It's Getting Better All the Time

[juanez]

If you're into statistics and want to know how we stand compared to society 100 years ago, read "It's Getting Better All the Time" by Moore & Simon. Very uplifting.

This book puts many false arguments to rest. For example, the gloom and doom statements by many that the lower class is growing and the rich keep getting richer.

In fact, 50% of the US population was "poor" before 1900, when most worked some sort of farming job. How many are "poor" today? 15% and shrinking. And "poor" Americans make about 3 times higher than the average per capita income of the world.

Damn corporations....

[ACPlayer]

This one may be bang on, but you can use statistics to prove most anything.

[juanez]

Very true for most things. Many topics in this book really can't be disputed. For instance, when's the last time you heard of someone getting Polio? In 1950, there were 50,000 deaths in the US from polio. In 1998, there were 0 deaths from polio.

Can't really "massage" those numbers too much with stats like that.

[jdl22]

[ QUOTE ]

Damn corporations....

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I haven't read the book but perhaps a key aspect to this was that there are more controls over corporations now than before. Anti-trust legislation was pretty weak in the 19th century and got a bit more teeth in the 1900s.

[Cyrus]

I am sure you have meant the whole thing as a joke but I will comment on it, briefly, in any case.

The history of the United States is indicative of capitalism's total superiority and the need to apply it everywhere with equal force, only if you are into results-affected thinking mode. For starters, the American economy runs on a percentage of the world's energy raw materials that outstrips its percentage of population and/or size. Arithmetically, this renders the model unworkable for all countries. (This is the part where the priests of the Invisible Hand of the Market start mumbling about technology taking care of that li'l disturbing fact.)

As to the poor in America "getting better", well, my dear Marie Antoinette, you should know that never in the history of the world did we have so many poor (not to mention hungry) people on Earth. The United States, being a superpower, manages to "take care" (a misnomer that) of its poor better than lesser countries as did Rome or any other superpower in its heyday.

And if the global argument doesn't move you, go back to the original stats: Technology and the overall advance in living conditions have made indeed life relatively better for all, including the poor (e.g. we are all in less danger of dying from cholera than 200 years ago), but the poor (not to mention the hungry) in America are far more, in numbers and percentages, than you submitted.

Fifteen percent?? What's that figure? By which criterion did you come up with it?

[Bez]

Maybe the poor in America deserve to be poor.