Live 1880, the best time in American history.

[SimplySagacious]

Originally Posted by JewellCityJoe

I've read a lot of Mark Twain's work. I don't think he was too thrilled with a lot of his times but he made the best of it. Travel and not staying in any one place too long seemed to be the key to that. Lampooning his times as a writer & speaker not only made him wealthy but gauged, for him, how others felt about their times thru the medium of laughter. Fortunately for those since the 1880's we have his work to look back to the 1880's.

I think it was a great time to live as a wealthy person, but if you weren't wealthy the average life expectancy was about 40 years then.

1880's distribution of wealth:

Kinda like today hmmmm?

Mark Twain was a satirist. Satire is exaggeration to expose and ridicule stupid human behavior. I enjoy the satirists from history but their writings don't begin to provide a comprehensive understanding for a majority of people and their lifestyles. So many like to pretend there were only very wealthy and very poor people, and nothing in between.

Twain married into money and they were gifted a mansion by her parents, and he earned good money from books. They lived extravagantly (like those he ridiculed) until his get-rich-quick schemes and poor money management forced him into bankruptcy. He was deep in debt for most of his adult life from his own actions. The speaking tours he did around the world were to pay off his debts which he managed to achieve.

People typically didn't stay in the same income bracket their whole lives. There were more opportunities for upward mobility back then than now. Most families in the expanded middle class back then were one-income households, and most were able to afford at least one servant. Today, comparable lifestyles require two incomes but most cannot afford hired help, or a home comparable to what was affordable to the middle and working classes in the 1880s. Most also had more leisure time and extra cash for amusements, investments, and to acquire more luxuries.

And, there is a great deal more stupidity to satirize today than in 1880... but if you do, you might lose your livelihood and receive death threats from progressive snowflakes.