- Households earning > $75,000: 1890: 1 %; 2000: 23 %
- Hours of work needed to buy McDonalds cheeseburger: 1956: 1/2 hour; 2000: 3 minutes
- Home ownership: 1900: 20 %; 2000: 70 %
- Hours of work needed to buy each 100 square feet of housing: 1956: 16 hours; 2000: 14 hours
- Rooms per person: Europe: ~1; United States: 2.1
- Dwellings with central heat: 1930: 15 %; 2002: 78 %
- High school graduates: 1940: <50 %; 2000: >80 %
- Food spending in restaurants: 1955: 25 %; 2000: 46 %
- "White collar" employment: 1900: 21 % men, 20 % women; 2000: 58 % men, 52 % women
- Workweek (men only): 1850: 66 hours; 1900: 53 hours; 2000: 42 hours
- Women spending 4+ hours/day at housework: 1900: 90 %; 2000: 14 %
- Weekly leisure time (men only): 1880: 11 hours; 2000: 40 hours
- Waking hours spent working over lifetime: 1850: 50 %; 2000: 20 %
- Life expectancy difference between upper and lower class Briton: 1870: 17 years; 2000: 2 years
All statistics from Gregg Easterbrook's remarkable The Progress Paradox (2003), which I recommend highly.
More:
Assistant Village Idiot accurately -- but unfortunately -- assesses Easterbrook's declining marginal utility:
The book starts to weaken here, and dribbles out altogether at the end, as he repeats his favorite complaints against SUV’s, health insurance insecurity, and the free market’s creation of losers. (He acknowledges, BTW, that market economies have created all the good things above, but keeps thinking there should be something, well, better. Great. Wake me when you find it, Gregg.)
4 comments:
I bought that book a while ago, on a whim. It seemed interesting. Haven't read it though. I am in the middle of about 12 different books- all political. Cap that with blog and news reading, and my head just spins, trying to keep up with everything.
Well - statistics don't lie, but liars figure.
However, in many ways life in the US has never been so good. The real problem we face is just keeping it going. Home ownership, in particular, is a very important index of the health of the country.
There are many who want to pronounce the patient terribly ill. Unfortunately, the medicine they want to recommend seems likely to be fatal!
Free-marketeers are very much more progressive than "progressives," even if they're right wing or "conservative."
The only significant and non-transitory unemployment in Bush 43's America is among leftist activists--those knowing only puppetry, chanting and "it-can't-be-fascism-if-you're-allowed-to-march" protest are limited to low-skill jobs with the European diplomatic team now negotiating with Iran (low-skill being a condition precedent for that position). But, expect the Wisconsin job market to tighten in the 3rd quarter -- flooded with Dem dirty tricksters having completed court-ordered community service.
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