The most striking difference I see between early 20th century New York literature and living in New York today was how little social stigma there used to be around being poor. 

Everyone was constantly scraping money together, borrowing, crashing at friends places. It wasn’t seen as a problem you had to grind and listen to @naval podcasts to get your way out of. It was just the struggle of life. There was no existential worry about being a failure and what will people think. It was just simply the everyday struggle of keeping a roof over your head. 

I wish modern culture was more like that. I wish we didn’t have to all make a 1B arr farcaster mini app by the time we were 35 to make something of ourselves