I’m one generation removed from this. My father grew up in a dirt floored cabin as a subsistence farmer. They plowed with a mule, and had very little technology that would have seemed strange to a peasant in mediaeval Europe. He would have been 12 in 1936. He had rickets growing up, and was often hungry. His first experience of food security was when he was drafted in WWII.
But because of free public education for all and a massive social program called the GI Bill, he ended up going to college, became an electrical engineer, helped build the first satellite based mapping systems, design the Space Shuttle, and ended his career helping put up the GPS system. It still amazes me.
