Class 8 - We're Richer and Better Off....and cancer is good?

Today we continued on our journey through the world of power point.

First we talked about how we are better off today than we were in the past. In terms of life expectancy, people are expected to live half a year longer than the people born a year before them. From ancient times until the industrial revolution, people only gained a few days each year, if that. Also, less senior citizens have diseases and less people are getting and dying from cancer. All of this data on the increase in life expectancy, along with a sharp decrease in infant mortality since medieval times, shows our socio-economic progress.

We then talked about nutrition and intelligence. Our caloric intake between the industrial revolution and today has increased by about 50%. Through techno-physio evolution we see that people are healthier and a lot taller. We then discussed how our intelligence is increasing.

We then talked about the increase in living standards. We first talked about the labor market and how household labor hours has decreased, retirement has greatly increased, and more women are working. Women actually make more money than men...until they have kids. We also talked about household amenities and how basically, 100 years ago, no one had them. Rizzo then decided cancer is a good thing because it shows progress - there are more things out there that can kill us. And finally we discussed productivity multiples. These show that we need to work a lot less to afford products we had 100 years ago. However this doesn't think about the functionality of the products. Yes we need to work say 1/12 as much to afford a comfy chair, but this would a 19th century good. Today we are so much better off because the materials we have are better. Also I am not necessarily paying for the chair, but rather something to sit on, the function it provides.