Again I’m not saying it’s not a problem. Merely that when compared to the problems of the past it’s minimal. If you wanted to live to be 60 years old you’d never take the past.
Technically there was a time of a few years where the tax rate was lower than recent years, but post Trump tax change we’re looking at what’re probably the lowest tax rate anyone alive has paid.
Varies between the states. Texas, for example, makes up for the no state income taxes with some of the highest property taxes in the country. They’re also one of the only southern states operating at a surplus, so they have above avg business tax revenue.
I’d imagine we’ll just pony up for single payer and print the shit before we ever dream of stopping the wars. Shit’s way too profitable.
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No that’s twisting the good old days part with the earlier part.
Take care of yourself and fuck everybody else will only make things worse. You even complained earlier that the government doesn’t do anything to help certain people. Simply saying people need to figure it out for themselves has no chance of working. We talked about that for quite a few posts.
I don’t know about that still. 3 of my grandparents lived past 90, one lived over 100, one of my great grandfathers also lived over 100. Maybe they were lucky, but people weren’t all dropping dead in their 50’s a few decades back.
I did mention I was being sarcastic. That was sort of the takeaway from your more recent posts, things have never been better than they are now and there is nothing that we can do to continue to make things better (except self-flagellation for being white and male) so just worry about yourself.
In reality there are probably some things that can be done, but as far as things that actually make sense, nobody has any ideas that don’t require the cooperation of those in need of help. So we’re back to square one.
Good for them. The exception…again we have statistics which clearly show this. I mean anecdotes are great and all and I use them. My grandma smoked and drank and died at 95. She did crosswords and played cards. Grandpa didn’t smoke and was physically active until the day he died at 72. But this doesn’t mean cigarettes on the whole are the way to live long. Statistics clearly show this. I get that you’re not a fan of these but they are the single thing that can help us from relying on “well dude x did this!”
I think you’re confusing the point of my posts then. You may need to go back and reread. Simply because things are far better than the past in many ways doesn’t mean we should stop attempting to make progress on the societal problems we face. It’s merely that the good old days mindset is typically backed up by fond nostalgia and stories of how it’s never been as bad as right now. I’ve showed that’s simply untrue.
No one in this thread as far as I’m aware has made any argument that people who need help should do nothing. Most of your posts seem to be aimed at people who aren’t posting on here best as I can see.
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Some things got better, some things got worse. I think that pretty much sums it up.
Yep. But the most traditional indicators of standard of living would show significant improvement for the present. And it’s not even close.
I really wonder how accurate all these so-called indicators are though. You can’t actually know how it was to live back then if you weren’t there, and I don’t hear any old people talking about how things are so much better nowadays.
Perception is a big thing too, if people were less materialistic but they were poor then it’s possible they would be more satisfied with their lives than people who are living comfortable nowadays but are upset because their credit cards are all maxed out and they cant get the latest iphone and aren’t getting any dates on tinder. My impression is that there are more and more people who are just totally fucked up in the head as time goes by, illiteracy might be lower but so is common sense.
Pretty damn accurate? Which part are you struggling with? Poverty way down, health way up, access to material and consumer goods way up, life expectancy way up, likelihood of being in war way down, etc.
You really don’t need anecdotes for these things. Sure they aren’t 100% accurate not much ever is. But to deny them would take some pretty serious mental gymnastics. I’m not sure why you’re struggling with it just because someone from the nursing home hasn’t told you. It seems like you’re placing a lot of stock in the “well no old person said this to my face.”
Again if we wanted to just go off anecdotes then I could say being sedentary and smoking is the key to a longer life because my grandma outlived my grandpa. But it’s incredibly stupid to ignore the mountains of evidence that say this isn’t the case.
You don’t need to have been alive in the 50’s to accept these things as true. Just because I wasn’t in a hospital in 1959 doesn’t mean I can’t think that being in a hospital in 2009 I have a better chance of being cured.
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My grandpa thought music post 1950 was terrible. He only liked traditional Midwest foods, thought good liquor and wine were a waste, didn’t wear a seatbelt, etc. Old people don’t like change and think their generations way of life is better. Despite him going to war twice, getting dentures at 45, moving 10 times across the country chasing work with the post office, etc.
I see it with my parents now as they recently retired. They are getting set in their was and reminiscing HARD.
Hell, I see it in myself when I talk shit about mumble rappers.
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Yep. I think music was better when I was a kid and my Dad thinks the designated hitter was a mistake.
Well… Objectively speaking most music today is uninspired low brow garbage
I’m not struggling with anything, what I’m saying is that statistics can’t accurately measure people’s satisfaction with life. Poverty and health have improved, but more people than ever are taking anti-depressants. Was there an epidemic of depression in the olden days? You can be rich and physically healthy and still hate life.
But that’s what I’m saying, if life was so bad back then then why do old people miss it so much? My mother’s parents didn’t miss the 50’s and 60’s in Poland because it was under communism and it sucked, but over here it wasn’t nearly as bad. Now you have politicians like Bernie Sanders and Justin Trudeau getting nostalgic for communism instead.
One of the stupidest things ever
It’s been getting worse and worse, what I thought was cool when I was a kid I now see was a bunch of nonsense and what’s coming out now is worse. Movies and TV too, I find it painful to watch most of the newer stuff.
NWA said fuck the police, now it’s a mainstream movement and rappers are drinking cough syrup and overdosing on all types of shit. They and those who follow them wore pants that were too big and were falling off, now they are so tight they can’t even pull them up all the way.
Elvis died in the shitter from a heart attack with a system full of drugs.
Ahh the good old days.
There was a study done a few years ago I heard about on NPRs Hidden Brain podcast. Basically, someone who was tortured for 1 day has the same recollection of the torture as someone who was tortured for weeks. Essentially, they remembered the how awful torture was, but the length of time torture happened didn’t change their memory of how bad the torture was. The psychologists brought this to a milder clinical setting and found similar results. Essentially, don’t trust peoples recollection of how bad or good something was a long time ago because they tend to remove the time factor from the memory.
Also, life for damn near everyone was better when they were younger. Youth is wasted on the young, I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger, etc.
Also, musicians and celebs have been taking drugs, drinking, fucking, and making bad decisions since the beginning of time. It isn’t anything new with mumble rappers
Well, we weren’t a nation of miserable fat fucks in the good old days.
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The difference is that music wasn’t actively promoting drug use until more recently. Also drug dealing, you ever heard Master P’s song “Make Crack Like This” (gives directions how to cook crack) or "10 Crack Commandments’’ by Notorious BIG?
I was thinking about what @H_factor was saying about studies showing that music had little effect on crime and violence, but when I think about it I really don’t think these studies are accurate. How did things like blunts, Timberland boots, and baggy jeans get so popular? They use music to advertise all types of stuff, like liquor, all these people start drinking Moet and Cristal because they heard about it in a song but what about Veuve Cliquot? And why not Freixenet or Prosecco? Because the song said so. Not everyone is going to turn to a life of crime because of music, and likely nobody will due to music alone, but it’s a contributing factor.
Good point, and that is one of the main health concerns nowadays.
Forgive me continuing to fight over demonstrably provable things lead me to believe you’re struggling. Yes more people are on anti-depressants than in the 1950’s. The existence of anti-depressants and increased mental health services are the reason for that. Not that 1950 didn’t have plenty of mental health issues they just weren’t properly diagnosed and addressed.
Who gives a fuck? Everyone misses the past. The idea is that we have actual things we can rely on and not just “grandpa joe said things were so much better.” The stock you put into whatever few old people you’ve talked to is mind boggling.
That’s the point our memories tend to be tainted. But through stuff we can actually measure significant progress was made in numerous areas. I don’t know how else to paint it for you to make it easier.
only four songs in the early 1980s referred to drug use, which ramped up to a whopping 45 percent of all hip-hop songs by the mid-1990s,
Rap’s go-to drug switched from marijuana to cocaine in the late 1990s, with rappers like Jay-Z and The Notorious B.I.G. glamorizing the narcotic. Rappers’ favorite drug switched again in the early 2000s from cocaine to “lean,” a dangerous mix of Sprite, hard candy and cough syrup containing codeine.
I stopped listening to rap a long time ago, but there was rappers like Ja Rule promoting ecstasy and early Wu-Tang Clan songs were all talking about smoking meth. Eminem has been on a hundred different drugs since before he even got a record deal.
You have already made your point, and I can neither prove or disprove it without some sort of time machine. Statistically things are better now, ok.
Yeah we partied to Master P quite a bit back when I was a teenager. He taught millions of middle class kids how to make crack and be a No Limit Soldier.
20 years ago.
Make em say Uhhhh. UHHHHH. Na-na-na-na!
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