By the late 1950s most households had washing machines and gas or electric stoves furnaces and water heaters (the old versions of these were coal or wood fired and required refilling) and most of the drudgery was eliminated from household chores.
This did, in my opinion, increased quality of life significantly.
However, I'm not sure much was gained in terms of happiness from going from Black and White TVs to 4K televisions with PVRs.
Pretty much the same entertainment value could be gotten from a back and white TV as with a hi def set. You could watch the hockey game on either, and the experience was basically the same.
As for my claims about real wages not having risen since 1970, other commenters have done a better job of defending that claim. (mbell for example)
I was trying to say: Not that [gadgets] has been proven to make people any happier.
And the support I would be inclined to give for that is the: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
By the late 1950s most households had washing machines and gas or electric stoves furnaces and water heaters (the old versions of these were coal or wood fired and required refilling) and most of the drudgery was eliminated from household chores.
This did, in my opinion, increased quality of life significantly.
However, I'm not sure much was gained in terms of happiness from going from Black and White TVs to 4K televisions with PVRs.
Pretty much the same entertainment value could be gotten from a back and white TV as with a hi def set. You could watch the hockey game on either, and the experience was basically the same.
As for my claims about real wages not having risen since 1970, other commenters have done a better job of defending that claim. (mbell for example)