This is the complete opposite of an empirical fact. The right has now joined the left in being pessimistic about the modern world and completely unappreciative of the amazing abundance we now have. I’ll just focus on food here, but you could do it for almost every category.
▪️Fresh produce used to be available only in season. In the winter it was canned or frozen. People used to send fruit for Christmas gifts, it was that much of a luxury good. Now, you can get giant, sweet berries year around in every grocery store. Corn on the cob in February. Not to mention once rare items like dragon fruit, heirloom tomatoes or baby bok choy.
▪️If you didn’t live on the coast, seafood was either not available, frozen, or extremely expensive. If you lived in the Midwest and traveled to coastal locales you would quite literally be able to eat food you had never seen. Salmon has become much more abundant and accessible. You can get fresh ahi at Walmart today. Sushi and oyster bars exist everywhere now.
▪️High protein/low sugar snacks are now everywhere and delicious. Protein powder used to be the main option, but was cumbersome to bring away from home and tasted meh. Or the old protein bars that tasted like cardboard. Now you have Core Power at every gas station, and countless protein bars that actually taste good with minimal sugar. Back in the 80s and 90s there was almost nothing.
▪️Items like Greek yogurt used to be obscure. Now there’s dozens of options, flavors, full/reduced/no fat, etc. at Target. Vegan isn’t my thing but you can get plant-based “meat” that actually tastes good and a wide variety of other options. Also oat milk and almond milk, those basically didn’t exist in the 80s and 90s.
▪️The variety of fast food restaurants is unbelievable now. I remember in the mid 2000s when a Chipotle opened near me and I was ecstatic. Now, it doesn’t even move the needle. Any decent sized town offers practically every cuisine under the sun for takeout, and you can get it delivered if you wish. Delivery used to only be for pizza and other niche places.
▪️Specialty and artisanal products have exploded, now available in every grocery store. Used to be you had to seek out a bakery to get good or fancy bread. Or specialty shops to get special spices, hot sauces, cheeses and chocolate. Now it’s easy. Go to Total Wine and you have a huge selection of wine from almost every country.
▪️It’s easy to get pessimistic, but if anyone from the 1980s went to a Costco today they would be absolutely blown away by the abundance and quality of food. Someone from the 1950s would think today’s grocery store is a miracle. The average person can eat better than millionaires of just a few decades ago, but few appreciate it. Sad.
So many of these right wing accounts are just whiners now, this is a diatribe about automatic sinks and towels, the horror! As I explained in a prior post, most of the newer terminals have great bathrooms, some now have completely private stalls and plenty of them. The worst and most crowded airport bathrooms are invariably found in aging terminals that are decades old. It’s a reminder that airports were usually drab and uncomfortable.
I think the heyday of the air hand-dryers was like 15-20 years ago, where often you couldn’t find real towels. Now you can at least usually get real paper towels in airport bathrooms. Remember those old cloth roller towels that would go in a loop and somehow “clean” themselves? Yuck! Public bathrooms have always been gross, it seems some are deliberately having selective memories.
Airport food and drinks were always expensive, but now practically everyone brings those huge cooler flasks with them and fills them up. So not sure what he means that ...
I first critiqued this terrible take by looking at how food has actually improved substantially. Even though I said the same could be done in every category, people said “you’re only doing food.” So let’s do air travel and see why it’s not gotten better, not worse.
▪️Aircraft have greatly improved. Just 15-20 years ago, many domestic routes (~15%) were flown by turboprops like the Brasilia, Dash 8 or Saab. Now, almost everything is in jets, and most aircraft have WiFi. Some even have Starlink, where you probably have faster WiFi than your home. Most major airlines offer dozens or hundreds of movies and shows to watch.
▪️Newer designs like the 787 have lower cabin altitudes and improved humidity, which make a huge difference in passenger comfort on long haul flights. The first/business class international market has gotten very competitive globally, with many carriers offering excellent service and amenities. Pods, suites, showers, etc. Coach still sucks but is dramatically cheaper ...
▪️This is a proposal that pertains only to graduate level nursing degrees, not undergraduate ones (which were never considered professional degrees). The proposal will have a 30-60 day public comment period next year, where groups can object, before the DoE will decide on it.
▪️This is about how much federal student loans someone can take out for a particular degree. The cap on graduate degrees is $100k ($20,500/yr), while a “professional degree” limit is $200k ($50k/yr).
▪️Under the new rule proposal, professional degrees include:
🔹Pharmacy
🔹Dentistry
🔹Veterinary medicine
🔹Chiropractic
🔹Law
🔹Medicine (including osteopathic medicine & podiatry)
🔹Optometry
🔹Theology
▪️The nursing degrees excluded are ones like master of science in nursing (MSN), doctor of nursing practice (DNP) and PhD in nursing. These degrees would be limited to $100k in federal student loans, like all other graduate degrees.
▪️These changes came from the One Big Beautiful Bill’s...
