Americans Live Better Than Kings and Queens Did Before
Most people alive in America right now have it way better than even the richest kings and queens did hundreds of years ago. It sounds hard to believe, but it’s true. Even an average person can afford things today that all the money in the world couldn’t buy you back then. Americans take a lot of this stuff for granted, but it’s pretty incredible if you think about it.
Technology Makes Impossible Things Possible
Science and technology have given normal Americans superpowers compared to people in the past. Inventions have made life so much easier, healthier, and more fun than it used to be for anyone, no matter how rich or royal they were.
Just look at medicine. Doctors today can use X-rays to see your bones, microscopes to spot germs, and scans and tests to figure out what’s wrong with you. If you needed surgery, you’d get put to sleep so you don’t feel any pain. You can take pills to make infections go away. You can get shots to protect you from catching terrible diseases in the first place. This stuff is so normal that it doesn’t seem like magic anymore, but you better believe it would blow people’s minds 200 or 500 years ago.
It’s the same thing with travel. Americans move around in ways that would seem impossible if you were born before 1800. We zoom down highways in cars and buses. We hop on planes and fly through the sky from city to city. It took Christopher Columbus months to cross the ocean, and he only had to deal with scurvy and sea monsters. Today, you can watch a movie, nap, and wake up on a different continent.
Even day-to-day life is different. Electric lights let us stay up past sunset. Air conditioners and heaters keep us comfortable no matter the weather. Refrigerators stop our food from rotting. Dishwashers clean our plates for us. Washing machines scrub our dirty clothes. Indoor plumbing means using the bathroom or drinking water without trekking to the outhouse or the well. And we can stay in touch with people on the other side of the country or the planet by making a phone call or getting on the internet.
A lot of this technology has only recently shown up. Someone born in 1900 has seen more changes in their lifetime than a regular person would have in the last 10,000 years. It’s only getting faster, too. Who knows what crazy new gadgets people will have in a few more decades?
The Market Keeps Making More Stuff and Better Stuff
Another reason Americans live so large today is simple economics. The basic idea of supply and demand, plus companies competing with each other, has greatly improved life.
When businesses are trying to attract customers, they have to work hard to give people what they want. They keep trying to make their products cheaper and more useful than the other guys sell.
Just look at something simple like socks. Kings and queens long ago had silk, but now you’ve got a rainbow of cheap, comfy socks at Target or Walmart. And you can get socks specifically made for hiking, running, playing basketball, or attending a fancy party. The quality and variety are through the roof. And it’s not just socks. It’s like that for almost everything.
This competition has caused prices to fall while quality has remained high. Moreover, entirely new products are constantly being invented, giving shoppers even more choices. When companies have to fight for business, the customer wins.
At the same time, technology is making it easier and easier to crank out huge amounts of stuff. Machines and automation let fewer workers make a lot more goods faster. Factories and assembly lines can churn clothes, toys, furniture, cars, etc. Container ships and cargo planes can move all that stuff across the world quickly and cheaply.
There Are Some Big Downsides, Though
Not everything is sunshine and rainbows in the modern world. Sure, Americans are living large in many ways, but there are still plenty of problems to worry about.
For example, buying and selling haven’t been great for the planet. Factories pollute the air and water, chemicals get dumped in rivers and oceans, garbage piles up in landfills, and burning gas and oil messes with the climate. These are serious issues that people in the past didn’t have to deal with.
Technology causes trouble, too. Yeah, it makes life easier, but maybe too easy sometimes. People spend so much time staring at their phones and computers that they forget to go outside or talk to each other face-to-face. Hackers and scammers have a lot more ways to steal from you. It’s easier for governments and companies to spy on people. And don’t forget about the invention that could wipe everyone out: nukes.
Finally, let’s not pretend that every American is living it up. There’s still plenty of poverty to go around. Folks are sleeping on the streets in big cities, and little kids don’t always get enough to eat. Life is definitely harder if you’re poor today than if you’re rich, but that’s not so different from the past.
