When my parents were my age, there were almost no jobs working with distributed systems or robotics and the relative standard of living was much worse than what I have been able to attain at a similar age and level of education.

My grandparents performed jobs that now are rarely performed in the US due to there being better jobs for those qualified to perform them.

I am much happier working with AI and distributed systems than as a carpenter or steel mill foreman like my grandfathers. Everybody on my father's side of the family had these white marks all over their forearms from molten metal splashing on them and burning them as they worked.

This is only possible because of technological progress. It creates new jobs.

Pretty sure a DoorDash driver now gets paid better than a 19th century farmer inflation adjusted? Over a single lifetime, there are no guarantees because there's too many variables, but civilization-ally, the progress seems to always hold up.

But, as a whole, the entire population's pay goes a lot farther since no one has to pay drivers to drive them around anymore.

Living standards would be a lot worse today if we still had to pick crops in the field by hand.

I always hear people saying this but when? the 70s the 60s? that’s your golden age?