Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report

derekthompson.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 196 posts

Re: America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report

#41

Post by artisinal »

2muchtime wrote: post #16
artisinal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural parks. Tasty drinkable water from the tap in nearly the entire country. Being able to flush toilet paper. Free toilets almost everywhere. Being a country for 250 years is also quite an achievement. I’m European and have witnessed many wars on my continent in my lifetime. A childhood friend was shot down with a Russian surface to air missile.

The water is drinkable but in many places not what I would call tasty.

Water tastes pretty gross in coastal Spain. In countries like Albania I wouldn’t even drink it at all. On Greek islands it is safe but everyone buys water from the stores.

Due to the age of many places in Europe there is also still a lot of copper pipe used for tap water. Not deadly but also not very healthy. In Amsterdam over 20 percent of homes have copper pipes.

Re: America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report

#42

Post by wqaatwt »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #19
axpy906 wrote: post #13

No offense but outside of money does the US have anything going for it?

The best geography of any country by a large margin and a non-ethnic culture that believes anything is possible and celebrates the ambition to try. The money is largely a side effect of these two things.

Europe probably has the “best geography” and the climate, though?

Coastal California is probably one of the nicest places on earth but generally US is quite harsh.

Re: America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report

#43

Post by pfdietz »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #37
pfdietz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sometimes is a single person. Consider the failed beer hall demagogue who wrecked a nation, a continent, and nearly a world.

To both of your points: the beer hall demagogue wouldn't have gotten to Chancellor if the German elites hadn't decided that he really couldn't do that much damage and we may as well let him be chancellor to quiet down his followers. Even after the putsch, he got a very light sentence because the judge was sympathetic with his right-wing cause. You're both right to some extent. A huge amount of damage was done by one…

All events have multiple causes. But history turned on what he did, and would have been very different otherwise.

Re: America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report

#44

Post by dgellow »

abirch wrote: post #30
UncleOxidant wrote: post #24

I read Sinclair Lewis' Babbit last year and it was kind of depressing how little has changed since 1922. The political climate (at least as portrayed in the novel) seemed eerily similar to now. Maybe we continually go through oscillations.

I'm shocked how much the average American knows about how things work. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. I'm not surprised how quickly Americans are giving up their liberty.

Did you mean to say “how little”?

Re: America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report

#45

Post by stackghost »

miroljub wrote: post #18
stackghost wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has felt inevitable to me for a few years now. The market != the economy but a major crash can still trigger a credit crunch that will materially affect regular people. Look at the insane valuations on some of these companies. They can't continue forever. As for WW3, well, there's a diaper-wearing senile old man, with an inferiority complex to boot, in charge of a nuclear arsenal and major conventional forces.

> As for WW3, well, there's a diaper-wearing senile old man, with an inferiority complex to boot, in charge of a nuclear arsenal and major conventional forces. How naive one must be to consider this NPC as the biggest threat to human kind since the dawn of man. It's not that single person who threatens the world, it's the complete American elite and the whole American society who push for wars and more wars, and the…

>It's not that single person who threatens the world, it's the complete American elite and the whole American society who push for wars and more wars, and the current NPC of the day in the office is just their tool.

I agree that Americans themselves are the root cause. Americans as a society are deeply, pathologically unwell and Trump is entirely their fault. I have no sympathy for any of them.

But only one person is the commander in chief of the US military, and the checks and balances that are supposed to keep him in control are not functioning.

Re: America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report

#46

Post by dgellow »

davoneus wrote: post #11

Great article. Just reminds me of how much societies resemble a pendulum; swinging from one extreme to the other. And of course you have the problem that some people want to freeze it mid-swing, or worse tear the damn thing down completely.

I’m really not sure, if you look at things before the 20th century it’s difficult to see a pendulum swing pattern. That works relatively well between the 20th and 21st centuries, but I don’t think we can see it as a general rule. It’s also pretty dependent on the region you look at, and movements you decide to take in consideration or filter out. There is just so much room for biases, it’s easy finding a pattern because that’s what our brains are good at doing, but it doesn’t mean it is predictive of anything

That being said, this video from Three Arrows (aka Dan Arrows) “America coming Weimar moment” has interesting things to say on that specific comparison: https://youtu.be/CFDDf48nj9g

Re: America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report

#47

Post by Schiendelman »

ck2 wrote: post #20
Schiendelman wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised to hear that wealth concentration was worse a hundred years ago than it is now. It's very easy to assume otherwise when the numbers are so much larger now across the board. https://americanbusinesshistory.org/superwealth-a-historical...

yes almost all americans now have running water and indoor toilets except we have more homeless than ever so they don't even have that with taxes slashed for billionaires and safety-nets for food and healthcare being destroyed, we are actually headed back to 1926 on purpose

I did a quick check, and the HUD point-in-time counts show the rate of homelessness was dropping slowly from 21.5 per 10000 in 2007 (the first year of a national standard), to around 17.5 per 10000 in 2020, then rose in 2023-2024 up to 22.9, and in 2025 was back down to 21.9. During the Great Depression this rose up to 100-200 per 10,000.

Keep in mind that "more homeless than ever" (and I would prefer "more people experiencing homelessness than ever") may be technically true, but per capita we've seen a post-covid bump that's likely already back to 2007 levels. Without understanding the trends I wouldn't predict what happens next.

I've done some research to try to help you understand more - can I ask you to think about your frame and beliefs and consider changing them?

Re: America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report

#48

Post by Spooky23 »

copper-float wrote: post #21
Avicebron wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I wish Strauss–Howe theory hadn't been hijacked. It seems noteworthy how similar (cyclical?) things are even if it's a coincidence..

What do you mean hijacked? I'm not familiar with that theory.

Crazy/extemist people use it as a way to justify their nonsense.

Re: America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report

#50

Post by Spooky23 »

jmyeet wrote: post #14

I an a completely unabashed leftist who has been "radicalized" (if you call free school lunches "radical", which apparently it is in modern America) by seeing the rapidly accelerating wealth and income inequality since 2008. I mean it really kciked off in the 1970s but the effects post-2008 became impossible to ignore. In the spirit of all models are wroong but some models are useful and that generational politics is…

Personally, I think GenX are the lost. (I'm a late GenX) Our colleages took the brunt of the global war on terror, and because we entered the workforce at the peak boomer pivot away from the pre-Internet era of business those of us that were in the corporate/government workforce were basically stuck waiting for people to die to move up. We're the people who got computers and internet in a way that neither our elders or children understand.

The millennials are the recipients of the great dumbing down. They get the inherit the wealth of their parents and grandparents, just in time for it to be inflated away to nothing.

Post reply on HN