Arkady
President
If you get your news mainly from a conservative outlet like Fox News, you may be convinced that the nation and the world are going to hell in a handbasket. Even if you get your news mainly from a less partisan for-profit corporate outlet like CNN, that may be your impression, since the very nature of the news business means there's more profit to be had in covering sudden, exciting stories, which tend to be negative, than slower, big-picture trends, which tend to be positive. The slower trends are proving much more consequential, but that doesn't make them more entertaining, so the shareholders are better served with a negative focus. Yet, if you take a step back, it's clear things are going unusually well in both the nation and the world.
Start with the US. Real GDP per capita has never been higher, in the whole history of our nation. The gap between the current era and prior eras is enormous:
http://www.multpl.com/us-real-gdp-per-capita/table/by-year
Take a look and you'll see that even after controlling for inflation and population growth, we're about 15% richer than we were at the peak of the Clinton years, about 48% richer than when Reagan left office, one and a quarter times as rich as at the end of the wondrous Kennedy/Johnson era, and well over three times as rich as in the mid-1950s.
Unfortunately, most of that gain has gone to the very rich, so when it comes to median incomes, there's been mostly stagnation during the Bush/Obama years. But, even there, the big-picture is one of improvement. Median real family incomes today are higher than at any point in our nation's history prior to 1998. Again, the improvements are substantial in the big picture. Even after accounting for inflation, the median family earns about 8% more than at the peak of the Reagan years, 29% more than at the end of the Kennedy/Johnson era, and about twice as much as in the mid-1950s. That's all the more impressive when you take into account how much family size has fallen in that time.
The picture is less impressive when it comes to poverty, since we hit an all-time low way back in 1973. But, still, poverty rates today are lower than at any point since the mid-1960s. As recently as the Eisenhower years, the poverty rate was 22.2%, compared to 14.8% today. And the improvement has been vastly greater for blacks -- with a poverty rate of 55.1% in the late Eisenhower era, compared to 26.0% today.
There is a long list of indicators of social and economic well-being that are currently as good as they've ever been in our history: the longest life expectancy, the lowest infant mortality rate, the lowest teen pregnancy rate, the lowest high school drop-out rate, the highest rate of higher education, etc. And there are others that aren't quite at all-time record points, but are tantalizingly close. For example, the murder rate today is 4.5/100k, which is lower than at any point in the last 59 years. Another half-point of decline will take us to the all-time low.
The employment situation is also decent in historical context. Currently, despite the Boomers moving into retirement, a larger share of our population is employed than at any point in US history prior to 1978. Right now, there are 597 jobs for every 1000 adults in the US, compared to 580 or less, per 1000, in the 1940s through 1960s. We got spoiled by very high participation rates from the late 1970s through late 1990s, but when you compare to US history generally, rather than to that one brief period with an enormous demographic bulge in its peak working years, we're doing very well.
It's not just in the US that things are doing better, either. Globally, life expectancies are soaring. People in the nation with the lowest life expectancy today (Sierra Leone) are outliving those from the nation with the highest life expectancy in 1800 (Belgium) by ten years. Even relative to 1950, most poor countries today have people who outlive most rich countries from then (for example, a German of 1950 had about the same life expectancy of someone from Rwanda today, and an American of 1950 lived about as long as someone from Pakistan today):
Real world GDP per capita is rising even faster globally than it has been in the US.
https://www.ourworldindata.org/roser/graphs/GDPperCapita_byCountry_Since1_Maddison/GDPperCapita_byCountry_Since1_Maddison.html
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD
Diseases that used to kill millions just a few years back are now virtually extinct and some of the biggest killers, like Malaria, are heading consistently and rapidly downward. Literacy is soaring. And, despite big news about small conflicts in places like Syria, we probably are living through the most peaceful era in human history:
https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence?language=en
There has been a gigantic decline in deaths by war. Here's an excellent discussion of the trends:
When you look at various other measures of global health and well-being, like infant mortality, mean height, mean IQ, literacy rates, etc., there's never been a time in history when human beings were doing as well as today. We would literally tower over our ancestors.
That's not to suggest that everything's on the upswing. When it comes to climate change, the news is ugly. 2014 was the hottest year on record, only to be exceeded by 2015, which may well be exceeded by 2016. The last 15 years have all been among the 16 warmest years on record. But, even there, there's some hope. Per capita carbon emissions have been plunging in advanced nations and the cost of PV generation is creeping very close to the cost of coal -- a little policy nudge might be all it takes to halt the carbon push on climate with minimal economic fallout.
Start with the US. Real GDP per capita has never been higher, in the whole history of our nation. The gap between the current era and prior eras is enormous:
http://www.multpl.com/us-real-gdp-per-capita/table/by-year
Take a look and you'll see that even after controlling for inflation and population growth, we're about 15% richer than we were at the peak of the Clinton years, about 48% richer than when Reagan left office, one and a quarter times as rich as at the end of the wondrous Kennedy/Johnson era, and well over three times as rich as in the mid-1950s.
Unfortunately, most of that gain has gone to the very rich, so when it comes to median incomes, there's been mostly stagnation during the Bush/Obama years. But, even there, the big-picture is one of improvement. Median real family incomes today are higher than at any point in our nation's history prior to 1998. Again, the improvements are substantial in the big picture. Even after accounting for inflation, the median family earns about 8% more than at the peak of the Reagan years, 29% more than at the end of the Kennedy/Johnson era, and about twice as much as in the mid-1950s. That's all the more impressive when you take into account how much family size has fallen in that time.
The picture is less impressive when it comes to poverty, since we hit an all-time low way back in 1973. But, still, poverty rates today are lower than at any point since the mid-1960s. As recently as the Eisenhower years, the poverty rate was 22.2%, compared to 14.8% today. And the improvement has been vastly greater for blacks -- with a poverty rate of 55.1% in the late Eisenhower era, compared to 26.0% today.
There is a long list of indicators of social and economic well-being that are currently as good as they've ever been in our history: the longest life expectancy, the lowest infant mortality rate, the lowest teen pregnancy rate, the lowest high school drop-out rate, the highest rate of higher education, etc. And there are others that aren't quite at all-time record points, but are tantalizingly close. For example, the murder rate today is 4.5/100k, which is lower than at any point in the last 59 years. Another half-point of decline will take us to the all-time low.
The employment situation is also decent in historical context. Currently, despite the Boomers moving into retirement, a larger share of our population is employed than at any point in US history prior to 1978. Right now, there are 597 jobs for every 1000 adults in the US, compared to 580 or less, per 1000, in the 1940s through 1960s. We got spoiled by very high participation rates from the late 1970s through late 1990s, but when you compare to US history generally, rather than to that one brief period with an enormous demographic bulge in its peak working years, we're doing very well.
It's not just in the US that things are doing better, either. Globally, life expectancies are soaring. People in the nation with the lowest life expectancy today (Sierra Leone) are outliving those from the nation with the highest life expectancy in 1800 (Belgium) by ten years. Even relative to 1950, most poor countries today have people who outlive most rich countries from then (for example, a German of 1950 had about the same life expectancy of someone from Rwanda today, and an American of 1950 lived about as long as someone from Pakistan today):
Real world GDP per capita is rising even faster globally than it has been in the US.
https://www.ourworldindata.org/roser/graphs/GDPperCapita_byCountry_Since1_Maddison/GDPperCapita_byCountry_Since1_Maddison.html
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD
Diseases that used to kill millions just a few years back are now virtually extinct and some of the biggest killers, like Malaria, are heading consistently and rapidly downward. Literacy is soaring. And, despite big news about small conflicts in places like Syria, we probably are living through the most peaceful era in human history:
https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence?language=en
There has been a gigantic decline in deaths by war. Here's an excellent discussion of the trends:
When you look at various other measures of global health and well-being, like infant mortality, mean height, mean IQ, literacy rates, etc., there's never been a time in history when human beings were doing as well as today. We would literally tower over our ancestors.
That's not to suggest that everything's on the upswing. When it comes to climate change, the news is ugly. 2014 was the hottest year on record, only to be exceeded by 2015, which may well be exceeded by 2016. The last 15 years have all been among the 16 warmest years on record. But, even there, there's some hope. Per capita carbon emissions have been plunging in advanced nations and the cost of PV generation is creeping very close to the cost of coal -- a little policy nudge might be all it takes to halt the carbon push on climate with minimal economic fallout.
