That depends a lot on how you define "good conditions".
My grandparents did not have television or computers, but they (and most people from their village) had a much bigger house and garden than I could ever afford and they were eating much better food than I can find anywhere in a city now, despite having nominally much lower revenues than I have today.
Some of their tastiest fruit cultivars might have completely disappeared, because I have never seen them again in any place, for many decades.
It is true that the percentage of people who are so poor that they fear not having food enough to survive and not having where to sleep has decreased, but the percentage of people who must be content to live in small boxes and be content with low-quality food has increased.
The problem of the space for houses is much less obvious in USA or Canada, which are huge in comparison with their populations, than in most other countries, which have much higher human densities.
> the percentage of people who must be content to live in small boxes and be content with low-quality food has increased.
Doubt it. Regular folks have access to foods like tropical fruits that would have been a complete luxury back then, even for rich people. Also diversity of cuisines; even rural towns have Thai and Indian food now.
Probably average home size is bigger now, too, and they are more comfortable. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were true even in Europe and Asia.
This has nothing to do with reality other than the N=1 sample of your grandparents.
How can anyone believe this is beyond me. The entire line of thought is just so utterly clueless.
If you go back 50 years the average person worked a mindless factory job, never traveled very far, never went out to eat.
Work your boring/mindless job, come home to your small house and drink yourself to sleep while watching some shitty sitcoms on TV. Or you could go to the bar on the way home from your mindless job. Take your pick.
> It is true that the percentage of people who are so poor that they fear not having food enough to survive and not having where to sleep has decreased, but the percentage of people who must be content to live in small boxes and be content with low-quality food has increased.
Assuming you're right, the utility of the former is much greater than the disutility of the latter.
Re: cultivars. Some have probably died out. Others have probably gotten better. Look at apples; my parents talk about how the only apples they had were red delicious and granny smith. Now we have insane diversity of delicious apples without even having to grow them ourselves.
I traveled through a town in California known for it's apple orchards. There, I ate a 'Hawkeye' apple, which was said to be an ancestor of the 'Red Delicious'.
The 'Hawkeye' isn't my new favorite, but was good enough to appreciate how much it's shameful descendent had dishonored the name of this otherwise respectable apple family.
The Red Delicious was made not for taste, but for durability: it has exceptionally long shelf life, so it's excellent for shipping to far-away places, including overseas, and it doesn't require refrigeration.
Most likely, the ancestor doesn't keep or ship that well.
There's a reason no one who actually likes apples buys Red Delicious these days; they buy one of the better varieties like Gala or Fuji or Honeycrisp or many others. Red Delicious still sell in huge quantities in the US, though, mainly to institutions like schools and hospitals. When the person selecting your meal cares more about cost than taste, you get Red Delicious.
Also, Americans throughout much of the 20th century had very poor culinary tastes. That only started changing in the 1980s, and got much better by the 2000s. So for a long time, Americans were perfectly happy to eat the nasty Red Delicious apples.
And you can still get Hawkeye. In fact, you can probably look up and find hundreds of heirloom apple types, pick any three at random, and go get them within a few days if they're in season.
My grandparents did not have television or computers, but they (and most people from their village) had a much bigger house and garden than I could ever afford and they were eating much better food than I can find anywhere in a city now, despite having nominally much lower revenues than I have today.
Some of their tastiest fruit cultivars might have completely disappeared, because I have never seen them again in any place, for many decades.
It is true that the percentage of people who are so poor that they fear not having food enough to survive and not having where to sleep has decreased, but the percentage of people who must be content to live in small boxes and be content with low-quality food has increased.
The problem of the space for houses is much less obvious in USA or Canada, which are huge in comparison with their populations, than in most other countries, which have much higher human densities.