Andrew Cuomo says "America was never that great" Do you agree?

[pbrower2a]

It depends on what demographic you were in. Technologies of entertainment are vastly overrated, as live music is typically better than recordings, and live theater is usually more fulfilling than cinema. Before there were radios and phonographs, people typically read books and got more out of them than one gets out of the idiot screen today.

Travel? It is far better and easier today with the Interstate Highway system and cheap flights. Insipid as the Interstate experience is, with predictable chains of fast-food and casual-dining restaurants along the way, it is safer. 150 miles on the Interstate in rural America is easier than 60 miles on the horrible Blood Alleys that the Interstates supplanted. Anyone who waxes nostalgic about taking the whole old course of Route 66 is nuts. You use the freeways and two Oklahoma Turnpikes to get to the most interesting parts.

Medicine? The problem with medicine today is the profusion of profiteers in the business. But that is the medical-industrial complex and not medical practice.

Working conditions? The forty-hour workweek has been in existence since the mid-1930s as a means of spreading the work around more and keeping employers from inducing workers to work for nothing so that their employers can make a special profit. Around 1900 the typical industrial worker worked 70 hours a week and lived for 40 years; by 1950 the typical industrial worker worked 40 hours a week and lived 70 years. That has changed little. Workplaces are safer than they used to be. (Of course people on adequate pay can avoid malnutrition). Grinding poverty used to be the norm for industrial workers.

Crime? Crime rates were very high in the white 'ethnic' ghettos of recent immigrants of southern and eastern European origin. "Little Italy" used to be a cesspool; it's a nice place to live now. Crime may have peaked around 1970, only to decline -- probably reflecting the disappearance of leaded gas and lead residues going into the respiratory systems of people along commute paths. Lead is an insidious poison that causes learning disabilities and poor impulse control -- a perfect duo for wasting people.  

Education? The 'solid eighth grade education' was once adequate, but it isn't now. Kids used to drop out of school to help put food on the table. It's better that the family get food stamps that eliminate food insecurity, don't you think?

The only thing that one could wax nostalgic about in the old days was cheap real estate. I'm not convinced that a McMansion is better than the old Victorian houses... and unless one wants the ostentatious show, one might as well spend money on something other than an ersatz castle or palace. But for people not in the market for McMansions, housing is certifiably more expensive in real terms unless one is where there are no job opportunities. But we have 328 million people in 2018 instead of the 179 million people in the 1960 Census, and we are more concentrated in areas where the opportunities are. Real estate may still be cheap in the High Plains that people are leaving, but if you are in certain places you may pay $3000 a month in rent for an awful studio apartment.

...OK, things were supposedly better for the economic elites when nearly everything was cheap, including domestic workers. Cheap industrial help ensured that anything manufactured could be inexpensive to make. Taxes were low. Paradise?

Hardly. I wouldn't want to go back to those times. I'm only about a thirteenth-cousin of the Rockefeller family. (I do genealogy, and I fount the connection). It's not enough of a connection.