for the record I'm speaking of a "Real" multiplier (taking in account inflation / standard of living) . IMO if every generation is 2x-ing their parent's lifestyle, its nearly instantaneous wealth in the scale of humanity.

In the developed world today's poor live like kings of old. In 1000 yrs I would imagine that their poor will live better than our wealthy "Playboys" of today. I see nothing wrong with people being in different places, so long as they have the ability to better their circumstances.

The ability (and actuality) of improving circumstances is more or less happiness, happy lives are definitionally worth living.

Poor people in the developed world do NOT live like kings of old. They have bosses. They struggle to find mates. They live in small, impermanent homes with no land of their own. They tend to be in debt, and don't even understand how permanent that debt will be for them. They're socially at the bottom.

This is nothing like a king, who could have a large family, and was well fed, had permanent shelter, didn't pay rent, etc etc. How ridiculous.

You are mixing social class with quality of life. Despite being at at the top of the social pyramid, kings of the past did not have many things that most of today's poor (in the US) do, like electricity, running water, air con, motor vehicles, antibiotics, the Internet etc.

Because they are strongly tied; we are social animals. Are you saying for millions of years, our ancestors on average had lower quality of life than the developed world's poor?

It turns out electricity, air con, motor vehicles, and the internet are not the source of happiness, as much as advertising would like us to think otherwise. I bet your average homeless person in America would happily trade for a life in time past if it meant family, community, offspring, and the like. So much of our work today is meaningless, the same can't be said for our evolutionary history as apex predators.

Along many facets, yes, life is much better. But let's not pretend that we haven't regressed in many ways, for much of the population on Earth.

I'm measuring quality of life in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs here. For most of recorded history, the poor often lacked the absolute basics like water, food, clothing and/or shelter, and they continue to do so in many parts of the world. But in the developed world, these problems are largely solved, and issues of social belonging -- Maslow's third layer and above -- come to the fore.

The New Republic has a pithy way of putting this: money doesn't buy happiness, but poverty increases sadness. In other words, you may not be happy just because you have 3 square meals a day and a roof over your head, but you would be a lot less happy if you didn't.

https://newrepublic.com/article/120859/money-doesnt-buy-happ...

Social class is inseparable from quality of life.

80% of the hierarchy of needs is immaterial, so at best your argument is weak. In many cases people will actually sacrifice physiological needs to fulfill the spiritual, intellectual and social ones (flipping the need pyramid)

> Poor people in the developed world do NOT live like kings of old.

I admit its hyperbole. But some things are comparatively like magic. Cellphones/computers, vaccinations, Internet, democracy for example.

Well, for example, even poor people can get antibiotics. Quite a few kings of old died from not having them.

Quite a few poor people still die from not having medical attention where a king would almost always have a personal physician at his side - a king of old would have a much higher chance of survival from a wound that would kill a modern poor person who couldn't afford medical care.

I don't think you can prove that assertion. The personal physician to the King of Olde would not know about Germ Theory, nor about the importance of basic hygiene and cleanliness. A modern poor person at least has a chance to learn about such things, and there is a significant number of people who provide medical care for free to those in need.

But Obama bought them IPHONES

i agree that improving your circumstances is the best thing.

i also dont dismiss standard of living arguments, i think they are valid. but i think they aren't the whole picture. i think alot of how we feel depends on how we compare to those around us. 100 thirsty people in a desert are much more pissed off if you add 1 person with excess water standing right next to them not giving them any. so, some consideration to the overall shape of the distribution of wealth is necessary in my opinion.

> 100 thirsty people in a desert are much more pissed off if you add 1 person with excess water

The analogy isn't entirely correct. If the thirsty people got all the water they could drink and a guy joined that owned a lake... They shouldn't really complain.

It's literally better for everyone, even if the wealth distribution is worse.