One of my big pet peeves is when people say "people used to ..." and they describe something well-off or only wealthy people did in the past.
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One of my big pet peeves is when people say "people used to ..." and they describe something well-off or only wealthy people did in the past. "but nowadays people just..." and they describe something poor and broke people do today.
We don't have as much documentation of how poor people lived in the past... so in a way we don't know how poor people lived as clearly.
1/
@futurebird It seems to me that learning from elder poor people in rural areas might help. I know my own family, subsistence farmers out of Wexford, Ireland, who landed in Pennsylvania and basically never left. I have furniture from them, including a cheap trunk brought over from the old country, and even that trunk has craftsmanship and care in it. I also have a kitchen table, and a desk, built by my great-grand and grandfather in their barn for their daughters. Plain but solid.
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@maswan @futurebird
Yes! I remember stories like this about houses built in the us (early days like 1600-1700) often times they would burn the house down and go through the ashes to save the nails and hinges. Much faster than taking a crowbar and hammer to it
and the nails would be intact. There wasn’t a “housing market” per-se at the time in the “wilderness” (which again is a terrible term from colonialism 
) and the conception was (at the time) that there were too many trees 
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For example I recently encountered a rant about the terrible quality of Temu furniture.
"Furniture used to be a family heirloom... but now it's disposable" --this isn't a statment without merit, but low quality items that didn't last may not be documented because they didn't last.
The selection bias of it all annoys me a little.
2/2
@futurebird Agreed! Furniture for poor people used to be boxes made of scrap wood or cardboard. Either that or throw-a-ways found on the street or at the town dump.
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One of my big pet peeves is when people say "people used to ..." and they describe something well-off or only wealthy people did in the past. "but nowadays people just..." and they describe something poor and broke people do today.
We don't have as much documentation of how poor people lived in the past... so in a way we don't know how poor people lived as clearly.
1/
@futurebird
and another thing, people used to wait until a celebration day to bake a cake or make fancy desserts, but now people expect to find candy in the check-out lane of the supermarket and baked sweets at every coffee stand. Dessert used to be special. -
@RobotDiver @futurebird
Yup! I still have a piece like that from my mom’s family! (The whole set included this dresser, a “writing table” and double bed with a huge headboard all made of a soft wood that I assume is white pine (from the north east us)
If anyone wants to add to the description for the alt text please let me know as I am unsure if I covered everything -
One of my big pet peeves is when people say "people used to ..." and they describe something well-off or only wealthy people did in the past. "but nowadays people just..." and they describe something poor and broke people do today.
We don't have as much documentation of how poor people lived in the past... so in a way we don't know how poor people lived as clearly.
1/
@futurebird My pet peeve is when people get annoyed at stuff THEY USED TO DO!
“Kids these days knock on my door and run away. It’s the downfall of society”.
“You told me about when you did it”.
“But back then it was fun”. -
@stellarsarah @futurebird yes, sorry, when I said "stay at home", I was thinking "ran the home" rather than just being ladies of leisure. But worth noting that poor women would have also been making the clothes for the family, as well as all the cooking/cleaning, and working outside the home, so very much working a double shift.
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@futurebird exactly - you can still buy heirloom quality furniture today. Its just expensive.
I've seen a lot of the inverse too, which bugs me even more more, personally - "back in the day everyone was poor as dirt and we just had beans and cornbread, when we were lucky. Now we can eat whatever we want 3 meals a day and people still complain about being poor"
Sir, you came up, not everyone did.
@AldinTheMage @futurebird In case you werent' aware, Mony Python were making fun of that attitude in 1982.
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@futurebird exactly - you can still buy heirloom quality furniture today. Its just expensive.
I've seen a lot of the inverse too, which bugs me even more more, personally - "back in the day everyone was poor as dirt and we just had beans and cornbread, when we were lucky. Now we can eat whatever we want 3 meals a day and people still complain about being poor"
Sir, you came up, not everyone did.
Yeah, I mean, visit a Walmart once in a while. Some of the people shopping there are obviously not doing well financially.
Like, I saw a woman with a kid a few weeks ago who was buying nothing but canned beans. The implications were…not pleasant.
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For example I recently encountered a rant about the terrible quality of Temu furniture.
"Furniture used to be a family heirloom... but now it's disposable" --this isn't a statment without merit, but low quality items that didn't last may not be documented because they didn't last.
The selection bias of it all annoys me a little.
2/2
@futurebird Selection bias is absolutely rampant in Home renovation/repair circles. I can't count the number of times I've pushed back on the idea that homes were built better in the "old" days.
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For example I recently encountered a rant about the terrible quality of Temu furniture.
"Furniture used to be a family heirloom... but now it's disposable" --this isn't a statment without merit, but low quality items that didn't last may not be documented because they didn't last.
The selection bias of it all annoys me a little.
2/2
@futurebird family heirloom? Cheap things were made of poplar and pine with enough paint to keep everything together and hiding the different bits of wood recuperated from something else. In Flemish there is a word for poplar "konijnenkotelaar" which means bad wood, just good enough to make rabbit boxes.
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@maswan @futurebird
Yes! I remember stories like this about houses built in the us (early days like 1600-1700) often times they would burn the house down and go through the ashes to save the nails and hinges. Much faster than taking a crowbar and hammer to it and the nails would be intact. There wasn’t a “housing market” per-se at the time in the “wilderness” (which again is a terrible term from colonialism ) and the conception was (at the time) that there were too many trees @em_and_future_cats
In this case it was in the early 1900s, and the farm was bought out by the forestry agency because growing lumber was seen as a better use of land in northern Sweden than farming or something (I'm not 100% on the motivation, just know who forced a sale).
@futurebird -
@futurebird Agreed! Furniture for poor people used to be boxes made of scrap wood or cardboard. Either that or throw-a-ways found on the street or at the town dump.
@HappytoBe @futurebird Or liberated from a company dumpster.
I remember friends visiting and asking me why the carpet in my bedroom didn't reach the walls at either end, why I had a chair that looked like it belonged in a factory, and why the kitchen table looked like pieces of old doors.
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For example I recently encountered a rant about the terrible quality of Temu furniture.
"Furniture used to be a family heirloom... but now it's disposable" --this isn't a statment without merit, but low quality items that didn't last may not be documented because they didn't last.
The selection bias of it all annoys me a little.
2/2
@futurebird Furniture can be expensive. A decently sized table made of actual wood by an artisan can cost you a few *thousand* €/$. Of course people don't even consider that and complain about modern furniture that is made of composite and is ten times cheaper. Works about the same but I guess it's not an heirloom.
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For example I recently encountered a rant about the terrible quality of Temu furniture.
"Furniture used to be a family heirloom... but now it's disposable" --this isn't a statment without merit, but low quality items that didn't last may not be documented because they didn't last.
The selection bias of it all annoys me a little.
2/2
@futurebird What do people expect from Temu products? I'm always pleasantly surprised if it survives being shipped nevermind being usable for more than a few hours
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One of my big pet peeves is when people say "people used to ..." and they describe something well-off or only wealthy people did in the past. "but nowadays people just..." and they describe something poor and broke people do today.
We don't have as much documentation of how poor people lived in the past... so in a way we don't know how poor people lived as clearly.
1/
With a few exceptions, thankfully.
Thanks to Henry Mayhew, for instance, and his 'London Labour and the London Poor', it's possible to get some idea just how many impoverished and homeless people there were in 19th century London and how they lived. I've only read excerpts from it but it is astonishing.
There used to be establishments which charged homeless people a penny a night for room where they could sleep sitting up and roped into pew-like benches, to have some shelter.
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@vfrmedia @gbargoud @futurebird My grandfather was a proper cabinet maker. I've still got some of his stuff. It shows no signs of getting old or worn out.
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@hi_cial @futurebird @ehproque Well, actually... (sorry to be that guy)
We have an Ikea desk, filing cabinet, and hutch cabinet in our family room that've been in our family for years. They have moved 15 times (at last count) to homes in three states. The holes where a keyboard drawer was mounted show it's definitely the fancy cardboard type of construction...nothing solid there.
The cheapo Sauder kit furniture my parents built for my childhood bedroom is planned to be used in our kids' bedrooms, so it will also be intergenerational "heirloom" furniture that has already been used across five decades.
@DanielMReck @hi_cial @futurebird so, even better, you can have cardboard heirloom furniture!
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For example I recently encountered a rant about the terrible quality of Temu furniture.
"Furniture used to be a family heirloom... but now it's disposable" --this isn't a statment without merit, but low quality items that didn't last may not be documented because they didn't last.
The selection bias of it all annoys me a little.
2/2
@futurebird
Survivorship bias is definitely a factor in this perception.But there is a kernel of truth in that sturdy, solid wood furniture has become much more expensive (demand being higher and trees not more numerous).
The gap is filled with cheaper, less durable furniture. So what we mainly notice is the declining quality of what we can afford.
Another bias is that we expect to spend more on personal electronics, computers, and other things that didn't exist decades ago. A person in the 1920s expected to spend more of their income on clothes and furnishings than we do.
Does that make us richer or poorer?
