This Steven Pinker stuff is absolute hogwash. There are more people living in extreme poverty today than existed 250 years ago. So what that as a percentage and when you are very careful with the definitions that they are a smaller proportion.

And what, I can get an extra 5 years in a nursing home where there's a decent chance I'll suffer physical and psychological abuse but will be forcefully kept alive in a stupor on a cocktail of drugs.

It's just unabashed justification for the interests of the top couple percent. They do in fact have it better right now by far than any other cohort in history.