On 2/8/2012 3:12 AM, Schweik wrote:
On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:55:50 -0800, Hawke
wrote:

On 2/7/2012 2:00 PM, George Plimpton wrote:
On 2/7/2012 1:40 PM, Hawke wrote:
On 2/7/2012 5:27 AM, wrote:
On Feb 7, 1:22 am, Jeff wrote:

The poor in 1900 did not have cell phones, HD televisions, cars,
microwave ovens, and such. The poor in 2000 have all of those things.

Neither did the rich. What is your point? Lots of things have changed,
usually for the better, over the past 112 years, even for the poor. The
poor of today are better off than the poor of 1900, just like everybody
else is. So what?

My point is that Hawke is wrong when he says there has been no
change. If you use constant standards, the poor today are well off.
But if you say the poor is the fifteen percent of the population that
has the lowest income, there is no way to change things. There will
always be people that make less than others.

Dan



Of course things have changed over the course of hundreds of years. But
someone living in a 20' trailer with a small flat screen and the other
things that come with it has all the modern conveniences from hot
running water to a microwave and a computer but he's still poor. Compare
him to a rich person in the mid 1800s who has non of those things but
has a lot of wealth. You could take a Texas cattle rancher of the late
1800s and he's got none of the things today's guy in the trailer has.
But he's got a big ranch house, thousands of acres of land, and all
kinds of livestock and equipment. He's got no micro, no computer, no hot
running water, and has an outhouse. So who is poorer?

Yeah, who is? That rich guy with all his wealth couldn't afford *any* of
that stuff. He didn't live as well, in many aspects, as a poor person of
today.


Yeah, that's probably true. When it comes to comfort and medical care
the cattle rancher was a lot worse off. In other ways he was a lot
better off. What that says is that it's not always a good idea to
compare things now with what they used to be.

My parents are in their eighties and in their youth they didn't have
hardly any of what we take for granted. People lived in 600-900 square
foot homes. They were lucky to have one car. Things are so different in
the last 60 years it probably isn't a good idea to compare anything
today with anything more than in the last fifty years. The world is too
different now that at any time in the past to be used for comparison
purposes.

Hawke

And, if they were a typical family of that era your mother didn't have
to work to support the luxuries. They probably ate fresh vegetables in
the summer and likely thought that they were pretty well off.

Like I said, thing were so different for them that we can't compare our
lives to theirs. My parents lived in the Depression. After that they
thought life was great. It was compared to what they had gone through.
They really felt well off after WWII. Life was good for them. I don't
know that it's better because of the things we have now that they didn't.




By the way, what did you mean about "to have one car". Are you
implying that anyone with ONLY one car is poor?

I meant most people in those days were lucky to own "A" car. Nowadays
you see many cars in most family driveways. I wasn't implying one car
means someone is poor. But show me a rich man and I'll show you a guy
with a bunch of cars.

Hawke