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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   28917 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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Various threads lately have had me thinking about how incredibly wealthy we are as a country, and how it definitely was not always so. For example, I made this comment a couple days ago about how everyone was just flat super poor back in 1900, and we're literally at least 10x richer now. I had likewise told the following story in the old place, in context of wealth to afford vast quantities of food (and how that may interplay with societal obesity):

Even coming from Canada, my wife was shocked by how cheap food is here in America. Historically, it just was not this way. We are one generation removed from stories like, "In the fall, dad made his semi-annual trip to the market in the city and brought back some quantity of 50lb bags of flour and 5lb chunks of lard, having a huge smile on his face, saying, 'We're gonna eat reaaaal good this winter!'" (I don't actually remember the exact quantity he said, but it was a low number, and we can easily scale by a small multiplier.) Like, this was a level of abundance in preparation for the winter that they were not used to (obviously, this was not their entire supply of food for the whole winter; they had some other food stored, but it is indicative that it was, cost-wise, an absolute treat). I checked a nearby grocery store's website; 50/5lbs would cost me $26.85. Like, pocket change. (Even if the multiplier was 5x, that's like nothing.) I probably have that much in random cash sitting around in my car. If I lost it or it was stolen, I'd be sad about a violation of my property, but literally wouldn't give a shit about the monetary value. This was a wonderful blessing of food abundance to some people in first-world countries not very long ago.

I didn't completely spell it out, but that was my wife's father's story when he was a child in Canada. (I also hedged on the number; my best memory was that it was precisely one 50lb bag and one 5lb chunk). That was not that long ago.

Yesterday, I read an obituary for a 95 year old who was born in a homestead dugout in New Mexico. Literally born in a hole in the ground.

Perspective on how utterly ridiculously quickly we went from basically universal poverty to nearly universal wealth is often lacking in many conversations where it could be quite beneficial. Sure, some in the capitalism/communism debates (or more generally the sources/causes of wealth and how it interacts with society's choices/governance), but also in obesity conversations (as mentioned) and even fertility conversations. Born in a homestead dugout. And you don't want to have a kid because of a car seat?!

I still don't properly know how exactly to craft an argument that comes to a clean conclusion, but I really feel like this historical perspective is seriously lacking in a country where the median age is under 40 and many folks no longer have communal contexts where they get exposed to at least a slice of history from their elders.

And you don't want to have a kid because of a car seat?!

Correction: people with two kids don't want a third, because car seat laws force you to buy a bigger car, which is still a substantial expense for most people.

See, car seats are usually so wide that you can't fit three in the back of a typical sedan or SUV, plus several states require kids to be in car seats or booster seats to a surprisingly high age - my home state of Pennsylvania doesn't allow kids to go without one until the age of 8!

And, y'know, we also have cheap and reliable contraceptives now, alongside all that cheap food.

Do you have to use an actual car seat? Older kids can sit on booster seats that are much smaller and lower cost than a car seat. Example

A quick googling says Pennsylvania law requires a booster seat between ages 4 and 8.

We do indeed own a couple of booster seats since our kids are in that age range, but you might want to take a second look at the specs on the one you just linked - it's 17.5 inches wide, which means if you want to fit three across then your car's back seat needs to be at least 52.5 inches wide, but actually more because you have to be able to reach in between the booster seats to buckle/unbuckle the kids. I haven't taken a tape measure to my own car seats, but we bought average sized ones and our cars aren't tiny and there still really isn't room for a third seat there.

I have a carseat and a booster in the back of a midsized sedan. It looks to me like I could fit 3 boosters back there. But I understand reaching your hands between the click the belts would not be easy.

The Nissan Altima is a mid-size sedan with 54.5 inches of rear hip room

With the Accord, you get 55 inches of rear hip room

The Camry has 54.6 inches of rear hip room

I have 3 kids, 1 was in a booster while 2 were still in their car seat. I made it work for a short time with 3 in the backseat of my crossover, but I had to buy a seatbelt extender just to be able to buckle in the booster seat.

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