The Conservative Sensibility by George F. Will

Author:George F. Will
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2019-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

BEING RICHER THAN ROCKEFELLER

Some historians estimate that on September 29, 1916, a surge in the price of John D. Rockefeller’s shares of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey made him America’s first billionaire. Others say he never reached this milestone and that Henry Ford was the first. Never mind. If Rockefeller was the first, his billion was worth $23 billion in today’s dollars. Don Boudreaux, an economist at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, asks if you would accept this bargain: You can be as rich as Rockefeller was in 1916 if you will consent to live in 1916. Boudreaux says that if you had Rockefeller’s riches back then, you could have had a palatial home on Fifth Avenue, another overlooking the Pacific, and even a private island if you wished. Of course, going to and from the coasts in your private but un-air-conditioned railroad car would be time-consuming and less than pleasant. And communicating with someone on the other coast would be a protracted chore. Commercial radio did not arrive until 1920, and 1916 phonographs would lacerate 2017 sensibilities, as would 1916’s silent movies. If in 1916 you wanted Thai curry, chicken vindaloo, or Vietnamese pho, you could go to the phone hanging on your wall and ask the operator (direct dialing began in the 1920s) to connect you to restaurants serving those dishes. The fact that there were no such restaurants in your community would not bother you because in 1916 you had never heard of those dishes, so you would not know what you were missing. If in 1916 you suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, influenza, a sexually transmitted disease, erectile dysfunction, or innumerable other ailments treatable in 2017, you also would not know that you were missing antibiotics and the rest of modern pharmacology. And don’t even think about getting a 1916 toothache. You could afford state-of-the-art 1916 dentures—and probably would need them. Your arthritic hips and knees? Hobble along until you cannot hobble any more, then buy a wheelchair. Birth control in 1916 will be primitive, unreliable, and not conducive to pleasure. You could enjoy a smattering of early jazz, but rock-and-roll is almost four decades distant, and Netflix and Google are even farther over the horizon. Your pastimes would be limited, but you could measure the passage of time on the finest Swiss watch. It, however, would be less accurate than today’s Timex or smartphone.104

So, as a 1916 billionaire, you would be materially worse off than a 2017 middle-class American. An unhealthy 1916 billionaire would be much worse off than an unhealthy 2017 American. Intellectually, your 1916 range of cultural choices would be paltry compared with today’s. And your moral tranquility might be disturbed by the contrast between your billionaire’s life and that of the normal American. In 1916, life expectancy at birth was 54.5 years (today, 78.8), and fewer than 5 percent of Americans were sixty-five or older. One in ten babies died in the first year of life (today, 1 in 168). A large majority of births were not in hospitals (today, fewer than 1 percent).

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