> I have a mostly Pinkerian view of the modern world, which is to say that by nearly all metrics, the world is better today than it has ever been, and is continuing to improve.
I think that's what most of us forget: the world has VASTLY improved in the past 50 years for the average person on the planet. The life prospects of the poorest half of the world's people are a lot rosier now than in the past, what, thousand years? Advances in telecommunication and public health and global transportation of essential goods has advanced most of the least advantaged parts of the world to life-altering levels. Child mortality, pestilence, starvation, all are significantly diminished. I think that's what Pinker posits, and it's hard to dispute his numbers or conclusions in terms of how the prospects for billions of people have improved a great deal.
But to the American lower and middle class, who enjoyed the post-WWII economic boom, the future seems less gleeful. But the decline they now bemoan didn't happen overnight. Diminishing opportunity among unskilled workers in the US began in the 1970s, and anyone paying attention back then saw that it was time to change career plans and get away from unskilled work, especially in those parts of the country where employers were already migrating away. More of that decline was sure to come, and sure enough, it did.
I feel for them, but that ship has been sinking for decades. The time to head for a lifeboat was 1990, not 2022.
I think that's what most of us forget: the world has VASTLY improved in the past 50 years for the average person on the planet. The life prospects of the poorest half of the world's people are a lot rosier now than in the past, what, thousand years? Advances in telecommunication and public health and global transportation of essential goods has advanced most of the least advantaged parts of the world to life-altering levels. Child mortality, pestilence, starvation, all are significantly diminished. I think that's what Pinker posits, and it's hard to dispute his numbers or conclusions in terms of how the prospects for billions of people have improved a great deal.
But to the American lower and middle class, who enjoyed the post-WWII economic boom, the future seems less gleeful. But the decline they now bemoan didn't happen overnight. Diminishing opportunity among unskilled workers in the US began in the 1970s, and anyone paying attention back then saw that it was time to change career plans and get away from unskilled work, especially in those parts of the country where employers were already migrating away. More of that decline was sure to come, and sure enough, it did.
I feel for them, but that ship has been sinking for decades. The time to head for a lifeboat was 1990, not 2022.