• Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    You’re completely wrong about the idea that people who were poor in the 1970s were worse off than people today.

    Hunter Thompson’s book, “Hell’s Angels” has a chapter on the economics of being a biker/hippie/artist circa 1972. A biker could work for six months as a Union stevedore and earn enough to hit the road for two years. A part time waitress could earn enough to support herself and her musician boyfriend. A kid who graduated high school and got a minimum wage job could rent a one bedroom apartment and party and still put money in the bank.

    And don’t say that today’s tech is much better unless you can prove that real wages dropping resulted in the creation of the internet.

    • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      stevedore

      noun.
      a person employed, or a contractor engaged, at a dock to load and unload cargo from ships.
      (Definitions from Oxford Languages)

      Edit: Reformatted for readability ease.

      • tb_@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Add two spaces before a line break to preserve said line break after markdown formatting.

        Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more
        noun
        a person employed, or a contractor engaged, at a dock to load and unload cargo from ships.

        > Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more  
        > noun  
        > a person employed, or a contractor engaged, at a dock to load and unload cargo from ships.
        
        • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Appreciate the advice, but I was aware of it. I was just in a hurry though, so I did a quick copy and paste and moved on. Figured the information would be conveyed well enough as is.

          • tb_@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Fair enough.

            Personally the “learn more noun” bit tripped me up for a moment, so I thought to mention after figuring it out. The information is appreciated regardless.

            • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Yeah, I was just doing a community service after having done the lookup for myself, so I figured anyone with any reasonable mindset would forgive me for it not being formatted perfectly, considering it’s still very readable.

              The information is appreciated regardless.

              You’re welcome. It was a easy ‘low-hanging fruit’ way of making Lemmy a little bit better for all.

    • mob
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      8 months ago

      But would you consider that poor then? Maybe money was easier to obtain, but starvation/malnutrition rates have constantly been on a steady decline until the last few years. Not often you see people using a burlap sack to cloth their families, child labor, things like that. And we do have a lot of social programs like SNAP that didnt exist pre-1970s.1980s had the Homeless act. The world has changed drastically in the last 50-100 years.

      But I guess you could make solid arguments that the economy is generally harder now, so its worse for the majority, incuding the poor.