The increase in wealth over time has also meant that many people have both the time and the money to enjoy leisure pursuits. Even if they had television and movies, professional sports, recorded music, and the Internet before this century, the average man or woman wouldn't have had the time or money to enjoy them. Life is so much easier now. While the daily grind may still seem like, well, a grind, it is far easier now than in the past. Spending eight or ten hours behind a desk may not seem like paradise, but most of us would find it vastly preferable to spending twelve hours behind a plow.
Travel is incomparably easier and faster.
We don't walk thirty miles to get to the nearest town. We don't even have to get up in the middle of the night to put coal into the furnace. In all material respects, the average person of today is better off. He or she is cleaner, better fed, lives in a bigger house, is healthier, better educated, and safer than his ancestors. The cycle of recession and depression, of famine and plenty, is less pronounced now than in the past.