http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2 ... eriod.aspxAccording to the Census Bureau, the average new home now has more bathrooms than occupants.
50 Reasons We're Living Through the Greatest Period in World History
50 Reasons We're Living Through the Greatest Period in World History
Re: 50 Reasons We're Living Through the Greatest Period in World History
We live in a Golden Era of toilets!
Reading that list reminds me why paying much attention to the "news" only gives you a distorted view of what's really been happening:
"Compare health-care improvements with the stuff that gets talked about in the news -- NBC anchor Andrea Mitchell interrupted a Congresswoman last week to announce Justin Bieber's arrest -- and you can understand why Americans aren't optimistic about the country's direction. We ignore the really important news because it happens slowly, but we obsess over trivial news because it happens all day long."
Reading that list reminds me why paying much attention to the "news" only gives you a distorted view of what's really been happening:
"Compare health-care improvements with the stuff that gets talked about in the news -- NBC anchor Andrea Mitchell interrupted a Congresswoman last week to announce Justin Bieber's arrest -- and you can understand why Americans aren't optimistic about the country's direction. We ignore the really important news because it happens slowly, but we obsess over trivial news because it happens all day long."
Re: 50 Reasons We're Living Through the Greatest Period in World History
I absolutely agree. I'm feeling so good right now that I'm not even going to read the rest of the list until later.
This one stood out:
"According to the Federal Reserve, the number of lifetime years spent in leisure -- retirement plus time off during your working years -- rose from 11 years in 1870 to 35 years by 1990. Given the rise in life expectancy, it's probably close to 40 years today. Which is amazing: The average American spends nearly half his life in leisure. If you had told this to the average American 100 years ago, that person would have considered you wealthy beyond imagination."
This one stood out:
"According to the Federal Reserve, the number of lifetime years spent in leisure -- retirement plus time off during your working years -- rose from 11 years in 1870 to 35 years by 1990. Given the rise in life expectancy, it's probably close to 40 years today. Which is amazing: The average American spends nearly half his life in leisure. If you had told this to the average American 100 years ago, that person would have considered you wealthy beyond imagination."
Re: 50 Reasons We're Living Through the Greatest Period in World History
Should make folks on this forum extremely thankful we have the opportunity (and recognize it) to retire when we do.If you think Americans aren't prepared for retirement today, you should have seen what it was like a century ago. In 1900, 65% of men over age 65 were still in the labor force. By 2010, that figure was down to 22%. The entire concept of retirement is unique to the past few decades. Half a century ago, most Americans worked until they died.
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jacob
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Re: 50 Reasons We're Living Through the Greatest Period in World History
Yeah, I'd like to point out that the because of their chemical stability, solidity, and wide distribution in huge numbers, ceramic toilet bowls will be the archaeological legacy of our civilization. It's our version of the pyramids or the Coliseum. Our bowls will last far far longer than any skyscraper, bridge, building, or other infrastructure we've put up.Dragline wrote:We live in a Golden Era of toilets!
I imagine some poor history grad student in the year 3800 having to deal with cataloguing yet another find of these ... pieces of furniture!? Did we use for ritual purposes? To worship the gods? For communication? Did our massive obsession with creating them cause us to run out of resources? Maybe the student will be lucky enough to find an unflushed one and use it to derive what we ate?
http://news.discovery.com/history/archa ... 140401.htm
Re: 50 Reasons We're Living Through the Greatest Period in World History
Humorous counter argument to more recent "advancements"...
Shadow Work:
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/08/3 ... s-serfdom/
Shadow Work:
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/08/3 ... s-serfdom/
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Kriegsspiel
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Re: 50 Reasons We're Living Through the Greatest Period in World History
Yes, you may have to be a cashier for 2 minutes a week. And you could be your own travel agent for 5 minutes once a year.
WHERE IS YOUR PROGRESS NOW?!
WHERE IS YOUR PROGRESS NOW?!
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jacob
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Re: 50 Reasons We're Living Through the Greatest Period in World History
I just read the OP list ... What an impressive piece of whitewash!
Given that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics ... here we go with the statistics and/or opposite perspectives ...
1) Survivor bias. If you survived early childhood in those earlier (pre-penicillin) eras, the average lifespan was about the same as today.
2) The global diabetes pandemic currently affects 9% of the planet. That's 650+ million people who are on permanent medicine looking forward to slow decline in quality of life that lasts decades before dying from complications. I'll take the flu.
3) But in 1910 practically nobody died in traffic
4) In 1949 somebody wrote a sentence on a piece of paper that weighed 0.01 pounds. Of course they didn't have emojis
5) Average-schmaverage ...
6) Indeed ... and from this comes most of the increase in average lifespan.
7) Many countries have averaged far less murders than for a longer time and achieving this long ago. Going from bad to less bad is only "greatest" in a relative sense.
8) See 3.
9) And nobody died in nuclear attacks before 1945, so ...
10) Me too ... but I can also think of better ones.
11) And by 2014, 38% of all CO2 emissions in the US came from power plants, sofar locking in a global average temperature rise of 1.5C or more.
12) I don't count the time I spend commuting, filing taxes, paying bills, shopping, cooking dinner, mowing the lawn, ... as leisure.
13) But strangely happiness indicators peaked long ago. It's not how big the pie is as much as it's how it's divided.
14) On the other hand, more than 1 million Americans are currently living with HIV.
15) New Orleans approves.
16) But the civilian death fraction from battle has never been higher than it is now.
17) Yes, today both adults in the family works and thus they make twice as much money and unwisely decide to spend it on a house that's twice as big. Crazy much?
18) Okay, there's 1991 again. So what happened (at least according to freakonomics) was that after abortion became legal, a lot less unwanted children came into the world. Since unwanted children have a higher chance of growing up to be criminals, demographics baked this into the crimical stats some 20 years after legalization. This effect started to pay back in the 1990s.
19) A/C is nice and has allowed us to build bigger houses in climates where it make little sense and skip on investing in insulation and improved building design. This has created an ongoing cost in energy, see 11.
20) Wow, cars with refrigerators in them. If that isn't progress... in 1900 almost nobody bought groceries because they didn't have to. If they did they could walk down to the corner store. This is almost impossible today. Therefore we have cars with refrigerators.
21) While flying has turned from being the best and classiest way to travel to one of the worst.
22) How can this possibly be great? Words escape me ...
23) Like 22 ... will the greatest possible period be achieved with the average number of occupants per room has decreased to 0.25? 0.1? 0.05? 0.01?
24) Which is why it's a good thing that the whole household can have full time careers so they can spend their time in their diminishing cubicles to enjoy paying the mortage in those bigger houses they come home sleep in. Maybe that's why refrigerators were moved into the cars?
25) Yeah .. average again ... but the median income earner didn't need to spend nearly as much time in the 1960s to earn enough to buy a car as he does today ... because cars are now financialized and thus priced according to how much credit was available to the marginal buyer (a lot more than they earn). Not how much they earned.
26) Indeed ... because 60% of Americans can no longer find north on a traditional map.
27) And average high school student intelligence is correspondingly at a 40-year low. Did you see what I did there?
28) Enjoy being a survivor. Strokes are now the leading cause of long term disability.
29) If we grade this supposed litteracy, it means that only 85% are capable filling in personal information such as name and address in a form. Whereas only about on half fully masters 6th grade reading material.
30) On the other hand, standards in the past were so high that a bachelor was considered an impressive achievement and enough to practice professionally at the highest levels. Today it means little.
31) Enjoy your part time job. At least there's ACA now.
32) See 2.
33) As of March 2013, about 100% of households in Zimbabwe were millionaires. Hint: A million ain't what it used to be. 1M in 2015 dollars would be 42300 in 1915 dollars.
34) According to the CDC, 48% of Americans in 2014 were now on some kind of prescription drug.
35) Not efficient. Effective at turning fossil fuels into calories.
36) No, this is the literally the worst problem to have. A growing population of old people who are too disabled to work but require a decreasing amount of workers to support them.
37) In 1940 a Bachelor degree was respected regardless of which field. Not so much today unless you can also lift 50lbs. Do you want fries with that?
38) How's that working out for ya now?
39) Some high MPG cars were built in the 1970s that got better mileage than today's Prius. How's that for progress? We now do the same but with more technology. Also see space launches.
40) Also very naive. If you use the same accounting standards as they did in 1980, you'll find that inflation now runs some 5-7% higher than the officially massaged numbers.
41) On the other hand, the percentage of Americans who live in poverty has remained constant. So if 65+ yo have won, then 65- yo must have lost. Maybe that's why the number of Americans who routinely go hungry is increasing ... good thing they don't actually go as far as dying of starvation because that would make 44 look less impressiove.
42) No, it's a pay-as-you-go social transfer system that is paid in by those who work to those who don't with age being the discriminator. See 41.
43) Only in America. The entire concept of retirement started in Germany almost 150 years ago.
44) Not bad. However, the annual deaths directly attributed to obesity has increased to 92 out of 100,000.
45) Last I checked the manufacturing of PV was not free. Toxic waste from silicon manufacturing is often dumped in open waste ponds in developing countries.
46) I finally agree! Where would we be without this:
http://www.amazon.com/b?node=10667898011 ...
47) Or this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgV22zHTtVI ...
48) Detroit celebrates! /sarc/
49) http://academic.reed.edu/economics/park ... figure.jpg
50) Being 4% of the world's population, we also use 26% of its resources (don't ask-don't think about how). This is why we're a shining beacon of freedom!
Given that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics ... here we go with the statistics and/or opposite perspectives ...
1) Survivor bias. If you survived early childhood in those earlier (pre-penicillin) eras, the average lifespan was about the same as today.
2) The global diabetes pandemic currently affects 9% of the planet. That's 650+ million people who are on permanent medicine looking forward to slow decline in quality of life that lasts decades before dying from complications. I'll take the flu.
3) But in 1910 practically nobody died in traffic
4) In 1949 somebody wrote a sentence on a piece of paper that weighed 0.01 pounds. Of course they didn't have emojis
5) Average-schmaverage ...
6) Indeed ... and from this comes most of the increase in average lifespan.
7) Many countries have averaged far less murders than for a longer time and achieving this long ago. Going from bad to less bad is only "greatest" in a relative sense.
8) See 3.
9) And nobody died in nuclear attacks before 1945, so ...
10) Me too ... but I can also think of better ones.
11) And by 2014, 38% of all CO2 emissions in the US came from power plants, sofar locking in a global average temperature rise of 1.5C or more.
12) I don't count the time I spend commuting, filing taxes, paying bills, shopping, cooking dinner, mowing the lawn, ... as leisure.
13) But strangely happiness indicators peaked long ago. It's not how big the pie is as much as it's how it's divided.
14) On the other hand, more than 1 million Americans are currently living with HIV.
15) New Orleans approves.
16) But the civilian death fraction from battle has never been higher than it is now.
17) Yes, today both adults in the family works and thus they make twice as much money and unwisely decide to spend it on a house that's twice as big. Crazy much?
18) Okay, there's 1991 again. So what happened (at least according to freakonomics) was that after abortion became legal, a lot less unwanted children came into the world. Since unwanted children have a higher chance of growing up to be criminals, demographics baked this into the crimical stats some 20 years after legalization. This effect started to pay back in the 1990s.
19) A/C is nice and has allowed us to build bigger houses in climates where it make little sense and skip on investing in insulation and improved building design. This has created an ongoing cost in energy, see 11.
20) Wow, cars with refrigerators in them. If that isn't progress... in 1900 almost nobody bought groceries because they didn't have to. If they did they could walk down to the corner store. This is almost impossible today. Therefore we have cars with refrigerators.
21) While flying has turned from being the best and classiest way to travel to one of the worst.
22) How can this possibly be great? Words escape me ...
23) Like 22 ... will the greatest possible period be achieved with the average number of occupants per room has decreased to 0.25? 0.1? 0.05? 0.01?
24) Which is why it's a good thing that the whole household can have full time careers so they can spend their time in their diminishing cubicles to enjoy paying the mortage in those bigger houses they come home sleep in. Maybe that's why refrigerators were moved into the cars?
25) Yeah .. average again ... but the median income earner didn't need to spend nearly as much time in the 1960s to earn enough to buy a car as he does today ... because cars are now financialized and thus priced according to how much credit was available to the marginal buyer (a lot more than they earn). Not how much they earned.
26) Indeed ... because 60% of Americans can no longer find north on a traditional map.
27) And average high school student intelligence is correspondingly at a 40-year low. Did you see what I did there?
28) Enjoy being a survivor. Strokes are now the leading cause of long term disability.
29) If we grade this supposed litteracy, it means that only 85% are capable filling in personal information such as name and address in a form. Whereas only about on half fully masters 6th grade reading material.
30) On the other hand, standards in the past were so high that a bachelor was considered an impressive achievement and enough to practice professionally at the highest levels. Today it means little.
31) Enjoy your part time job. At least there's ACA now.
32) See 2.
33) As of March 2013, about 100% of households in Zimbabwe were millionaires. Hint: A million ain't what it used to be. 1M in 2015 dollars would be 42300 in 1915 dollars.
34) According to the CDC, 48% of Americans in 2014 were now on some kind of prescription drug.
35) Not efficient. Effective at turning fossil fuels into calories.
36) No, this is the literally the worst problem to have. A growing population of old people who are too disabled to work but require a decreasing amount of workers to support them.
37) In 1940 a Bachelor degree was respected regardless of which field. Not so much today unless you can also lift 50lbs. Do you want fries with that?
38) How's that working out for ya now?
39) Some high MPG cars were built in the 1970s that got better mileage than today's Prius. How's that for progress? We now do the same but with more technology. Also see space launches.
40) Also very naive. If you use the same accounting standards as they did in 1980, you'll find that inflation now runs some 5-7% higher than the officially massaged numbers.
41) On the other hand, the percentage of Americans who live in poverty has remained constant. So if 65+ yo have won, then 65- yo must have lost. Maybe that's why the number of Americans who routinely go hungry is increasing ... good thing they don't actually go as far as dying of starvation because that would make 44 look less impressiove.
42) No, it's a pay-as-you-go social transfer system that is paid in by those who work to those who don't with age being the discriminator. See 41.
43) Only in America. The entire concept of retirement started in Germany almost 150 years ago.
44) Not bad. However, the annual deaths directly attributed to obesity has increased to 92 out of 100,000.
45) Last I checked the manufacturing of PV was not free. Toxic waste from silicon manufacturing is often dumped in open waste ponds in developing countries.
46) I finally agree! Where would we be without this:
http://www.amazon.com/b?node=10667898011 ...
47) Or this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgV22zHTtVI ...
48) Detroit celebrates! /sarc/
49) http://academic.reed.edu/economics/park ... figure.jpg
50) Being 4% of the world's population, we also use 26% of its resources (don't ask-don't think about how). This is why we're a shining beacon of freedom!
Re: 50 Reasons We're Living Through the Greatest Period in World History
@jacob, well put. You summed up many of the thoughts I had while reading that list.
I often get flashes of realization that the way we live in the USA is extremely temporary but last night was particularly strong. Enjoy it while it lasts folks (if you can call it enjoyment).
This one in particular is pretty madding for me. Last night we watched a presentation at our local garden club meeting about a team that goes to Costa Rica to do environmental work. It takes them about 18 months to gather enough supplies and such to bring down to give to some of the areas where they work. She talked about one family that they stayed with that didn't have enough forks for the entire group to use and they were greatly ashamed and felt very bad about it. Our club sat there eating food with plastic forks that were just going to be thrown away.jacob wrote:50) Being 4% of the world's population, we also use 26% of its resources (don't ask-don't think about how). This is why we're a shining beacon of freedom!
I often get flashes of realization that the way we live in the USA is extremely temporary but last night was particularly strong. Enjoy it while it lasts folks (if you can call it enjoyment).