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▲ WalterBright 21 hours ago

America's poor today have clean water, health care, washing machines, central heating and air conditioning, flush toilets, hot and cold running water, electric lights, hot showers, fresh vegetables and fruit year round, glass windows, cotton undies, ice cream, TVs with 24/7 entertainment, talk to anyone in the world at the push of a button, need I go on?

▲TFYS 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The poor have those things because they still have some amount of power. They're still needed for work, and if you make too many of them too desperate, they can threaten the people at the top. But if you let the wealth (and power) gap get too large this will no longer be the case, and the poor might lose access to those things. If the wealth gap becomes such that the rich can afford automated production and protection but the poor can not, the current economic and political systems will no longer have a reason to give access to any of those things to the poor.

▲ozim 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think you want to replace fresh vegetables and fruits with processed ready meals.

Being available is not equal to a person being able to afford it.

Maybe you were writing about middle class and not the poor?

▲WalterBright 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

So, fruits and vegetables cost more than processed ready meals? Yesterday I bought a banana for $.22.

The government provides food to the poor with SNAP.

The only starving people in America are drug addicts or very ill people. Obesity is the usual problem for poor people.

▲ponector 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You don't need to be a middle class to be able to afford electric lights, mobile phones, apples, oranges and grapes all year round.

On the other hand kings had free-range organic grown meat prepared by personal cook anytime they wanted which is a true luxury even today.

▲swiftcoder 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> On the other hand kings had free-range organic grown meat prepared by personal cook anytime they wanted which is a true luxury even

There is no refrigeration, so "fresh" meat has to be slaughtered the same day. Kings tended to live in populated areas, so wild game would be scarce. Majority of meat would have been pork kept in pens (not free-range in the modern sense), or mutton/goat (free range, but typically older and tougher). At the same time, even a king likely wasn't slaughtering 365 pigs/year just to have fresh meat every day - lots of dried, smoked, or even salted meat in the diet...

▲spwa4 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No they didn't. In castles meat wasn't very fresh at all, and food poisoning was both common and a common cause of death especially in medieval times. Which is why we have so many traditional dishes that are effectively just ways to keep food fresh and especially safe for longer. How many stew recipes did people invent worldwide, for example? Slow cooking will keep food edible for a week if you do it right. And if you really push it, for months (ie. add animal gelatin as a last step and keep cooking for 2 hours after that, at some point it will solidify and you get something that can be considered "instant soup" by extremely flexible interpretation). If you look back 100 years there are books with year-round menus, and bits of that survive. Why? To give you specific dishes when the ingredients are available according to the "agricultural calendar" as it's called in France. Christmas is great. October sucks.

The very oldest book in the bible contains the basic recipe for keeping meat fresh for ~week, and that's what Kosher, Halal, ... are really about.

And yeah, it depends. Roman emperors, for example, would have had fresh meat available whenever. Medieval kings, no way. Renaissance kings ... probably not constant fresh meat, and certainly not constant fresh fish, but a lot better than medieval kings.

▲enatiello 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Speaking as someone who has been truly poor, if you're lucky enough to have a "home", the water is probably poisoned or flammable from some sort of mining. Health care, in the US? You may be better off with a witch, which is certainly cheaper. You may have access to appliances, and some of them may even work. Fresh veggies contaminated with shit from increasing cost savings being applied to every form of production. Glass windows are available in increasingly "sealed for energy efficiency" homes festering mold. Synthetic fiber clothing, as cotton and wool are way to expensive and "TVs" that phone home about every ad you are increasingly being served even with your "ad free" subscription. Being able to speak to someone across the world with one touch of a button is fairly new, however pressing 7/11 buttons, and before that dialing 7/11 buttons, and before that speaking to someone to make the connection for you did the same job, usually without ad bombardments. Before that was the press of one button many many times. Patrick Stewart was excellent.

▲Two4 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it’s disingenuous to imply that there isn’t an inequality issue because the basic standard of living has advanced since the Middle Ages. Even if we compare the standard of living for say, Mississippi lower third and Uganda lower third, it’s obvious that you’re better off in Mississippi. However, the fact that the wealth and means to uplift the poor actually exists in the US but is not exercised is itself an issue - Uganda does not have that possibility.

▲znpy 19 hours ago | parent [-]

> Even if we compare the standard of living for say, Mississippi lower third and Uganda lower third, it’s obvious that you’re better off in Mississippi.

I mean, it’s no wonder people move from uganda to mississipi (or other places in the us) and not rhe other way around.

▲defrost 19 hours ago | parent [-]

Uganda's a popular destination with US evangelical bible belt Christians.

* https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/feb/25/us-evang...

▲paulryanrogers 15 hours ago | parent [-]

Not to settle and raise their families

▲Geezus_42 14 hours ago | parent [-]

No, just to colonize with their religious before they fly back to their mega churches and call it charity.

▲ninjalanternshk 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Kings has dozens or hundreds of people who did all those things for them, and more, at their command.

▲dtj1123 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm not to certain about the healthcare and aircon.

▲modo_mario 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do you define have as own or as in can afford to utilise momentarily?

▲fodkodrasz 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And none of these give them the freedom, agency, a past noble or a king had.

My parents had access to cheaper housing, less red-tape and fixed working hours, more job security than my generation, when I was born.

So now insert BUT THEY DIDN'T HAVE FLAT PANEL TV AND IPHONE in retarded Sponge Bob chicken meme here.

▲peterfirefly 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Could your parents travel further and faster than a king?

▲ndsipa_pomu 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> America's poor today have clean water, health care

Clean water depends on how you define "clean" e.g. from https://www.theglobalstatistics.com/united-states-water-poll...

> Current EPA data reveals that nearly half of all tap water in the United States contains detectable levels of PFAS chemicals

There's also plenty of contamination violations (apart from maybe Hawaii with only 2) of the water supply.

As far as health care goes, I thought that most people in the USA will refuse to get an ambulance due to the expense. I've also heard of plenty of reports that poor people will not visit a doctor for minor health issues even though they may be early signs of much more serious issues.

▲WalterBright 9 hours ago | parent [-]

The king's "doctors" in medieval times were little more than witch doctors.

> Clean water depends on how you define "clean"

Always, back to arguing about the definitions of words. Let's put it simply. People before 1800 had little idea about clean water. They didn't know what bacteria was. They didn't know about contaminants. They had very poor sanitation practices. They died of cholera regularly.

Probably the greatest advance in health care in history was the introduction of a clean water supply.

So if you want to quibble about what "clean" means, I'll take municipal water, water filters, and boiling any day over what anybody in medieval times drank. If you don't think your water is clean enough, get a water filter from Amazon. They're cheap, and they work.

In the US, emergency rooms cannot turn away anyone. The care delivered there is light years ahead of anything any king got in medieval times.