Awesome Question: Would You Rather Be Middle Class Now or Rich in 1900?

By Brad Tuttle | @bradrtuttle | October 13, 2010 | +

Either way, you’d be making roughly $70K a year.

The question is being asked right now over an NPR survey, and the results will be included in a podcast next week. Here are your choices, with some of the pros and cons of each:

Would you rather:
A. Live in 1900 and make $70,000 a year.
or
B. Live today and make $70,000 a year.

If you choose A., you get to be super rich; your income is roughly equal to $700,000 today. You get a mansion, servants, the whole deal.

Choice B. means you aren’t rich, but you’re not poor — and you don’t have to worry about being crippled by polio, or killed when a cut on your foot gets infected. You also get cable TV and air conditioning.

When this question has been posed to econ students, two-thirds choose B. So far, about two-thirds of folks are also clicking B at the NPR online survey.

When I think about how I would answer, and when I think about how most people do answer, there’s an obvious, uplifting takeaway: Modern life is pretty darn good, all things considered (sorry for the NPR overload).

The truth is that most Americans today have everything they need—and then some.

Related Topics: history, middle class, miscellany, rich

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  • shebamarx

    I don’t have air conditioning or TV now. I’d choose A, but I’d have to wear those big dresses.

  • http://allbummedout.wordpress.com allbummedout

    I suspect the aristocrats and Kings of the middle ages would have traded their entire empires to travel in a time machine to the year 2010 and resume their lives from there starting as middle-class folk. The modern middle-class are filthy rich by the standards of the world’s richest people centuries ago. And the rich? Well, they would have been considered gods and titans.

  • http://lindaonwheels.wordpress.com lindaonwheels

    If I had lived in 1900, I would be dead about 4 times over: Spinal Meningitis; Polio; bad heart valve; pneumonia about 15 times…..I could go on and on.

    Even if I had managed to survive all of those diseases, life for a handicapped person was hell back then. No electric wheelchairs or kneeling wheelchair vans…..Plus you sere often “hidden” by your family….

    TG for Jonas Salk, Dr. Sabin, Penicillin and the VOTE for Women, the ADA, Civil rights movement…..I could write a book. Give me 2010 any day!

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