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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (265152)	5/30/2008 8:12:30 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The quality of the average strawberry purchased today in the USA is considerably lower than the average strawberry purchased in 1970 That is a rather questionable statement. It is clear that the average strawberry bought in the months that where the "out of season" period in 1970, would be higher now than it was in 1970. In any case strawberries are an extremely tiny part of the overall point. Technology definitely allows much better selection in the store for much more of the year, but this does not mean what you buy is better quality, unless you want to say that what you buy is better than buying nothing at the same time of the year. Something is better than nothing. Also it was often possible to buy frozen, or otherwise reduced quality items out of season. Generally selection is an aspect of quality. Having the world's best quality steak available to you for every meal but nothing else, would not be a very high quality diet even for most steak lovers. For another example, you might want to consider the total fraction of USA calories served at McDonalds over time and see if you think that is an improvement in quality. Even McDonald's can be an improvement in quality over some awful local greasy spoon. Our lower quality food sources are more likely to be chains now, but its not like people switched from 5 star restaurants to McDonald's. McDonald's and other fast food places at least have more consistent quality, putting a floor on how low the highest quality locally available restaurant food is likely to go just about anywhere in the US. And Fast food quality has gone up. You have more choices and a number of them are more upscale than McDs, when back in the 70s you might have only had a McDs and maybe a burger king in some town. Getting back to the overall point rather than talking about strawberries or complaining about McDonald's - The average quality of everything people buy is considerably greater than what people bought in 1970.