EVEN IF THE FRIDGE IS FULLER AND THE PHONE IS SMARTER

Insight from your friendly Microsoft Co-pilot prompt by apropos.

Where life really did improve 1. People live longer—on average Life expectancy rose significantly from 1960 to the 2010s, even with the COVID dip. Macrotrends Stanford Center on Longevity 2. Formal rights expanded End of de jure Jim Crow, Voting Rights Act, Fair Housing Act, disability rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women’s legal and economic rights—all of that is a real shift in the legal terrain. 3. Material standard of living More people have access to cars, refrigeration, air conditioning, digital communication, information, and medical technology that simply didn’t exist in the 1960s. Where quality of life clearly degraded 1. Inequality and class fracture Wealth and income are far more concentrated at the top; a Senate HELP Committee report bluntly notes extreme inequality and that over 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Senator Bernie Sanders 2. Life expectancy inequality Higher-income Americans gained more years of life; lower-income groups saw smaller gains or stagnation. Inequality in life expectancy has stopped falling and in some dimensions is rising. Congress.gov  Stanford Center on Longevity 3. Work insecurity Union density collapsed, long-term employment eroded, and gig/contingent work expanded. The “you can raise a family on one industrial wage” 1960s myth is gone for most. 4. Carceral state Since the 1970s, the U.S. built a massive incarceration machine. For Black, Indigenous, and poor communities, quality of life is inseparable from surveillance, policing, and imprisonment. So, has the standard of living improved or decreased? If you average everything: Material standard of living: mostly up Formal rights and protections: up, though under attack Security, equality, and mental load for working-class people: down Outcomes split by class and race: more polarized For a wealthy or even solidly upper-middle household, life now is objectively “better” than the 1960s on almost every axis. For a poor or working-class household—especially Black, Brown, disabled, or criminalized—life is more surveilled, more precarious, more unequal, even if the fridge is fuller and the phone is smarter.

By Apropos