Would you rather be middle class in 2013 or peasant in 1813?

[Jester]

Wow. That is new even for HA paranoid conspiracists.

BTW, cocksucker, don't throw labels around without evidence.

[Teal Lantern]

Did Black families get separated by sale of a member? Yes, if the owners went bankrupt etc. But I bet Black families were STILL more intact than today, on average. No AIDS, no crack, no gangs, no welfare.

This was my point about Armenians under Turks. Were there arbitrary tortures and murders under the Turks? Yes. But even so, as a race we were building churches and schools and making babies. Now, in America, our young men jack off and our women are sluts.

My point is that injustices and hardships of the past have to be weighed against intact families, more virile men, more feminine women, better human (i.e. Christian) values overall.

Looking at how quickly women throw away "family values" when mechanization and the welfare/chilamony state offers a 1-2-punch alternative to Father Knows Best, I'm inclined to think it was only ever an arrangement of convenience (to women). IOW, the families stayed intact because more women preferred that to going it alone, and the state didn't have the money to carry them.

When the distribution network breaks down again, women will suddenly be "traditional" again.

[Jester]

Well that begs the question, if life was so much easier back then and food was so much better, why is it that a white male:

- in 1850 could only expect to make it to age 38 at birth or to age 60 if alive at 20;
- in 1900 could only expect to make it to age 42 at birth or to age 61 if alive at 20;

VS

- in 2004 could expect to make it to age 76 at birth or 77 if alive at 20?

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html

Life is much safer, and medicine is much better. Yes.

Weigh that against a virgin wife, freedom, Christian values in schools, no police state, etc.

If you want an environment where expectations are generally low, visit or expat to a poor country. You do have that choice you know.

Don't you live in Taiwan? So I guess you agree with me? Thanks again!

One very great thing about life in this century so far is that as citizens of the developed world, we have choices, many choices. 100 years ago, that simply was not the case for most people.

Wrong again. 100 years ago, relocation was a lot easier.

To get into America, Ellis Island. Easy-peasy. Uneducated people flocked in.

Now, even to move to some fleabitten backward country, you need proof of funds, FBI report, notarization of FBI report IN GODDAM WEST VIRGINIA:roll: , consularization, bank statements, clean criminal record, verifiable guaranteed income, and an onward airline ticket. In some countries a divorced man needs permisson from his ex-wife, verifying child support is up to date, to go there. I imagine coming IN to the U.S. today is similarly challenging if not more.

Coming in from the South, in the 19th century, you just waded or swam the Rio Grande. No fences, no border patrol, no ICE or TSA.

Leaving America was even easier than getting in. No passport to show. In fact, no passports at all. Just buy a ticket and go.

Oh and one more wrinkle: there ARE no free, old-fashioned White Northern European countries with good Christian values. So Americans are forced to change their culture and language in order to obtain even a semblance of what was previously a birthright.

[Jester]

Damn some people are more desperate then I thought. They would give up modern basics just to get with women more....

Is getting a quality woman, and raising a family, really so trivial and unimportant? Why are you on HA?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTGT7giq3Ss

[Jester]

Well that begs the question, if life was so much easier back then and food was so much better, why is it that a white male:

- in 1850 could only expect to make it to age 38 at birth or to age 60 if alive at 20;
- in 1900 could only expect to make it to age 42 at birth or to age 61 if alive at 20;

VS

- in 2004 could expect to make it to age 76 at birth or 77 if alive at 20?

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html

Life is much safer, and medicine is much better. Yes.

Weigh that against a virgin wife, freedom, Christian values in schools, no police state, etc.

If you want an environment where expectations are generally low, visit or expat to a poor country. You do have that choice you know.

Don't you live in Taiwan? So I guess you agree with me? Thanks again!

One very great thing about life in this century so far is that as citizens of the developed world, we have choices, many choices. 100 years ago, that simply was not the case for most people.

Wrong again. 100 years ago, relocation was a lot easier.

To get into America, Ellis Island. Easy-peasy. Uneducated people flocked in.

Now, even to move to some fleabitten backward country, you need proof of funds, FBI report, notarization of FBI report IN GODDAM WEST VIRGINIA , consularization, bank statements, clean criminal record, verifiable guaranteed income, and an onward airline ticket. In some countries a divorced man needs permisson from his ex-wife, verifying child support is up to date, to go there. I imagine coming IN to the U.S. today is similarly challenging if not more.

Coming in from the South, in the 19th century, you just waded or swam the Rio Grande. No fences, no border patrol, no ICE or TSA.

Leaving America was even easier than getting in. No passport to show. In fact, no passports at all. Just buy a ticket and go.

Oh and one more wrinkle: there ARE no free, old-fashioned White Northern European countries with good Christian values. So Americans are forced to change their culture and language in order to obtain even a semblance of what was previously a birthright.

[Jester]

But, in 30s, a huge percentage (like one-third) would find no work at all .... 80 years ago, maybe you could busk, hop trains from town to town looking for work, or perhaps try to join a circus lol.

Today there are no circuses to join... and you cant show up unwashed from hopping a train and then get a job. It was EASIER back then. No resume needed!

Oh BTW only around 70% of people are working today. Look at full-time male employment back then and today. It's at depression level today.

As for debt, it's a choice. Nobody forces you to use credit cards or take out a mortgage or student loan. I've never taken out debt except to do temporarily lever up high yielding bonds or do carry trades with currencies. My family owns their farmland and houses debt free even though they could borrow against them at very low interest rates if they wanted. We managed to make it through uni with no student debt by working summers and even part-time during the year. Again, its a choice. Today, people can get access to very cheap credit by historical standards whereas it was probably much harder to borrow a few decades ago even though rates were much higher. It's up to the individual or family to decide. If they make unwise choices, it's their own responsibility.

Not if you were TOLD by all authorities that that was the wise course.

Lots of young people have been snookered by high school guidance counselors, college recruiters, and ALL MEDIA, left and right, into useless majors and massive debt to get a college degree.

The victim of a con bears responsibility, but so does the con artist.

Re the family farm, your forebears ACQUIRED it. So you now own it, and are not feeling any pain. How easy is it to acquire farmland now versus back then?

And if life is so peachy keen in the U.S., why are you in Asia?

[Jester]

Yup. No need to go abroad to find a virgin bride. No need to outside your own language, culture or country.

Yes, if your dream would have been to get a virgin bride and be done with it, where would you be now? Probably together with an old woman, probably the only one you ever had the privledge to be intimate with. Be careful what you wish for.............

Mmm in the nineteenth century, me and the old woman would have eight to ten children, quite a few grandchildren by now.

And family holidays would be happy occasions, with the whole family together, instead of mixed joy and sadness over the loss of a once-intact family.

Is it possible we could have lost some children to fever etc? Yes. Is it possible she could have died in childbirth? Yes. In that case, men usually remarried quickly and continued on.

Still, even with tragedies, an intact and thriving family beats a shattered one.

[Jester]

Well that begs the question, if life was so much easier back then and food was so much better, why is it that a white male:

- in 1850 could only expect to make it to age 38 at birth or to age 60 if alive at 20;
- in 1900 could only expect to make it to age 42 at birth or to age 61 if alive at 20;

VS

- in 2004 could expect to make it to age 76 at birth or 77 if alive at 20?

Probably there is a certain mental element to this. White men had the common decency to f**k off when they had lived their useful lifespan, rather than squandering the family resources on their creature comforts while waiting around to see what kind of cancer they are going to get and then leaving everyone else with nothing like the selfish old c**ts of today.

+1

[Jester]

Actually, the question is, "Would you rather be middle class in 2013 or peasant in 1813?". But I've answered more generously (to the pro olden days side) by comparing average middle class of 1813 to that today. Presumably, middle class had it better than so-called peasants beck in 1813.

A peasant IS middle class, at least in nineteenth century America. In 1776, ninety percent of free Americans were self-employed farmers working their own land. Life was agrarian but not feudal. We were not serfs. Our peasants were not downtrodden.

I realize that, in England etc., the term "middle class" once meant businessmen and professionals who were not landowning nobility. But I have never heard the word used that way here in America. Usually here it just means "ordinary folks". So today, a guy with a steady job is middle class, and so is a real estate agent.

So I read the OP as comparing an ordinary Joe nowadays with an ordinary Joe back then.

[Jester]

That really wasn't the question was it?

If you ask most turkeys at the Tyson Foods or Purdue feedlot if they want to live in the wild and scratch out their own meals on their own, they would just look at you, say 'gobble gobble", and go back to eating what they're fed.

It's not about taking a vote.

The thread is about what each of US would do, not asking the turkeys.

....My posts have been arguing pretty much in favor of 2013 middle class lifestyle which is directly relevant to the question. The turkey analogy is a red herring and doesn't make a lot of sense since turkey's don't even have capacity to make such choices.

That was the kind of the point. You said "how would people vote", for modern comforts or for yesteryear. Obviously they would vote with you, for comfort. The point is, so would turkeys on a feedlot. The voting opinion of domesticated creatures is not an objective evaluation of freedom versus the feedlot.

There's not voting box in this post. But you gotta wonder, if you life was better back in 1813 and we can get a very good idea about it through recorded history, why wouldn't people vote to abandon modern life and return there if it was possible.

Because they are... turkeys?

BTW, did you watch the recent movie "Lincoln". Talk about grim and depressing. And that's life in the White House lol. Imagine having to use kerosene lamps at night and smell the strong stench of horse shit whenever you went outside. Imagine trying to get somewhere on a rainy day when the muddy roads were flooded. OMG, do u really think you would be happy living like that?

And here I thought you were a farm boy!

[Jester]

Basic necessities (except clothing) have kept pace with gold. Gold price increase has far outpaced wages.

Are you sure? What data is that based on? For example, check out these charts on food prices:

http://mjperry.blogspot.tw/2008/08/over ... allen.html

Ford kinda made a car in the 20s like Bill Gates made a computer in the late 90s, a cut price mass marketed have to have item for most families. So it's kind of stretch classify a regular car as a luxury then or now. Try surviving where you live without one and you'll see what a necessity it is.

Cars ARE a necessity today. Five per family, in fact, if you have three kids in college. Cars were $500 in the past. What do they cost now? Do the math yourself.

Re gold, again no charts are needed. Gold was $20 an ounce throughout the nineteenth century. Now it's what? $1800? $1400? Sure it jumps around because the dollar is nonconvertible. But it's still a rough measure of real inflation. I currently figure a 75 fold increase in prices since 1900. The "nickel beer" should now cost $3.75 at the local tavern. About right.

Technology brings down costs and downsizes electronics, but electronics are necessities only today, not in the past.

Yes charts or some other sources are needed or else you are just talking out of your a**. You weren't alive then so your info has to come from somewhere. Why not cite it to back up your claims?

You talk about gold being consistently $20 per ounce in the nineteenth century. Maybe that's true though why not cite your source? But even it is true, so what? From 1850 to 1900, there was virtually no inflation in USA. A US$ in 1850 was worth about the same as it was in 1900.

Sorry, I thought everyone knew that there was a $10 gold coin was called an Eagle, and was roughly half an ounce.

No, I wasn't alive back then, when gold was confiscated. But my dad was, and he told me about it. He had an Eagle, but had to give it up.

But anyway, since you like charts, here you go:

http://www.nma.org/pdf/gold/his_gold_prices.pdf