How far we've come — and how fast.
Buying music used to cost a serious chunk of your paycheck — vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, and iTunes downloads all added up fast. Then streaming arrived and flipped the entire economics of the industry upside down. Listeners won. Artists? That's a longer conversation.
Driving from New York to Los Angeles used to be a full-blown expedition — weeks of planning, unpaved roads, and a genuine chance you wouldn't make it. Today, you can pull it off over a long weekend. What changed, and did we lose anything in the process?
In the 1950s and 60s, retirement was something your employer handled. You worked for decades, collected your pension, and that was that. Today, the responsibility has shifted almost entirely onto you — and the stakes have never been higher.