I’m trying to compare the circumstances of my life with that of a multi-millionaire of the last century, JP Morgan.
I’m a lower-middle class guy-I own a house (small), a car, a PC, and I have access to excellent medical care. I also am able to travel (we take a vacation every year), and I have good shoes and clothes.
Now, in 1910, JP Morgan was one of the richest men in American-he had a huge mansion in NYC, and big homes elsewhere. He had access to the best medical care of his time, and had servants to do everything for him. He also had a huge yacht, with a captain and crew, that would take him anywhere he wanted to go.
Am I living better than him?
I have a similar dilemma. I masturbate a lot and manage to get laid by someone I can grudgingly talk into bed every once in a while. In the mean time, Justin Timberlake has Hollywoods starlets begging to suck his cock and he probably gets laid more than carpet. Is he doing better than me with the ladies?
Moved Elections --> IMHO.
The life of those robber barons was absolutely better than mine or yours, right up to the point they, or someone close to them fell ill. At that point I’d happily trade their life of opulence for my 1 bedroom apt with access to 21st century healthcare.
For example John D Rockerfeller was, relative to GDP, one of the richest people in history. But the best healthcare in the world in 1901 couldn’t stop his Grandson dying of Scarlet Fever.
ETA: griffin wasn’t there when I loaded the thread.
Until ol’ JP gets sick, he’s got everything better than you do. So vastly better that you can’t even imagine how good he’s got it.
You could argue that your air travel on Cattle-car Airlines is better than his slower travel by train or ocean liner. Until you saw that his life moved slower & he had hot & cold running babes on his private railroad train. So what if it took 4 days to get from NYC to L.A.? He was having a party the whole time. You got some stale pretzels & a nasty room at the Motel 6.
Effectively, the only two ‘products’ which haven’t moved into the hands of the common man are property and servants. You’ll have better music equipment, better transportation, better medicine, etc. but JP Morgan will have more land with bigger houses, and servants. It’s really up to you which is more valuable from your vantage point. Personally, I’d rather live in the now with modern medicine and A/C.
The example of his yacht probably doesn’t match your example of the airplane, however. A middle classed person could purchase a fairly nice boat like a Nordhavn, which I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s about the same size as a yacht of JP Morgan’s day, and cruise safely with autopilot and one person on deck to keep watch (2 people can safely cruise short distances, and 4 is enough for any distance, with it being not too hard to find another couple to join you for free).
You can also get tickets for a cruise, in which you’ll have a larger cabin, and more on-board entertainment than he would have had.
Once you add in the airplane, I think you’ve safely beaten JP Morgan on that front.
Also, don’t forget food. JP Morgan couldn’t choose between Italian, Indian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, or any other national cuisine on any night of the week.
I’d like to see him get porn on the telegraph.
— … / -.-- . .- … / -… .- -… -.-- --…-- / -.-- — …- / -.- -. — .-- / -.-- — …- / .-… … -.- . / … - / .-… … -.- . / - … .- - .-.-.-
Hey, if phone sex can qualify as porn…
Yeah, but he could get some damned fine ethinic food in NYC during his life. German, French, Continental. It would have been pretty damned good. Better than much you could get today.
I think it depends on what you want to do with your life. There are a number of things that are much easier to do today than in 1901, and if those conveniences are important to you, say to your work or an important hobby, then your life is better. If not, then maybe Morgan has the upper hand.
I think the difficulty in this question is that 1901 isn’t that long ago, really. I have pondered a similar question off and on, but with Louis XIV. What did Louis have that I don’t: Power. And what do I have that he didn’t: Life without rampant disease, a toilet, electricity, almost all the information I could possibly want in seconds, etc. For me this is a no brainer, since I don’t really want power, but for someone else, I suppose that might not be the case.
ETA: Then there’s the question of knowing what you’re missing. If you were to go back in time and become Morgan, life might not be so great for you since you know what you would be able to do in the future. Sure, Morgan apparently had a fancy yacht, but part of what made that great is that no one had anything better. So now we have to balance the opulence of the yacht with the ability, that we have now, to get to Paris tomorrow.
I imagine that there are dozens of different fresh fruits and veggies that just about anyone in the USA can get at their local supermarket for a mere dollar or two that ol’ JP never got to taste…
I’ll take JP’s life. I’d be dead right now, but the path to getting there would have been a lot more fun.
I’m pretty sure Louis XIV had a toilet.
Awesome, and an apt reply to the OP 
I would have thought it would be possible for someone as minted as him to find somebody to cook any type of cuisine in the melting pot of 1900’s NYC.
I’ve brought this up in the past.
I’d much rather be poor [in the USA] today than rich 100 years ago. Even our poor have oodles of cable channels, internet, cell phones, interstate freeways, and yes, even poor guys get some pretty good pussy in 2011. All this plus not having to worry about dying from Polio or an infected paper cut and JP’s money seems like chump change. Replace a “poor” standard of living with a “middle class” one in 2011 and JP’s life seems horrifyingly boring. At least to me.
If he was so rich, why is he still dead?
There was nothing JP Morgan could do about his skin condition (rosacea) and he hated being photographed for that reason.
I think a more interesting question, though, would be whether one prefer to be a poor-ish white man now or a very rich woman or black man of 100 years ago.
Seeing that I’d rather be a poor white guy now than a rich white guy back then, the question is answered.
With apologies to Chris rock, I’d even rather be poor and white in 2011, than rich and black in 2011.
Why on Earth would he need porn? Life is a pussy buffet for a rich man. Even back then.
Could be he’d do better in this thread also, at least with regard to this post. Warning issued.