Does anyone truly think times are better now than 30 years ago? (US)

Medicine has improved by leaps and bounds. We have greater life expectancy and mostly a better quality of health along the way. Child mortality is down globally.

https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-mortality?time=1996..latest

Improvements in our understanding of neurodivergent students has resulted in better educational and quality of life outcomes for millions who in past decades would have fallen through the cracks.

The proliferation of environmental lead from paint and gasoline are WAY down, and the hole in the Ozone was just about peak in 1995.

Open source, public domain, and freely available knowledge have democratized education, technology, research, and product development in ways that would have almost been inconcievable in 1995.

We are able to communicate more globally, even with total strangers, often across language barriers, and for free.

Video games, films, and television are able to create visions that would have been technically impossible 30 years ago. And technology has reduced the barriers for people to gain entry into those industries.

I carry around a tiny super computer with instant access to all the world's knowledge. That would have been a dream in 1995.

There are of course many things that are worse. It's a harder time to be starting out in life. "Luxuries" are dirt cheap and necesities are unaffordable. We've traded our sense of community for a paranioa of "others" even as the world has gotten safer. Globally the world has been swinging toward extremism and it constantly feels like capitalism may collapse and we don't know what comes next if that happens. But failure to see how much is better and for how many seems like too much doom scrolling and too narrow and outlook.

the unshittified internet

If you were in the 1% or whatever of the developed-world population that had it, a nice collection of bookmarks and an hour to load every image over your shitty dialup.

Like, I'll go ahead and say the internet has gotten worse, but only after a decade or two where it got much, much better.

As for the rest of the stuff, the 90's were kind of a sweet spot. The Cold War was over, the new gilded age was just starting to gather and some of the 20th century problems were on their way out. Leaded gasoline, rampant littering, near-disposable cars and cigarette smoke everywhere are more 1980's and earlier in my head.

90's music is often terrible to my ears, by the way, and grinding was weird.

Tech is better. But life is a lot worse in general. Unless you're part of a marginalized group I suppose.

We've gone from a bright shining future to no future at all.

According to social psych, this is called reconstructive memory, "reconstructing past behaviour" - tending to underreport bad behaviour and overreport good behaviour, sometimes remisrecalling our past as worse to justify self- improvement.

Crime has declined by 50% or more beginning in the mid to late 1980s and early 1990. While we still have some of the highest crime rates compared to other developed countries. I still think that this is something to be proud of.

Also we are improving our urban planning to make our cities more walkabke, bicyclable, and livable.

Times in general? No. Certain aspects? Yes, even with fascist rule.

Yes, 30 years ago the AIDS crisis was still going strong and, in the US at least, same-gender relationships were illegal and the LGBT community didn't have a right to work, and on top of that same-sex marriage was illegal. A lot of rights are rolled into marriage, including the ability to remain at the bedside of your loved-one when they are at the hospital or on their deathbed, arranging and/or attending your partner's funeral, and being allowed to remain in your house after your spouse dies. Through the 80s and 90s, gay men were losing partners left and right and some were kicked out of their partners' funerals and then kicked out of the house they had lived in for decades because the title was in their partner's name since they couldn't sign together.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell was also started in 1994.

Same sex relationships weren't made legal until June 26, 2003 (Lawrence v TX) Same Sex Marriage on June 26, 2015 (Hodges v Obergefell) Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace was barred in the US June 15, 2020 (Bostock v Clayton)

Even with all the holes Republicans drilled into it, the Affordable Care Act helps many people get health insurance. We also have medication that prevents the transmission of HIV and that prevents the onset of AIDS, saving many lives.

In 1995, the internet was in its infancy, at least compared to today and was largely text-based. If a website had a bunch of pictures, it took take 5-15 minutes to load depending on your location, provided nobody killed the connection with an incoming call.

Sure the mindset nowadays is much more pessimistic, even thought the ruling class from the 90s is aging out of power. We just need people ready to push us forward as more of the silent generation and baby boomer politicians leave office.

Convenience-wise? Yes. A lot of things are easier to get taken care of now. From being able to handle DMV shit online to organizing events to paying bills. All way easier than they used to be.

Everything else....yeah, no. Things are not good economically. Things are not good socially. Things are not good civically. Stress levels are high. Suicides are up. Wealth disparity is getting insane. Finding career jobs with good employers is rough. Have fun buying a house. You might be on the street if you have a medical emergency. Fuck you if you're poor.

Generally speaking, things are getting worse, but we've got some cool tech and easier payment methods while everything else goes to shit, so we've got that going for us.

30 years ago the Internet was tiny, and to this day you can largely get the same experience if you opt to ignore some of the more frustrating Internet. In practice it is a problem that extremist views can come closer together without the moderating influence of those physically near you. would definitely appreciate a harder push back towards federation and a break from subscription based software, though compared to 30 years ago, the free software today is better than anything we had back then.

Our cars were not durable, drive trains can take a whole lot more negligence than they used to and hoses and gaskets last longer than they did back then. There have been struggles with some cars adding turbos for efficiency, but even those are way less problematic than they used to be.

We can interact in real life, we just largely don't. As an adult I probably interact with peers about as much as my parents did when they were my age, not much at all. Constant hanging out goes away with age for most people.

There's a lot of regression in the world but that pendulum swings back and forth.

Yeah it’s better than in 1995.

• Vehicles have gotten much more efficient, quieter, and safer (for the occupants)
• Electric-assist bicycles
• Smartphones and fiber internet
• Making orders, reservations, and appointments online rather than with agents or phone calls
• Less crime
• More organic food choices
• Better coffee roasters
• More artisan bread bakers
• More locally made fine beer, wine, and cheese
• Less air pollution (including cigarette smoke)
• Better television and movies at home
• Affordable solar energy, batteries and off-grid living

I’m sure there more I’m not thinking of. I’d have a hard time going back to 1995.

Medical technology has greatly improved. More people survive cancer, aids, surgery is far less invasive, and better medications.

Technology in general is getting better.

We have a faster internet. I love having access to so much information. Sure, there are far more gullible fools who believe in all manner of silly stuff but I feel the internet has done more good than bad.

I was around for that time, and yes in many ways the world is better now, it's a mixed bag but:

My kids were not beat up in school for being queer.

The bay is much cleaner (though that is going in the wrong direction)

Solar power has come down in cost so much that there is hope for the clean energy transition to accelerate.

I was literally paid less than the men doing the same job I was doing, openly, in the early 1990s. And there was smoking in offices.

Violent crime is much less prevalent than it was back then. My kids don't have to be as careful or afraid as I was.

Overall - I don't think it is useful to be nostalgic, there are enough changes in a positive direction, sure we had more hope for the future in the 1990s but the reason we needed it was because things were kinda shitty.

Since it hasn't been mentioned, one thing that I am truly thankful for that we have improved since the 1990s is public smoking. Not having to be prepared for the reek of cigarettes in virtually every public space is such a big win.

Hell, in 1990, which is 35 years ago, you could still smoke on airplanes in the US. Airplanes! Can you imagine flying back then? Your neighbor could light up and there was nothing you could do but sit there and stew in the smoke stream. I'm glad I never had to experience flying with smoke but I had my fair share of being forced to sit in smoking sections of restaurants until my teenage years.

Depends who you ask. Things are better for the LGBTQ+ community. Still not as they should be, but I see a generation of kids now who are accepting, whereas 30 years ago, it was the worst thing anyone could accuse you of.

You say that civil rights may go away, but we do have them right now, and as our kids get older, they might not be so willing to take them away.

In the 90s, people's minds were blown by Crash Bandikoot, now I play Balatro and Hollow Knight. Sometimes I play The Finals, a 3D game so realistic you need to use a sniper scope to see textures, and buildings can be completely destroyed every match. While this may blow the minds of most people in the 90s, honestly it doesn't even phase me, Balatro and Hollow Knight are so good, I prefer them most days.

Yeah, this is way better.

The sheer amount of street level crimes, bar fights, car break-ins that existed in those days would blow your mind. Things have changed so much and yet everyone seems to have forgotten. I can't speek for the 'worst' neighbourhoods in the US nowadays but back in the 70s - 80s whole sections of US cities were shitholes. Media make's everything look way worse than reality.

Crime in 1995 was...let's just say... fucking worse in virtually every category...by a lot. Waco and ruby ridge had just happened. As for poverty, there are the same number of people on poverty in 2023 a there were in 1995. Let's talk violence against women. It's tragic today at shockingly high rates. It was much worse in 1995.

Don't be a woman, or a non white man, or poor, or non cis and you are probably just fine back in 1995.

...cept for abortion. Fuck Trump.

30 years ago? So 1995. As one who was there: fuck no. The 90s where cool, everything seemed fixed, osties travelling through Europe in their Trabant 2 stroke miniature cars. (That was fun on the Autobahn) Only Saddam was jerking around and that was far away, internet was brand new, everything seemed possible. No terrorist threat of the RAF, IRA or the bask separation front. There was even hope for peace in Israel.

But if you would say 40 or 50 years ago? I would say fuck yes. It's much better nowadays.The cold war was wild. The recession of the 80s was bleak af, Thatcher, Reagan. PLO, RAF, IRA, Basks. No man, there was a reason behind films like aliens, Terminator and punk music. Why they resonated with society at that time. Contrary to current popular belief the 80s was not a decade long neon party. Many people lost their jobs. Youth unemployment was at it's highest ever. No jobs, no houses available. It was dark. Darkest time of my life. Everyone thought nuclear war was inevitable. We would all die of radiation or in the cold harsh nuclear winter. Yup. That was the Outlook at that time.

70s was the all time high of the cold war, oil crisis, something else i'm forgetting. But I was a small child back then so everything about that era is hearsay.

But for me? The 90s where good. 80s sucked hard. (End) 70s also had a lot of downs.

For LGBTQ rights? Definitely. For the climate? Way worse. Politically? Way worse. Economically... I'd way we are in a big bubble like the roaring 20s before the great depression. And when it pops, it's gonna be bad, thanks to idiot voters and corrupt Republicans.

Government-wise...things are not looking good. It will take a very long time to rebuild.

Now...state-wise, I know my state is way better off than it was 30 years ago, but that doesn't mean we aren't about to get slammed by braindead antics of the federal government. But we have made a lot of infrastructure investments that are paying off locally. The future of America will be exclusively in states that put a premium on science and progress.

Yes and no. Some things got better and easier than 30 years ago. Some things entshittified beyond reasonable expectations.

We got phones which act as a device to connect the world with endless amount if information, entertainment and is a great tool for personal comfort yet the same things are twisted to a degree where we cant live without a phone anymore. Can't not to have a social media account, we got fully compliant to the surveillance that is happening to us not even that we are tracked not only for the governments of our countries but mainly by advertisers in order to manipulate us into buying crap we don't need.

Feels like a double edged sword to me personally.

Yes, everyone will say "civil rights improved"

Gay marriage was only legalized due to a Supreme Court decision that declared same sex marriage bans to be unconstitutional.

Since then, Republicans have appointed replacement justices, and it was they who overturned Roe v Wade and upheld a lot of Trump's recent antics.

Technology is better, crime rates better, environmental issues were better, LGBT rights and racism seemed better. But the gap between rich and poor has grown, wages have stagnated. And now I fear we are regressing.

Violent crime is down. Smoking is down. Teenage pregnancy is down.

That's about all I've got.

I guess it depends on the person. 30 years ago, I was actually living and working in the US. I was driving a 1988 Volvo 760. I was still driving it 10 years later; best car I've ever had. Gas was under a buck. Interest rates were so high that once I got some savings, I lived off the interest and ended up saving 80% of my salary (years later, when the rates went down, I used those savings as a down payment for my house). I could get lost for a full day at Borders. I was able to hitchhike up the east coast, get odd jobs without any resumes or background checks, while on a road trip across the continent. There was a lot of new and exciting technology: CD's and discmen, computers and the beginnings of the Internet. I read the news via Gopher (unless it was Sunday, then I bought the papers for grocery coupons). I feel that now there are too many limits on people. Lots of them are self-inflicted: I'm middle aged and with kids, so I need to be far more responsible. But when I look at my kids, I feel that they won't have the same opportunities I had, for travel, education, personal growth, or independence.

30 years ago we had a future to look to

You were less cynical, I remember people in the 90s saying the world was shit and getting worse, that there was no future.

the unshittified internet

Do you really remember the internet back then? Of course it wasn't enshittified, there were only dozens of people online. And it really depends on what you mean with enshittified, the designs were horrible and polluted, sure it didn't had ads, but realistically even a page with adds nowadays is more readable than most websites back then, with tiling images background, gifs everywhere and interesting font choices.

I'm sure that the vast majority of stuff you do online today wasn't available in 95, so yeah, it might have become "enshittified" but it also became usable, and a shitty usable thing is better than a pure useless thing in my book.

great music

That is relative, I bet young people today feel 90s music was good and old people feel it was bad, because it depends on the age you had at the time. Generally we tend to think that the music that was popular in our group when we were around 14 to be good, so I bet that 14 YO today love today's music, and telling them their music is bad sounds exactly the same as when old people used to tell us that the music was better in their times.

affordable land/housing

Was it though? Let's pick a place, let's say NY since it's a well known city worldwide, minimum wage was apparently $4.25 and an apartment in NY costed $328 per sqft (as best as I can find out), this means that you had to work 30 years with all your money going into an apartment to afford it. So no, it wasn't affordable, it's become worse since then, but it wasn't the wonderful past where everyone could buy a house that you seem to think it was.

affordable durable cars

Is it though? Most cars from the 90s are in dumpsters by now, they consumed so much gas that it simply wasn't worth keeping them. And by the 90s cars had already started using electronics so they don't even have the appeal that a purely mechanical car from the 60s brings to the table. Also again with the affordability probably wasn't all that much better than now, where you can probably get a used car for very cheap.

people actually interacted in real life

People still interact in real life, go check meetups or other local events. In fact we have more opportunities to interact in real life today because we can look for stuff that interest you to check out, I. The 90s it was my experience you mostly always hanged up with that same people in the same place because you never knew what else was happening in the city.

no social media trash

No social media at all, social media is not 100% bad, you're using one now

Now, we have billionaires

Those already existed back then, in fact they were mostly the same people. Also they had a lot more control over the media back then because without social media and internet there were no alternatives to mainstream media which is almost entirely controlled by billionaires. So long story short, the problem was already there, you just weren't aware of it.

and LLMs.

What about LLMs? They're great tools for brainstorming and getting unstuck, but beyond that they're very limited and are a huge money sink that companies are desperately throwing money to try to get something out, but so far they haven't delivered. Yes there are people getting fired because of LLMs, and it really sucks for them, and I wish they had a good social net to catch them during this time, but honestly I think we're about to hit a turning point in the coming years where companies will understand that LLMs are all promise no pay (plus a few lawsuits from big companies getting their copyright infringed on will help) and will hire those people back.

I don't see how anyone can possibly think times are better or going to improve.

Like you mentioned, civil rights are at an all time high, even with conservatives worldwide trying to revert the situation LGBTQ+ are well more accepted now than what they were in the 90s; Interracial couples is not a debatable topic anymore outside of the Klan; Smoking indoors has been banned and marijuana has been mostly legalized; Cars are lots more fuel efficient and that's without mentioning EVs; Billionaires are still a problem, but as a society they're now being criticized out in the open, whereas before they were not even discussed at all; Crime is at an all time low, and reporting percentage is better than ever (as in people didn't used to report crimes), not to mention that we have a lot more crimes being recognized (Marital rape wasn't even a crime until 93 in the US), and we have become a lot better at preventing innocents from being arrested and freeing the ones that had in the past; Life expectancy at an all time high, and medicine has become lots more affordable (although this might not be the case for the US, but it is worldwide) and better; Technology has not only advanced drastically, but it has become a lot more accessible both in terms of price and usability; Workers right have increased significantly, and work life balance is a lot better in general terms; etc, etc, etc, we tend to only remember the good things of the past and look at it with pink glasses, but in reality if you were to suddenly be transported back to 95 you would probably find it a worse time than today by most day-to-day metrics.

Yes. You can fit all the great music from the 90s and before in your pocket now. You can also get newer music if you want but it's up to you. Lemmy is better than a lot of the old forums.

You don't have to use social media, I don't. Information is far more available now than it was 30 years ago.

Do you have any idea how many people were always shut out of those things, in the USA? Any idea that our prosperity at home came from brutal repression and denying them to people in the global South, Asia, Africa, far away from our eyes and ears?

We still have it good. Yes, not as good, but good. Are we sliding headlong at a gallop towards overt fascism at home? Also yes. What happens depends on us, and the sacrifices we're willing to make, now. Or not.

While medical advanced have improved, acces to medical treatment, at least in the US has declined. What good are cures and treatments that most of the population cannot afford? To me it's just as bad as not having them, or even worse.

For most of the world's population, things have significantly improved by almost every conceivable measure.

I strongly recommend Roslings book, Factfulness. The difference between how people think things have changed and what's happened is wild.

Edit: Just saw the (US tag, sorry.)

30 years ago most people weren’t yet on the internet, there was very little entertainment media, you couldn’t use online accounts for most stuff, and most people didn’t have online bill paying. 30 years ago I helped bring my company online as the first full investment company, and my bank was still rare for doing online bill paying.

30 years ago, most of the US were in denial over climate change, renewable energy was expensive and there were no practical EVs.

For the middle aged white American or...? Even then, the question seems to mean more as words than as an actual inquiry. It's just too big of a question for it to mean anything. 30 years ago different brown people were getting bombed, for instance!

Look up medical advancements over that time.

Life and the world wasn't as dangerous. It was easier, less stressful. Simpler 😊

We drag them to the future. There is no other direction.

Some of this is just the noise that society makes though.

Our billionaires have a lot of power, but I don't think they're near the Robber Barrons of the US past. The LLMs are trash, but your boss used to put who you should vote for in your paycheck and the only media that existed was sole property of big business.

I'll grant that the last few decades have been rough, but it beats the past.

Just gotta keep moving.

I was very happy in the mid 90's. It was my prime time with my friends. Mid-20s and high on life.

Now, I need to put in a lot more effort to be happy and have fun. I am grateful that many of those great friends are still in my close circle.

Times are looking tough right now but the pendulum can swing back at any moment. And when it does we won't be starting back at square one. Might be a few years and a few wars until then. Maybe just an arms race and the odd proxy war. No way to know. All we can do is resist and wait.

Billionaires aren't new. I also don't really think LLMs will be as impactful as they get hyped or feared to be, and actually think AI as a whole outside mere chatbots will be positive if not the revolution it gets hyped as.

Honestly I do think there has been an improvement. It might not seem like that when viewing the past, but the past is easy to overestimate- we don't have to live it anymore.

As to civil rights, it should be pointed out that while recent years have seen regression in the US, its not always a regression to the point that things were at back then, and more importantly, the rest of the world does not necessarily share the political woes of the US.

Everyone's experience will be personal to them, so it's not anyone's place to say your experience isn't worse, but as a whole, things are better.

Crime, no matter the category, is down ~33% since the mid-90s.
Median household income, adjusted for inflation, is up ~25% (despite the narrative).

Here's a post/graph I think about all the time: https://bsky.app/profile/simongerman600.bsky.social/post/3ktds56nqus25

Regardless of age, we are generally nostalgic for a time in our youth. Or even earlier. Notice that something like half (or nearly so) of people think "the most moral society" was before they were born.

If we allow for the fact that nuance exists, and apply it to a response, then I agree:

No, things are definitely NOT better in a lot of ways. And I think you summed it up very well.

1995? For me, personally, I'd say some things are better, some are worse. I was struggling to get by on $8.60 an hour back then, couldn't live on my own so I had a room-mate. I was still a year away from the tech job that would crack open my real career and bring me where I am today.

1996 - first tech job, income doubled+ overnight. Got my own first place. Commuting between Portland and Chicago every 2 weeks for a year. Feels like that was when my life really started.

2025? Still working in tech, married 14 years, 6 figure salary, bought a house 4 years ago. OTOH - 2 heart attacks, congestive heart failure, cancer scare in the past 2 weeks. Looks like they got it all, but I need to back in 6 months for a re-check.

Not I. I grew up thinking overall we were on a good track and humanity would get better. The star trek utopia future type. This started to break apart in the early 90's but I held out hope that tech was going to get us through but that started to fall apart by the late aughts and really by the 20teens is about when I lost most hope. Brexit and the first trump win was pretty much the nails in the coffin. Biden did pretty well considering but you can see how behind we already are and how we would actually have to maintain a decent path in way we just had not for the last couple of decades.

well things are certainly better for me...

Yee, unquestionably IMO. There is of course plenty of fucked up shit but we are doubtless better off in America, on the whole, than in 1995.

Some things are better. Some things are worse. Some things are about the same.

I don't think they are at all.

I wanted to post that we were in the hight of the cold war 30 years ago but then I calculated and now I am sad

It really depends where. In the global south? Way better, in China, it's debatable. In Poland, way better. In the US, way worse. In the UK, way worse.

It's good to bring it into perspective with numbers like Hans Rossling used to do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8t4k0Q8e8Y sadly he died and nobody took this over after him to visualize data in this way so publicly yet.

Yeah, definitely better, but for me personally. I... had a shitty childhood.

That all depends on the people. Many numbers in many places are far better than they were three decades ago. I could make a list, but so can you, so why bother.