We're all sometimes guilty of viewing the past through rose-tinted spectacles, it makes us feel good about whatever troubles we have in the present, such is Human nature. This is even more likely in the current pandemic, our lives have been disrupted in a serious way, people are dying and normal life is on hold for an unknown period of time, we all feel like if we could rewind the clock we would.
However when you think about it the past may not actually have been the bed of roses that we sometimes think it was, take someone born in the year 1900 in a Western country like our own, what life changing events would they have experienced and how do they compare with the ones we have.
Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until your 20th birthday. 50 million people die from it in those two years.
On your 29th birthday, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, the World GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33 years old.
Many countries nearly collapse, along with the world economy.
When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet. And don’t try to catch your breath. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war.
At 50, the Korean War starts. 5 million perish.
At 55 the Vietnam War begins and doesn’t end for 20 years. 4 million people perish in that conflict.
On your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, should have ended. Only luck and some (rare) rational leadership prevented that from happening.
When you turn 75, and reach average life expectancy, the Vietnam War finally ends.
I hate to say it but I reckon us boomers haven't had it so bad..
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