Let nobody tell you that the second decade of the 21st century has been a bad time. We are living through the greatest improvement in human living standards in history. Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 per cent of the world’s population for the first time. It was 60 per cent when I was born. Global inequality has been plunging as Africa and Asia experience faster economic growth than Europe and North America; child mortality has fallen to record low levels; famine virtually went extinct; malaria, polio and heart disease are all in decline.
Little of this made the news, because good news is no news. But I’ve been watching it all closely. Ever since I wrote The Rational Optimist in 2010, I’ve been faced with ‘what about…’ questions: what about the great recession, the euro crisis, Syria, Ukraine, Donald Trump? How can I possibly say that things are getting better, given all that? The answer is: because bad things happen while the world still gets better. Yet get better it does, and it has done so over the course of this decade at a rate that has astonished even starry-eyed me.
ht/ annie
#5 is supposed to be good?
Next up criminalizing heterosexuality.
The website https://humanprogress.org is a great resource for positive and interesting information in the same vein.
“Donald Trump?” That’s a bad thing? I quit readIng after that…
We’re living at the pinnacle of human existence so far thanks largely to Christianity, free market economics and the belief in inalienable rights from a higher power. Merry Christmas indeed.
NEXT UP: OBAMA SAVED THE WORLD
18 near end of the world predictions that did not happen.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/18-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-made-around-the-time-of-first-earth-day-in-1970-expect-more-this-year-3/ .
Oh, wait, there’s a late addition 19th doomsday prediction, I’m confident that will also fail to be true by 2030:
“Climate preacher/scientist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez predicted recently that “We’re like… the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” You can add that to the spectacularly wrong predictions made this year around the time of Earth Day 2019.”
If you are a child molestor in drag, obama saved your world.
The first six years of this decade sucked hardcore Obama ass.