• BeardedGingerWonder@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Something has definitely gone screwy and we’ve definitely not gotten the balance right - but equally I’d tend to agree that QoL has substantially improved since the 70s. Air quality, many medical advances, many more people in less labour intensive jobs, safety and quality of products has also improved substantially. General societal attitudes towards women and minority groups is better as well as all the tech and toys.

    Housing is messed up and there’s seemingly been a shift towards the rich, the taxes imposed on the wealthiest in society has been reduced and income inequality has increased. We may or may not be more stressed (I tend to think we are) and capitalism in general has shifted from worker first to shareholder first.

    The stats above definitely don’t tell the whole story either, doubling productivity while reducing price, for instance, may increase access to a product to consumers with no net gain to the company and while this is almost certainly not the case in every scenario, it just shows we can’t just cherry pick stats blame all of society’s ills on them.