I’ll start with poverty, which has declined more the in the past 50 years than the previous 500. In fact, during the last 50 years, while the population on Earth has doubled, the average per capita income around th world (adjusted for inflation) has tripled.
We’re not just richer than ever before, we’re healthier as well. During the last century, maternal mortality has decreased by 90 percent and child mortality by 99 percent, while the length of the average human lifespan has more than doubled.
As Steven Pinker has made clear, since the middle ages, violence on Earth has been in constant decline. Homicide rates are a hundred-fold less than they were when they peaked 500 years ago. So we’re not only healthier, we’re safer as well.
If your measure of prosperity is tilted towards the availability of goods and services, consider that even the poorest American’s today (those below the poverty line) have access to phones, toilets, running water, air conditioning and even a car. Go back 150 years and the wealthiest robber barons couldn’t have hoped for such wealth.
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