Things have gotten better and progress has been made from times past, it just seems worse now because we have more access to information. We’ve come far, and have further to go!
the last two are easily debunked. I hate shit like this because it reinforces an idea that time = progress. There are influential and powerful people alive today who would reverse any of these trends if it meant money in their pocket.
It’s bewildering why they decided to restate the 1st point as the 3rd point when they could’ve just said the average retirement age is 10 years lower than it was 100 years ago https://www.statista.com/statistics/319983/average-retirement-age-in-the-us/
I don’t get why they are comparing things to the depression rather than after ww2. 50 years would be a better measure. Also retirement wise people can’t always choose to so income and home ownership in retirment would be more practical.
How is the last one debunked?
Classic SMBC
While “technically” true. We all know the average lifespan was brought down by a high infant mortality. So comparingbthat to when peopke retired is meaningless. That said, it dies seem worse because with more information we realize how much better it could be. 100 years ago, the average american had no idea how common slums were outside the US. And those that knew considered those slum people less than human. So what we have really done is expanded who is considered human, and who matters. That certainly does make it look worse.
Yeah, mean lifespan is meaningless if the distribution is bimodal. Median would be a more useful average.
100 years ago, the average american had no idea how common slums were outside the US.
This was and still is very true. The level of the poverty in places like that is astounding and beyond the experience of most anyone in a 1st world country. I grew up in America, in poverty of the level that my single mother was only eating what she could scrounge at work some years so she’d have enough to feed us kids. Yet when I deployed to Panama in the mid 90’s for a 2 month military operation, and had to operate in many of the rural areas of Panama during those missions, I had my eyes opened to what real 3rd world poverty looks like. The way I grew up would have been a huge improvement for many of the people I saw there. You can’t really understand it until you’ve seen it with your own eyes.
Also, significantly less dead babies increasing average lifespan is a very happy way to boost that number
*fewer dead babies
I think we can all agree to that.
Wealth inequality is possibly the highest it’s ever been in history.
I wouldn’t be surprised if food wasted (food that goes straight to the trash) nowadays is also at peak numbers, or close to.
During the Bolsonaro years (2019-2022), Brazil saw a drastic increase in extreme poverty, made worse by the pandemic. Poor people were literally scavenging carcasses for anything that could still be eaten. We’re still trying to recover.
Do not take any of those good things for granted, they can be very easily reverted by a small number of psychopath assholes.
Wealth inequality is higher now than it was back when most of us were serfs who barely owned the clothes on our backs while one family lived in a castle and owned the rest of us?
Yes. Modernity made it a lot easier to create wealth out of thin air. However most of the worlds lowest class have it better in pretty much every metric than that family.
This is some real Fox news “80% of Americans own a refrigerator” optimism
There’s more wealth being transferred in circulation than ever before
There’s more food being produced than ever before
Your points are invalid without the context we need better regulation and methods to prevent collapse and waste. We’re literally outgrowing by production over our knowledge.
Wealth inequality is possibly the highest it’s ever been in history.
What does this mean and why is it a problem?
Yes there are more rich people now with more money than poor people. But they don’t exactly have the power of Mansa Musa.
Also, I’d rather my neighbor be a billionaire and me be a thousandaire, than my neighbor be a thousandaire and me be a negativeair
If you like this post maybe read The Progress Paradox. It goes in much more detail than this meme, it then poses the question but then why aren’t we happy. Without giving answers it does point to possible paths. It’s a good book.
Refreshing to see this instead of the usual screeching here on lemmy. I really need to stop looking at 99% of this bullshit on here.
Atleast for 2 minutes I believed the average quality of content will not go to the shitter like reddit.
What’s the 99% of this site that is bs to you? And why are you hanging around if it’s that terrible? Genuinely asking.
99% of lemmy is: bashing and memeing rich, companies, conservatives. Posting outrage and celeb articles. Honestly these issues are not even on my mind a fraction as much as it is for most guys here.
Im mainly hanging around for my preferred topics to reach a critical level so that it will be enjoyable.
As of right now, even main lemmy sites like technology is not even about technology but this bullshit “how Musk fucked over twitter at this moment”. And look at that. Wasnt this trend taken 1:1 from reddit. I cant clean up properly because this spam keeps leaking into my feed. I cant subscribe to my only preferred communities as they are too small.
sounds like you need an echo chamber, friend! Truthsocial sounds more up your alley
Does a site like that have proper communities for things like spirituality, Zen, audio equipment and drugs?
I think its pretty self explanatory that we are already in an echo chamber since I never fucking said anything about what my political beliefs are. The current lemmy community is kind of okay to keep up with the events in the world, but still dogshit. And I want to look at the conservative bullshittery even less.
I have high standards.
I think its pretty self explanatory that we are already in an echo chamber since I never fucking said anything about what my political beliefs are.
If you don’t want people to make assumptions about what you think/believe then you should express them instead of only listing what you don’t like and leaving them to infer. It’s also not out of left field to assume you may be conservative, at least relative to the community, based on what you said. It’s a little odd to me to see you get angry at people misunderstanding/making incorrect assumptions when you’re appearing to be deliberately opaque. Just my 2 cents here.
That never worked out for me. People feel attacked regardless. They might not comment (in any meaningful way) as they have no way of reflecting on my argument, but they still downvote.
Maybe it didn’t work out previously - I have no idea what you did or the context of those cases - but I can tell you with certainty that what you did today didn’t work either, so I’m not sure what to say man. In addition, I see no downvotes, but I’m on Kbin so may be simply not seeing them across instances.
You’re free to not be upfront that’s your prerogative. But lashing out at folks for incorrectly connecting the dots you’re laying out isn’t really accomplishing anything. You’re also being very hostile/bristle-y which will inevitably engender a similar response.
Either way it’s neither here nor there. Ignore me or don’t! Just trying to be helpful.
Nonsense. Don’t read something that was never said. Really simple. If you need to bring it up, formulate a passive, neutral question.
It really is easy to lose track of how far we’ve come until we look back. Thanks for this!
Glass half full guy 😂
Im as cynical as they come and I want to see more posts like this.
I still have an urge to be cynical, but less so.
I don’t really care about any of that. All that matters is that I’m constantly having to fight to keep wfh, it’s impossible to get health issues diagnosed and I just keep wasting hundreds of dollars on trying, I’ve resigned myself to staying untreated for adhd and whatever else, I am sick of having to work a job where I need to interact with people, and all the foods I enjoy the most make me incredibly sick and I’m sure are gonna kill me one day. If I had a choice I wouldn’t have been born. I am very lucky, I have no money problems, didn’t have to buy my house, have a good long term stable relationship, not having to deal with having had kids, quiet neighborhood with no crime… but things should be a lot better than this. People can shove their head in the sand and pretend things are not going to end very badly for humankind and I personally don’t care. I live my life and enjoy what I like and either I’ll be dead or will witness the glorious end of humanity. I just hope my AC keeps up with climate change lol!
Lmao.
Arbeit Macht Frei
Jedem das Seine
The average American didn’t die at age 51. And, while the average life expectancy might have been 51 years, that’s a Spiders Georg moment.
The life expectancy was thrown off by all the child mortality. If you lived past 10 years, you were likely to live to 70.
Yep, and now there’s not a deluge of dead children dragging the average down, which is objectively pretty great
Correct; “average” and average can be different things.
It’s not like we don’t still have problems to fix, but always only focusing on them doesn’t show just how far we’ve come.
The problem is that the line between “we’ve come a long way” and it’s corollary “therefore why are you upset/why do we have to address [insert issue]?” is razor thin.
Celebrating success is great. Using it as a cudgel to stop further success is not.
Yeah definitely. But only thinking of the worst everything all the time is bad for mental health and isn’t reflective of reality.
I don’t think anyone is advocating for that
But the bad news is what social media and news amplifies.
And most people agree that’s a bad thing so I’m not entirely sure what we’re talking about or who we are addressing anymore tbh since it’s no one in this thread
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humans are an invasive & overpopulated species
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people can read but still choose to be ignorant
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Americans working til their 60s is sad
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Because of the rising population, there are more homeless people than ever before
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