. Did you live before ~1990? Standard of living was a lot lower back then, it’s pretty apparent.

Maybe in some places??? I am an 80s kid, and was raised with what we'd call something like lower middle class. Neither parent has a college education, worked minimum wage, and owned a home and fed 4 kids. We didn't have as much stuff... But we sure were outside and playing a lot more back then.

I lived two decades before 1990.

Life was better then than it is now. But the 1990s were arguably the high point.

How was the standard of living lower?

Mostly what I can think of is access to medical treatments developed in the last few decades. Comforts like A/C are more widespread now (but they were less necessary when we were under 400 ppm CO2).

I was waiting for the classic “why would you pay for Dropbox” comment

I wonder if there’s any reason SF has that problem yet almost no other cities do.

Not everyone benefits since many people take the standard deduction.

If you own a house and pay interest, especially like this person, they'd max out the SALT deduction with the house alone, much better than the standard deduction.