When was the best time to be alive?

[ohfook]

If right through history you had to pick a point somewhere in between say the Stone Age where there was no technology at all, life was exceptionally tough and people didn't have any rights right up to now where we have every convenience known to man but we live so out of tune with nature and we're watching the planet burn in slow motion. Where do you think the sweet spot was? The point where we had enough to make our lives easier but we weren't producing so much that it was actively destroying our planet?

Feel free to take other factors like wars or disease into account too if you like, but you don't have to!

I don't have an answer, I just posted this because I was reading about the Ancient Maya and thought it seemed like quite a nice life until I heard they sacrificed children.

I have to disagree with this. Some industries have thrived since 08 and have never been as lucrative as they are currently.
We; me, my husband and our group of friends (couples) all left sixth form / college in 2009 and by 2014; 5/7 couples had bought our first homes. One other couple went travelling and the other couple both went to uni and only managed to buy in 2019. Those of us who bought didn’t buy hovels in rough areas either.

Sweeping statements fail to realise different industry patterns and varying house prices across the UK.

Thanks for all of your answers. I love how nuanced it is and there isn't a collective answer of X being the best era for everyone. It totally depends on your sex and loads of other things too.

I totally agree with the poster who said about us all using social media/the internet to post about how life was better pre internet and social media. I hate it and what it's done to my productivity and concentration. Yet I'm never off my bloody phone - definitely something I need to work on!

The late 90's and up to 2010ish. In the UK.

I think the world is a better place with the internet, and has made communication so much easier, but other things seem to be harder and more expensive, just as they were in decades previous to the 90s.

I was talking statistically though? That doesn't mean no one could buy a house or that every single person has seen wage stagnation.

But low interest rates have inflated assets & many industries have seen stagnated wages. Austerity has had an impact but you can disagree of course.

https://ifs.org.uk/news/labour-market-inequalities-show-need-boost-wage-growth-middle-earners-and-low-earners-non

https://propertyindustryeye.com/the-unaffordablity-index-average-house-price-now-8-7-times-average-income-ons-data/

Sweeping statements

the irony 😆

Ok; statistically certain industries have never been as prosperous as now; 2022, and the upward spike in wages started around 2016 and has continued to rise since; only slightly stagnated by the pandemic. Should a recession hit this industry, which by its nature is likely; the wages are highly unlikely to ever drop back to what they were following 08 and are more likely to slowly decline back to roughly 2019/early 2020.
It’s a huge industry so, statistically, hundreds of thousands of workers have benefited from the upward spike and have done so for 5/6 years.

"Until May 2008, wage growth was above inflation, causing positive real wage growth. But, since 2008, the UK has seen periods of negative real wage growth."

"In 2007/08 real median disposable income was £37,310. By 2020/21 that was only a very small increase of £37,622 or less than 1% growth over 13 years."

This is the general trend & as I said it's not applicable to every individual.

Do you have data that shows wages haven't stagnated as a general trend?

Or that house prices vs income is lower?

I came on to say this, only it was me living it! Even my son says he wishes he'd been born in the 50s/60s. I reckon we had (in the main) the best life. Grew up without SM and all that entails and freedom to play, but young enough to embrace technology when it appeared. Affordable housing and an NHS that worked. Yes we had the strikes in the 70s but no era is perfect!

Of course there was crap stuff, sexual harassment in the office, school bullying but I'm still glad I was growing up then.

I do yes; our companies accounts and the public accounts of the other large firms in our industry. 40% of our workforce are now earning double what they were earning in 2016. The other 60% have had significant increases but have more variables so aren’t directly comparable to the 40.
Our businesses are large, but not the largest 5 in the UK and these have all had similar increases during the same period.

I didn’t read the articles you linked previously but I’m assuming that’s where your quotes are taken from. Do they take from across the board or just the lowest paid workers?

Not arguing the house prices.

DH’s grandparents feel that they have had the best of it. Born in the last year or two of WWII so can’t remember it. NHS, vaccines, antibiotics etc all available. They say easy to leave one job and the next day start another. Affordable housing and decent pensions. No social media. Challenges of course but overall they feel they have lived in the best period to be alive.

I tend to agree

The 1980s were fun

Born in the 60’s, university in the 80’s. Some racism but not too much. (I’m Greek Cypriot) Knew what a woman was. Strikes in the 70’s I remember that. A working NHS. Freedom to play out with the other kids. No SM to worry about. Bullying didn’t follow you home. I’d say the 90’s & early 2000’s.

WeBuilt "If it's not asking an impossible question, would you prefer to be the age you are now and live now in 2022, or would you wish that you had been born in the earlier decades of the 20th century, with the understanding that you would now either be dead or otherwise fast approaching the end of your life?"

i'm not sure I get the question! I'm 46. I think it was better when people didn't expect to pass 70. I always say George Michael age would be more than enough for me.

I wouldn't want to be in my 20s again - drastically overworked and still struggling moneywise, and anxious about so many things that ( I realised later on ) didn't matter at all.

Would I like to be 46 and transported to London in the 90s? Yes, it was a good place to live across all age groups back then, I think. My parents were in their 50s and loved it too.

I was a child in the nineties and didn't realise what a special time it was. There seemed to be a real sense of positivity in the world. International travel to a lot of places was relatively safe but before globalisation made everywhere homogenous. So it would have been cool to have experienced it as an adult.
I comfort myself by thinking I would have had to have been a child in the seventies though. That entire era gives me the ick.

80s and 90s were good in lots of ways. Pretty prosperous generally.

Got rid of the strikes/militancy and high inflation of the 70s.

We still had vibrant town centres with shops.

Plenty of jobs in smaller cities and towns before the concentration of "good" jobs in London.

People could get a good, lifelong, job/profession straight from leaving school, not having to get into huge debt to get a degree needed for even call centre work.

Housing was still affordable for most working people.

Growth/Ease in foreign trade, both importing and exporting, increasing choice of goods for people to buy, and increasing opportunities for UK businesses to export.

Dawn of computing made lots of jobs easier, quicker and more reliable.

I think we've really lost our way over the past 25 years or so, mostly for the worse.

Well, I was born in 76 so I don't really remember it. Wandered London reasonably freely in the days it was easy to bunk off school, kids taking (and selling) E by the time 1990 hit. On the Tube for regular work by 1994. So I don't recall anything of the 70s really. My older sister finds it fine though, but expectations were different. I do recall, in the 80s, keeping my coat on after school and sitting in bed to read, with the coat on, because the house was so cold.

The 80s were not good in the north - where I lived we have an unemployment rate of 25%

I think the answer depends on your class and region

The 1990s felt like a good decade. Economic prosperity, public services that still functioned. Labour in power. Politically bridges were being mended - good Friday agreement, Glasnost etc. We were still in the EU.

Life was less stressful than now, for sure.

According to development indicators, if we take the world as a whole, now.

We are, as a planet, healthier and wealthier than ever before. We live longer, are more educated and more equal than in an previous era (see Hand Rosling's book called 'Factfulness' which discusses the question).

As a country it's a far harder and more nuanced question.

Depends which part of the North.

Obviously, the areas which depended on older/heavy industry really suffered, but lots of "The North" wasn't dependant on manufacturing, mining, etc., so large Northern areas didn't suffer high rates of unemployment.

I lived in a coastal/tourist part of the North and it was booming in the 80s. The rot set in in the late 90s and 00s and it's now very run down, with huge social problems and high unemployment, although starting to recover again.

It has to be post-antibiotics.

My parents (recently deceased) said the sixties were great. Not from a social pov (they were married and starting a family) but from a more general feeling of opening up. They felt it was a time of opportunity. Perhaps that was relative to grim 40's and 50's. And it was sandwiched between the grim 70's. When you think about it, grammar schools actually worked and did what they were supposed to, giving bright kids from all backgrounds a chance, economically we were opening up too, as well as artistically and socially.

Anyway I'd like to go back to the early 60's and see what my little part of Cornwall was like when my parents were making a future for themselves and feeling suddenly unfettered.

I think the 60s had hope

So many people lived in squalor with outside loos and no heating still standard and your chance of an early death was high , and the nueclear threat was high but all around change was for the better

They are from the 1960s youth generation and got to enjoy sex drugs and rock and roll without looming ecosystem collapse and a public service in tatters
They got all the fun, none of the responsibility, and then mismanaged it all to secure the wealth for themselves in retirement and beggar successive generations. A great time to be born, if your intention was to be a selfish bastard.

Now definitely. I probably would’ve lost my children (and possibly died myself) during childbirth if we didn’t have the medical facilities we do today. I’m self employed and the main breadwinner while being able to stay home and look after my kids. That’s not something that would’ve been possible more than 10 years ago (I work online). I have access to education and to travel etc. I’m lucky enough to have good heating, a good roof over my head and good food. We’ve also had great opportunities in recent years to make good money with investments like crypto. It’s far from perfect, but I think as women this is the best time right now. Growing up on a farm in Ireland in another era I most likely would’ve lived a life of poverty that I may never have been able to escape.

Life for the average person was very hard, with average life expectancy 30-35 years. Life for the majority of people - serfs, was very shit.