Comment by sshine
6 hours ago
> > America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.
> False Equivalence, Red Herring, Chronological Snobbery, Fallacy of Relative Deprivation, Contextomy.
There's a lot of reasonable arguments to unpack here.
But no, it's not that Louis XIV didn't have an iPhone, it's that the vast middle class in developed countries has central heating and access to penicillin and don't die from giving birth as much.
Also, America's poor are definitely worse off than medieval kings. They don't have access to those basic things that keep most modern people wealthier than medieval kings, like food, shelter and health care.
Some of the older (pre-medieval) king's ruins in Denmark are (by our standards) small stone houses with a moat, and what makes them remarkable is that they're made of stone, and the moat is rather big, so it keeps people out. Like metal doors in apartment buildings, sort of. (Correction for the historians: The oldest king's ruins are of course just holes in the ground where wooden beams used to stand.)
s/America's poor/Europe's lower middle class/ and you're there.
I think that we are both well aware that the statement was not about "Candy Crush" or "Louis XIV". As the "America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings" was not about technological progress.
Some more thoughts for you: since 19xx workers are productive to the scale of 10x (feel free to downplay it to whatever factor over 3x as this is the minimal amount, everyone agrees on except of those that harvest the difference) against those times. But we are still working 8/8/8. Who takes the difference? Of 10x (or 3x)?
> it's not that Louis XIV didn't have an iPhone,
probably more that Louis XIV was not a medieval king.