People don't compare themselves to how people lived 80 years ago. They compare themselves to other people, today. So saying "Look poor people, who cares if you can't afford decent housing, or health care, or quality food - you've got a cell phone!" will not quiet the social unrest that a growing underclass will cause.

Overall though, more people have healthcare, more people have housing, and more people have food than ever before.

No one is arguing, 'cellphone, hence no poverty'. People are merely arguing that the lowest 10% are no longer destitute.

Yes, I agree the lowest 10% are no longer as destitute, but my point is the dangerous social unrest that is likely to be caused (some would argue already has been caused) by widening inequality is not something that absolute measures of living standards will have much bearing on.

That remains to be seen. There's clearly a certain level of "comfort" where the majority of people become satisfied enough, and the quality of life at the bottom is rapidly increasing as technology and the world matures. The rise of the middle class in China and India seems to be the biggest indicator of this approaching steady state.

There are some indications that relative inequality creates vocal anger and unrest, however, it generally takes quite low levels of actual living standards (or physical security) before masses of people become willing to actually risk their lives in violent overthrows of the regime.

Historically, "Bread and circuses" is sufficient to keep disgruntled poor masses just disgruntled but not revolting; regimes get overthrown either when the rulers can't provide bread anymore, when they do unbearable physical harm (e.g. disappearances, torture, etc), or when an external force comes in. And currently it's not a big burden on the economy to just provide lots of cheap food and entertainment for everyone to pacify them, that can be done with just a few percent of GDP.

You attacked a very poor interpretation of the parent comment then. Claiming ' they may have iphones, but they don't have food ' is patently ridiculous.

>No one is arguing, 'cellphone, hence no poverty'.

The parent comment certainly does. Specifically mentions "things that used to be luxuries" being available to the poor as a reason.

I'm not sure if that's a helpful observation, though. The floor for the "lowest" percentile in America is outright destitution.

Homelessness means no shelter from the elements or people that want to hurt you, possessions beyond what you can carry and defend, no health care, and being treated like a second class citizen.

I would be interested in the numbers, but based on my experience of homelessness in California, most homelessness is due to severe mental health issues, not poverty. I'm unsure of any data suggesting these kinds of mental health issues are increasing, but I'd be interested in the data.

Also, having seen the situation in third world countries, I have a real issue calling American homelessness destitution, but I understand the arguments from social cohesion.

Homelessness is overwhelmingly caused by economic issues[1][2], even in the Bay area[3], which are certainly exacerbated by mental health issues.

[1] https://www.nlchp.org/documents/Homeless_Stats_Fact_Sheet [2] http://homelessresourcenetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/0... [3] https://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2017-10-2...

I have no doubt homelessness in San Francisco is caused by poverty. However, San Francisco is not california. Do your data apply to California as a whole, or just the bay? San Francisco is a very bad choice in city to extrapolate from.

I supplied numbers for homelessness in general, and homelessness in SF.

Homelessness, in general and in SF, is overwhelming caused by economic issues.

> What if the lower class is getting simultaneously bigger and also better off? Do you think the bottom 10% is living as bad as they were in 1940? 1980? Things that used to be luxuries are now normal across all income brackets... That's a good thing. :-)

Ah yeas, the good ole "TV's and refrigerators" argument[0]. They have luxuries! Even homeless people have cell phones, what a world!

Now how about things that actually matter:

* Housing

* Healthcare

* Education

* Transportation

* Income security

All these things are less accessible now than they used to be.

As for the "luxuries": when everyone is expected to have something, it's not a luxury anymore, it's a necessity.

Before most people had a fridge and a car, daily grocery delivery and grocery stores a walk away were the norm. It isn't now because cars and fridges changed the infrastructure. You are screwed without either in most places (and yes, relying on McFoods instead of a fridge is "being screwed").

Public bathhouses aren't the norm because most people aren't homeless and have access to those at home. In that regard, the very poor are worse off than a hundred years ago when a lot of tenements didn't have showers/bathtubs[1].

Before everyone had a cell phone or a computer, people weren't expected to find jobs online. Now this is a requirement to be a member of the society in most cases.

And so on, and so on.

In short, "Poor people now have ________, so we're better off!" is a bad argument. If these people had good lives, you wouldn't call them poor. Their lives suck. Yes, in a different way than a 100 years ago.

But back then, nobody would be out of job because they couldn't answer recruiters' email either.

[0]https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/02/poor-people-having-nice...

[1]https://journals.ku.edu/amerstud/article/download/2244/2203

What? More people across the entire world have more access to those things that actually matter than ever before in history. This is indisputable fact. There are also 7.5 billion people now so it's impossible to compare absolute numbers without looking at the actual billions who have been lifted out of poverty.

There is greater inequality and that is a real problem, but the bottom is still rising, helped along by the very things you seem to mock.

It's a really big stretch to say that some people are somehow worse off now than before because of a lack of public bathhouse (we do have public shelters and bathrooms) and lack of cell phones (we do have libraries, subsidized phones, social services, etc) and just comes off as disingenuous.

>What? More people across the entire world have more access to those things

I won't argue for the entire world, but I have some numbers for the US - all adjusted for inflation:

- Housing: real-estate prices have increased 4x since the 40-s. The median age of purchasers jumped up by more than a decade.[1]

- Healthcare: per-person spending has increased 9x since the 60's[2]

- Education: the higher education cost has increased by at least a factor of 3x[3]; that article doesn't take into account mandatory fees and living expenses. Or that's 2x if you account for increase in salaries[4]. Should I even talk about jobs available to people without college degrees? You could support a family with a high school diploma back in the day.

- Transportation: public transportation has been in decline in the US. It is by far less available to people today. Read this article for a bigger picture[5]. In particular, the section titled "Death of interurbans and streetcars".

Car prices have remained somewhat stable[6], but that doesn't help people who can't afford one. They are really screwed in a society where car ownership is pretty much expected and public transportation is nonexistent, especially in the suburban areas and small towns.

- Income security: it's hard to characterize that with a single number, but long story short - we are worse off now than in the 70's[7][8]

---------

To sum it all up: in the past 5 decades, housing, healthcare, education have increased in cost several times, public transportation died, income stability is down the drain.

To answer your question:

>What?

That. The comparison is not to middle ages here.

---------

[1]https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/23/how-much-housing-prices-have...

[2]https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/23/heres-how-much-the-average-a...

[3]https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/how-much-college-tuition-has...

[4]https://college-education.procon.org/view.resource.php?resou...

[5]https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/08/how-america-k...

[6]https://wgntv.com/2016/04/25/the-average-car-now-costs-25449...

[7]See page 7 of: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/32896/...

[8]https://www.epi.org/publication/bp213/

If you just discount the rest of the world then you're talking about < 4% of the population of the planet, making your post nothing more than random examples that you're stretching into a strange narrative. The people at the bottom aren't living great lives, but they are much better off than the people at the bottom even 50 years ago.

Plenty of people are still buying homes (unless you think those prices just rose without any buyers) and higher education is not necessary to fill the 6M blue collar jobs that remain open in the US today. You can't just look at some isolated negatives and yet ignore all the positives of change with the immense amount of opportunity available today.

>If you just discount the rest of the world then you're talking about < 4% of the population of the planet

Talking about a country with population of ~325M which we both happen to live in far from being merely "random examples" in my opinion.

>higher education is not necessary to fill the 6M blue collar jobs

6M jobs in a country of 325M. That's 2 years worth of high school graduates for you. Not exactly inspiring, don't you think?

>The people at the bottom [...] are much better off than the people at the bottom even 50 years ago.

I made my case above why I can't agree with that statement, with sources. If you have a different metric, please provide it, with sources. Then we can discuss that.

>You can't [...] ignore [..] opportunity available today.

Sure, there' plenty of opportunity for some people - including you and me, given that we're on HN. Arguably there's less opportunities for vast amounts of others. Less opportunities than there was in the 70's, in particular.

You can ignore that, but that's a part how we got Trump. Saying that the lives of poor people are improving doesn't seem to bode well with the said poor people.

Yes, talking about a fraction of US population, which itself is just a few percent of global population, while billions of lives have been improved is random samples.

If you must scope your argument that narrowly, it does not hold. The US also has the greatest opportunity and socioeconomic mobility in the world and this has only improved. Your attempting to piece together a narrative from disparate data while ignoring the world, even though we already track measures for what you're talking about and they all show great improvements.

>random samples.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

>The US also has the greatest opportunity and socioeconomic mobility in the world

Hahaha no. We are lagging behind Canada, Australia, Spain, for example, and not by a small margin[1]

>we already track measures for what you're talking about

Yes! That's my point!

>and they all show great improvements.

No they do not! They do the opposite!

See the little numbers in square brackets, like [1]? They refer to footnotes. There are links in the footnotes. There's data there, data that supports what I'm saying.

Try arguing in the same way: make your statements quantifiable, and follow up with references that support your statements. It's fun, and we all learn something!

[1] https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobi...

Fine, I'll concede the point about the USA. But as stated, it's 4% of the global population so discounting the vast majority of the world and how many billions of people live betters means this conversation never started on a decent foundation anyway.

Globally this may be true, but it's just false for the US. Wages haven't increased since the 1970s, and now even metrics like life expectancy are falling.

Wages have increased since the 1970s. Median and average wages are at new all-time highs. The middle class hasn't improved, the bottom 25% have seen dramatic improvements since the 1970s.

That 1970s income figure, is a fluke of history. The sole reason it was that high back then was because the US inherited a unique position post WW2, in which it had 55% of all global manufacturing, temporarily. That caused a brief 20-25 year period of artificial economic results that saw the US pull far away from everyone else. Over time much of the developed world has caught back up.

Total compensation has increased since then. That includes health care, which is very expensive. The per capita cost of healthcare is near ~$11,000 now, several times what it cost in the 1970s inflation adjusted.

Homelessness is near an all-time record low in the US and poverty is near 40 year lows.

A record number of people are covered by health insurance.

The per capita income transfers for social welfare policies have tripled since the mid 1970s, inflation adjusted. That is, the US welfare state has dramatically expanded over 40 years, to the benefit of the poorest.

Sure, there's a lot more to do. That doesn't mean there haven't been some vast improvements.