It is worth noting that the rise of wealth in our society means that "decent living" by the standards of the 1930s means "extreme poverty" by today's standards.

More precisely the real value of median income tripled from the 1930s to the 1980s. Lower income brackets did likewise.

So it is historically incorrect to hear FDR say "decent living" and map it onto current notions of a decent living. Separately, we have many decades of experience with the program that FDR didn't, and therefore our opinions today can be better informed than his way. Therefore there is no particular reason that we today should feel bound to agree with his original views.

If you measure it in calories or other form of nutrition, did it triple?

If you define poverty not by an absolute standard of living but the poverty trap (the range where the rest of society trivially exploits you, intentionally or not, and you cannot advance as they do), does it triple?

As measured in calories it did not triple. But malnutrition went down a lot. And reduced malnutrition was one of the causes of rising IQ and physical stature over that time period.

The actual progress in standards of living in the USA from 1930 to 1980 is hard to overstate.

In what way are the poor exploited?

They possess essentially no power in labour negotiations, and most of them live under the yoke of debt.

I agree with those statements, and still dispute your use of the word 'exploit' insomuch as it implies unfairness or some kind of wrongdoing on the part of society.

Society has implemented welfare safety nets and minimum wages for the express purpose of improving the lot of the poor, at a non-trivial cost to the rest (i.e. financial net-contributors) of society. The wages that the poor are able to command (above the proscribed price floor) are the result of market forces of supply and demand; the prevalence of unskilled labor results in low pay--not society or greedy business owners.

The fact that society doesn't do even more to put money in the pockets of the poor can't be 'exploitation', unless you're 'exploiting' a homeless man when you put a dollar in his cup, when you could've put two.

Unless you're talking about loansharks, pay-day-lenders, and that sort of thing, in which case you're right, screw those guys.

Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological arguments. They're off topic here.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Not exactly. While you could claim that due to technological advances a person working a low skilled job at full time in 2019 is better off than someone doing an equivalent job in 1980, you fail to take into account that in 2019 that person would be by major guidelines in a much worse position, ie, no hope of owning a house, taking public transit, can't support a family in a city, less likely to be in a supportive union, and so on. In the things that matter, the person in 2019 is worse off. And at the same time, a worker in 2019 has wildly increased productivity compared to one in 1980. So in a sense, purely by the standard of what they produce, they make more but has less baseline property and amenities. This is an issue. It's no coincidence that rich people have proportionally gotten much much richer in these 40 years, and it has 100% come at a cost to the majority.

The comparison that I made is not between 1980 and the present, it is between 1930 and 1980. This is a very different time period and saw very different trends than have happened since.

FDR would have very much been of the opinion that rise of wealth in our society needs to be distributed to everyone, particularly the least well off among us.