• phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    This is something more lemmies should see… I keep being told that 200 years ago, people only worked 15 hours per week, water was like beer and everything was peachy for everyone! It’s… Frustrating.

    • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      Take the general point: life today is a hundred times better than hundred years ago

    • owenfromcanada@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      This isn’t a sharpshooter fallacy–that would mean the good things OP is noting are made “good” after they happen.

      If you think this is an unfounded optimism because there are a lot more bad things (or that things have gotten worse over the last two centuries), there’s an argument to be had there, but this isn’t it.

      • Maven (famous)@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I do think the bottom one is misleading. One of the reasons there’s less global poverty is because the standards for what counts as being impoverished on these studies has gone down… Not living conditions going up. They just redid the studies in a way to make it look better for the stats.

        It’s a good thing to have less poverty but having less purely because you decided people can live on less now is misleading at best.

        Nothing against OP, I just hate that specific stat every time it gets thrown around.