If you could be transported back to 1973 with your current income, would you do it? Scott Sumner, writing at The Money Illusion, says absolutely:
I'd cash out my high six figure Newton home and see what was available in the Hollywood hills for that price in 1973. I'd take my low six figure income and live the life of a wealthy person in 1973. Sure, I'd miss the internet. But let's face it, the internet is a sort of drug. Unless you are Tyler Cowen, it crowds out more authentic pleasures like books, films, music, and jet travel to exotic spots (without T&A frisking at airports), all easily done in 1973 on the sort of nominal income that now makes me merely another faceless upper-middle class professional in today's Boston metro area.
Kevin Drum says no, and in addition to citing computers and the Internet, he notes that the picture really changes if you aren't a certain kind of white dude:
This conversation was originally kicked off by a discussion of how impressive productivity gains have been since 1973, something that this thought experiment is meant to help us get a handle on. So you might object that social inequities really shouldn't count. But I say they should. Progress is progress, and the utility of a person's life depends on a lot of things, not just material wealth. So this stuff counts for everyone who's not a straight, white, WASPy male.
This is absolutely right, and even more true for the original question, which posed time travel to 1900. Even with money, my life as an African American in 1900 would be severely constrained by political disenfranchisement, terrorism, and state-sanctioned violence. With notable exception of a few areas, I'd have to live in absolute obscurity -- in the backwoods, like a black Grizzly Adams -- to have any shot at a decent life. Obviously, 1973 was better for black people. Even still, prejudice was widespread, and large swaths of the country were basically hostile to black residence. I've said this before, but in terms of actual freedom -- and not political abstractions, like "freedom" from health-care reform -- women, minorities, and other marginalized groups are better off now than they have ever been.
In a brilliant routine, comedian Louis CK addressed the "time machine question" for his HBO special "Shameless." Warning: this isn't safe for work:
"Here's how great it is to be white: I could get in a time machine, and go to any time, and it would be freaking awesome when I get there. That is exclusively a white privilege." Indeed.
