Exactly.
It follows a general principle some people forget often: as time goes on, human beings try their best to put precautions on things that may have eliminated them in the past. A few smart people invent things that protects a bunch of people from hurting themselves and everyone benefits. We constantly raise the floor.
Like how they have alerts, beeps, and automatic shutoffs for home machinery that may kill someone being un-attentive or damage their property in the past.
That's honestly why a lot of people are around now that wouldn't have survived before.
The same thing applies to the social programs.
There's always going to be a top and bottom, but if you compare what people in the past had to go through, it ain't the same because the present has been made to be more efficient than the past.
Yep. I saw years ago on the history channel why in New York fire alarms and automatic sprinklers were instituted in all buildings. Basically a high rise factory caught on fire in 1911 which was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory ( The factory was mostly women making clothing and many of them died in the fire. This prompted the fire codes, alarms and sprinkler systems that we see in every building today.
Also my dad (a black man) grew up very very poor in Chicago in the late 60s. He was born in the late 50s. His father passed and his mother basically had to raise him and his siblings by herself. As I mentioned back then their was no social safety nets. until like the late 60s. So much of his child life he didn't get any of the social benefits. So it was nothing for him to have no food, lights, heat and etc in his home. He talked about how many of the places he lived in were owned by slum lords how there was no national law to prevent slum lords as we had now. No social programs for poor folks who couldn't afford lights and heat.
He talked about how he had to get a paper route and deliver coal (yes back then many houses had coal) at like 12 just to help his mom out with the bills. My dad also mentioned how many of the folks in his community had low paying labor jobs and how their bodies would break down. But they had to work so they would do whatever it took to keep going and many time would end up in an even worse situation once they bodies completely fell apart because their bodies were used up to do low paying physical work. Think how long your body would last doing hard physical labor out in the Chicago cold all year around. Arthritis sitting in your joints, back and knees.
My dad said he didn't want that life and focused on his education and knew that it was better to use your brain then you physical body to make a living. One cause you could do it longer and two because your body wouldn't get beat up and you could enjoy old age. As my dad always told me...."Work Smart, Not Hard".