> giving people a false impression that the future will be worse than the past even that goes against direct evidence that throughout human history things have trended better, on average, every single year with a few moments of worsening.

This is called 'Whig history' and in my view it is an incorrect characterization of history that gives people a false impression that things will get better without them having to understand the enabling factors that lead to social improvement, ironically leading to the possibility of a decrease in prosperity and social welfare as people take improvement for granted and fail to bring it about through their actions.