The average middle-class person today is richer than the average billionaire a hundred years ago: Wealth isn�t simply about money, it�s about the ability to do things

From Jonah Goldberg' s latest G-File:

  � it�s worth highlighting something the folks shrieking about censorship and free speech tend to overlook. I�m one of those folks like Steven Pinker, Marian Tupy, Ronald Bailey, Russell Roberts, Donald Boudreaux, Matt Ridley, and other misery-deniers who feels compelled to point out how much better we have it than people in the past.

By many metrics, the average middle-class person today is richer than the average billionaire a hundred years ago. Of course, your choices in real estate would be much greater as a fat cat in 1920, but your choices in cuisine, air-conditioning, transportation, medicine, communication, etc. would be far worse or simply non-existent.

Kevin Williamson points out a scene in The Count of Monte Cristo in which the Count hosts a dinner at which he serves a staggering variety of fish to his guests. How many kinds of fish in this lavish repast? Two. The Count describes this largess as a �millionaire�s whim.�

The point here is that in terms of the ability to communicate � both to friends and family and the broader public � we�re unimaginably wealthier today. Wealth isn�t simply about money, it�s about the ability to do things. Financial wealth manifests itself in the expanded number of choices you have to do and have stuff. The mid-market cars of today have features that were reserved for the wealthy two decades ago and that were reserved for science fiction a hundred years ago.