Study links sugar-filled drinks to millions of heart disease and diabetes cases

Soon, we might even reach low stress and not back-breaking! *Gasp*!

But I also think you might be underestimating how many people's ancestors were slaves, serfs, miners, and laborers during hose prior several millenia of settled, urbanizing civilization. We don't all come from aristocratic or even subsistence farming stock.

It can be less bad than it is, we might want to strive to make it less bad than it is, but it's been pretty darn bad for a long while. For pressing modern problems we also need to commit to more immediate tactics.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/z38k5p/i_h...

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/im1lqu/is_...

One thing you'll see in the mid-90s and beyond is artificially lowered rates, which cheapen money. Low rates boost asset prices, so they are great for asset owners (and there are very few asset owners in the US on a % basis.)

This doest really help normal people, because while borrowing becomes cheaper, prices go up commensurately. Debt:income ratios inflate. Costs inflate overall. Overall it hurts normal people because you end up with the same outcome but more leverage and hence more risk.

Worse, because rates are low, income-seekers (e.g., insurance companies, foundations) steer away from traditional means of income (bonds) towards buying up homes, infra, assets, as they "reach for yield". Again, this just worsens the problem for everyone.

With rates lowered and debt volumes ballooning, we've given a one-time boost to asset owners and in the process, spread stress and risk to all working class individuals.

I always thought this was true, but it's not. The entire Marshall Plan gave out about $80B over a decade in today's money, which is peanuts by our modern financial aid standards.

The main value the US provided to Europe after WWII was security, a stable common currency (almost all European ones were pegged to the dollar), and private investment.

It was a lot easier to fire people in those days.

> the cost of living is much higher for basics like housing

Around Seattle there are still a number of older homes. They are tiny and cheaply built compared to modern homes.

Do you actually think that there was less mental illness in the past? Because I find that extremely unlikely. My parents' (gen X) generation is LOUSY with depressed, anxious people who don't believe in medication, therapy, or really even the existence of many forms of mental illness.

They had more serious problems to contend with - political instability, unemployment, etc., etc. and so they bottled their feelings up and did the needful.

Human beings are evolved to survive on the edge, in situations where our performance is the difference between their families' survival or starvation. Even 50 years ago, food was more expensive and work was harder on our bodies and minds - people getting depressed about writing code, frequently at less than 40hr weeks, have nothing on office workers of the 70s.

Calories and entertainment keep getting cheaper, which means anxiety and depression keep getting more maladaptive.

I would like you to post numbers. "National wealth" is not a vague notion, it's the product of lots of government workers doing a lot of statistics. Some of those statistics are target specifically at the bottom quintile or decile of income or wealth (they are vastly different).

Income for the bottom 10% is rising. Wealth for the bottom 10% is rising. Gen Z is unprecedentedly rich at this point in their lives, relative to past generations. The reason why the American middle class has shrunk is mostly because the upper class has grown. The third link below has a graph that highlights why this is a GOOD THING.

I don't doubt that quality-of-life has declined for a lot of people - but those people are a minority and the data does not support anything else. Most of their pain is almost certainly housing prices, which have been the Great Sin of the Democratic party and notably have very little to do with federal policy.

If you want to talk about vague notions, let's talk about "wealth inequality." Most of these takes are bad because that's not how the stock market works. Elon Musk cannot go out tomorrow and buy $3XXB of stuff. He probably cannot even come CLOSE to realizing the full paper value of his net worth in cash. None of the world's rich can. Yet there is a daily, breathless headline about wealth inequality that waves those dollar figures around like they're real.

Stop disregarding on actual, economic data in favor of hyperbolic headlines about wealth inequality.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/family-finan...

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/animation-collapse-middle-c...

But it’s not like you’re not doing the same thing in the opposite direction.

The only thing really factual here on your list is wealth inequality, although as recently in history as the gilded age it was the same or worse. You barely have to go back more than 100 years to witness children working in factories with no safety standards in the USA.

And really we don’t have to involve the totality of human history to talk about major problems in the 1960s/1970s or even 1990s that we don’t have anymore.

- Lack of regulations that led to the EPA. Your parents probably grew up in a more polluted environment today breathing leaded gasoline.

- Extremely recent prevalence of easily immunized diseases. Smallpox was eradicated in 1980 which wasn’t all that long ago. Polio also comes to mind.

- Developing countries like China where living standards have very obviously shot up by magnitudes in living memory

- Crime in the US at generally declining levels since the 1990s, which has resumed its decline since the pandemic spike.

- Arguably a decent amount less societal friction than the mid-century in America and more recently like with the LA riots. You don’t have to go far back in time to have civil rights problems like gay people being excluded from marriage, women being disallowed from opening a bank account on their own, Black people being prohibited from getting mortgages.

- Just the last decade of cancer treatment technology improvements has been incredible for late life longevity, and America’s best universal healthcare program (Medicare) has better outcomes than other wealthy countries’ universal healthcare systems.

- The continuation of life expectancy gains has only recently stalled and IMO this will likely tick up again as obesity becomes a treatable disease with simple pharmaceuticals.

- Safety standards and behavioral changes related to common causes of premature death. Factors like a more regulated tobacco industry and lower rates of smoking and motor vehicle safety improvements come to mind. A society that allowed cigarette companies to advertise with doctors as spokespeople is a society where you’re more likely to die early. A society where the youngest generation has lower usage of alcohol and drugs like Gen Z/Gen Alpha does is one that is going to have better life outcomes compared to one that has higher use rates, and that behavior is a result of improvements to the environment around them.

I could go on and on…yes things like housing and university have become very expensive, yes there are problems, but holistically you’d probably right rather be alive now than in 1970.

FWIW: there's a... sociological problem with arguments framed around that. When you measure US citizen wealth in the 1960's it looks unimpressive[1]. When you picture a "baby boomer", you see a working class family with no debt behind a white picket fence in a beautiful new subdivision living a great life on just the one income. And those families existed! So what gives?

You're looking at a family headed by a working class white man. Not everyone could get those "working class" jobs that supported a family in the suburbs. There was plenty of poverty in the 60's, it was just hidden along with the single moms and minority communities we didn't record.

Things today are a lot more even, which means that the "white picket fence" demographic perceives things going in the opposite direction from what's actually happening.

[1] Relative to today, anyway. The US in the 60's was obviously an extremely wealthy country!

And while there were enough of those to write and televise a mythos about that America in counterpoint to the communist threat overseas, it actually represents a narrow slow that the "average" Baby Boomer did not get to enjoy and doesn't live in much benefit of today.

You're going to destroy your kidneys. Our bodies are evolved to eat mostly carbs, not protein. It may make your head "clear," but just because you feel good doesn't mean its a genuine improvement to your physical health.