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Comment by HPsquared | Hacker News Reader

If people today were satisfied with a 1930s level of luxury, we could absolutely get by on a 16 hour week. Probably a lot less, in fact. There would be no need for content marketing.

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I was perusing YouTube last night and found a video of city life in 1945. It looked basically like today, except the cars looked nicer, there were more public transportation vehicles milling about, and people had great hats.

I'm being a little tongue in cheek but my thought was that daily life isn't that different now vs 80 years ago. Having a good cup of coffee provides the same level of stimulation. You go to work, chat with people, make something, and go home. These days you have access to more reading material during your commute, and can die from less diseases, so I mean the present isn't bad or anything, but people were probably enjoying existence as far back as 1945 ;)

I think that was also a time when people only owned one outfit and pair of shoes for several years, and would make due by mending them and washing them in the sink, and umbrella repairman was a profession.

Sounds like the good life to me; where do I sign up?

It may not be "that" different if you're comparing it to 500 years ago, but I'd be very surprised if the vast majority of people today and in 1945 wouldn't prefer the amenities we have now.

I assume you refer to the US, and it might be true in that case. In 1945, after WWII lots of places were completely destroyed.

Most of the cost of living is fundamentally related to housing and transportation, which are determined by land use policies. In this respect, people of the 1930s may be better off than us depending on the metrics.

"Cost of living" must have meant something different back then. To me, it doesn't survive very well as a concept in the interwar period.

One thing that irks me is how keeping up with tech is almost mandatory. I see sms two factor being deprecated a lot now and am curious how people without smart phones work around that - just as one example of many

Switch to using TOTP based second factor and just use your computer to generate the TOTP secrets. Plenty of apps do it, no need for a phone of any sort.

It doesn’t cost that much to have a phone. Supermarkets sell smart phones for $50AUD and older phones can be had for free which still work fine.

No one _has_ to have the latest iPhone pro.

I don’t disagree but one still kind of needs to have a phone or phone number

Edit: was meaning to speak broadly about “keeping up” m

On an individual level it's not particularly hard to do for a little while when you're young.

The only problem is healthcare.

> 1930s level of luxury

I can't help but s/1930s/Great Depression/ and wonder what this even means.

A very sparse standard of living, in other words.

So s/luxury/austerity/ which begs the question why the working class majority would want that.

More leisure time would be the benefit. Although the leisure would have to be less sophisticated.

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