In 1939, I didn’t hear war coming | Hacker News Reader

In 1939, I didn’t hear war coming

theguardian.com

21 pointsthelinuxkid10 comments

"... eroded democracy and social justice, and savaged the welfare state with austerity...". The article just reads like very modern terminology like it was written by someone in their twenties or thirties. Not that people's vocabulary cannot change over time but it seems odd.

I noticed that also.

Welfare state was the term used in the post-war period where Britain re-imagined themselves. America is having this debate now so perhaps that is why it sounds "modern" to you. It comes from the book: Christianity and the Social Order (1942)

Wikipedia has a good etymology section on the term if you are interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Etymology

??? The term "Welfare State" was not what captured my attention. The whole article reads like very modern vocabulary. Here is an article on how your vocabulary can be used to predict age/gender/personality. https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/under-the-hood/how-your-...

I didn't get that from the article. To counter, "omens of doom." "deficient in honour, wisdom and just simple human kindness. " "I watch them in their leisure"

These are not phrases I'd expect to hear from a Millennial.

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/harry-leslie-smith

Harry seems to have been writing as part of the Guardian for at least 4 years, I think hes most likely adopted practices that can better connect to modern audiences.

I guess another possibility is his editor suggests some changes, which is a reasonable thing to do.

We will have a war again in Europe.

The tensions are too big and there is no way for most countries to reduce that pressure because the main choices have been delegated to EU by treaties.

It's a similar problem that Germany had after WWI with war reparations and economic crisis. It weakened the hability of the elites to handle the situation.

That's something like that we have now.

Low corporate tax rates and laughing young people are the harbingers of WW3?

No, the advent of or call for protectionist policies and increased xenophobia in not just Europe with large-scale international wars being fought all around the war is a sign of something changing.

It used to be that these wars were more of a concern and on the news and would spark attention from more than just the countries involved especially given the areas they are in such as Ukraine, Syria, etc.

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