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onlyrealcuzzo

What about:

- Your access to mRNA vaccines

- Your access to cleaner air due to electric car adoption

- Ditto for energy security and renewable sources of electricity

- Your chance of dying in a car going down due to new safety features

- Your access to crazy advanced cancer treatments that are making progress at almost miraculous paces

- Your much improved ability to work from home, cutting out ~2 hours of commuting each day

By every metric, the world is DRAMATICALLY better today for virtually everyone than it was in 1960, and the same from 1960 to 1900, and so on.

The pace things are improving is exponential.

If you think we're all worse off, maybe you're depressed. Or maybe you actually are worse off - but most people aren't...

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"- Your access to crazy advanced cancer treatments that are making progress at almost miraculous paces"

If things were improving "exponentially" like you claim, our lifespan would be accelerating and these "miraculous" treatments would allow us to live 100s of years. What's actually happening is our lifespan is not increasing, and in some years has been decreasing.

>>maybe you're depressed

But if these "miraculous" "exponential" medical improvements were real, we would expect to see less and less people who were depressed every decade. Instead, depression rates have been increasing.

One might also suggest if the world were DRAMATICALLY better as you claim, depression rates would be going down, not going up.

When I was a child in the early 90s, the likelihood they gave my mother to survive leukemia was slim to none. It was essentially a death sentence. And she died.

Now if you get leukemia in 2023, it's something close to a 70% survival rate over 5 years with significantly better treatments.

That seems dramatic to me.

Sure but if life expectancy is not increasing then technology (or social change) is not just saving people, it's making them sicker as well.

The push for early diagnosis skews the statistics. Early diagnosis gets the drug companies paid more. The actual lifespan may not have changed.

I'd say especially treatment for childhood leukemia is one of the real success stories in fighting cancer.

Only if you have good insurance.

In the EU that isn't so much of an issue.

But then you look at the cause of of the lifespan decrease; and it's mostly not directly related to healthcare or quality of life* (though easy to argue mental health)

It's drug overdoses, addiction, car accidents.

It's plausible that the world is demonstrably better in pretty much every way, but there is an overwhelming amount of propaganda telling us to believe otherwise.

Yeah pretty much. The data is pretty clear that life for most of the global population is getting objectively better overall such as declining poverty rates. Climate change is certainly looming and starting to have a real effect, but it is only starting. But a lot of people feel "the world is getting worse" because most news is negative and most social media is overly positive, meaning it makes people feel like they don't measure up to the influencers. I think the word "propaganda" implies a coordinated effort which I don't think is the case, but the current state of media seems to hurt mental health and biases perceived reality to the negative.

These are technology developments, not GDP. Of course, technology developments are part of why GDP grows, but it's possible for tech to improve for everyone while only a minority reaps the economic gains.

Are any of the things I mentioned only available to "rich" people?

Unless your definition of rich is literally everyone in the US and Europe (which could be a fair definition) - then I disagree.

My point isn't that only rich people can access technology, it's that even if everyone, rich and poor, gets the direct benefits from technology, that's separate from benefiting from an increased GDP, which is what the post you were originally replying to was talking about.

The pace things are improving is exponential.

You're off your tree.

Coal usage is at an all time high while the climate is collapsing. We're living on an exponential growing crisis is maybe what you should be saying.

>Coal usage is at an all time high while the climate is collapsing

For the vast majority of people in the world hasn't changed enough to have any noticeable impact on their lives.

But in the period of the article (2008) things aren't as rosy as you paint. Car fatalities are up on a per mile basis. Life expectancy is flat (and turning down recently). Electric outages are up. Work-from-home is counter balanced by some pretty awful working standards for others (amazon).

By your metrics, it'd be hard to argue that things aren't getting worse in last decade. I'm not arguing things are worse now, just that you chose bad measures.

The media and politicians know that negativity drives attention. People that pay attention to that and do not think for themselves come away thinking that the world is in terrible shape ( The climate is beyond fixable, The LGBTQ+ are out to get your kids )

I understand your point - whenever people ask what era I would like to born in (that's not the future), I always say now. I really like mRNA vaccines, the discovery and proliferation of mindfulness/meditation/mental health, antibiotics, supercomputers strapped to our wrists, etc. Even things like food have gotten better than from when I was a kid (that one could be personal).

However, just because it's good, doesn't mean it couldn't be better. I think this all the time - why can't the rich be rich without inflicting cruelty and suffering on people? You can have your millions, just give us healthcare, housing, public transit, vacation time, and fair pay, and stop dumping chemicals in the water, torturing animals, warming the planet, addicting folks to opioids, and promoting guns and the use of personal vehicles.

We don't have to imagine or fantasize about improvements the US could make - we have an example right in front of us with many social democracies in Europe. When a car backfires, the French don't assume it's an active shooter. When a Dane gets into an accident, they don't take a taxi to hospital. When your CEO gets trolled on Twitter and decides to fire 70% of the staff, you don't have to worry about it because you have an employment contract, and he simply can't.

We have to do better.

The world is dramatically better, but it already was dramatically better 10 years ago, and in the developed countries a lot of those improvements stagnated or are slowly rolling back due to stagnant wages, insane costs of living etc.

The world is getting almost noticeably better by the day - due to all the progress people make every day, building on top of past progress.

If you're staying "stagnant" and the world is getting better, you're better off.

Even if you're declining, you can be better off.

If you think poor people in the US and Europe have it rough today, you should read up about what it was like to be a normal person in the 1600s in Europe.

If you think poor people have it rough today in California, you should read up on what it was like being poor in California in the 80s and 90s.

Etc.

The average lower middle class family today has it better off than nobility in the 1700s.

> If you think poor people in the US and Europe have it rough today, you should read up about what it was like to be a normal person in the 1600s in Europe.

The fact that we're better off than people in the 1600s does not contradict what I wrote.

> The average lower middle class family today has it better off than nobility in the 1700s.

But in many countries is worse off than a couple of decades ago.

When people use the term progress, what is meant by it? What are we progressing towards exactly? Utopia?

35 year olds on 90%ile income jobs can’t afford to live on their own. Millions are worse off compared to even the 1980s because the productive gains are going to the wealthy.

That must be unique to Europe because in the United States, a 90th percentile income is >$200,000. I don't make that and I live extremely comfortably on my own.

The cutoff for 90th percentile in the US for individual income is $132k[0], certainly not >$200k. I'm guessing you looked at household income.

[0]: https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-individual-income-perce...

Your numbers are adjusted for CPI. They’re not nominal.

Your objection is nonsense.

>Median individual income in the United States was $46,001. It is up from $44,225 in 2021.

The graph shows 2022 with a median income of $46,001. That means the 2022 data hasn't been "adjusted for CPI" because duh. When you adjust for CPI you choose a reference year which can't be anything but nominal and other years are brought to the same price level. This means that the $44,225 from 2021 have been adjusted upwards to $46,303. You can disregard the 2021 numbers, just as clipsy did (he only posted numbers for 2022), and just click your way to the 2021 post if you want the nominal numbers for 2021.

Still definitely enough to live on your own.

> - Your access to mRNA vaccines

Ain't disputing that, but that's an outlier because it's a government provided thing, at least where I live.

But look at the rest of those things from a POV of people from lower and middle classes:

> - Your access to cleaner air due to electric car adoption

Yeah someday, maybe; right now it only means my perfectly good car is no longer good, and I have to somehow find money to replace it - and since this tech is new, there aren't many cheap used replacements available.

> - Ditto for energy security and renewable sources of electricity

Energy security? That's not what TV says. Renewables? You mean like those PV scam companies popping up everywhere? Or government forcing me to replace my cheap heat source with an expensive one?

> - Your chance of dying in a car going down due to new safety features

Feels like a pretty remote risk at this point (if it weren't, people wouldn't be driving at all). But sure, nice that safety improves over time, even if I'm always 10-20 years behind on the features.

> - Your access to crazy advanced cancer treatments that are making progress at almost miraculous paces

US: what access? Can't exactly afford it.

EU: what access? The queues are so long I'll die before my appointment comes up.

> - Your much improved ability to work from home, cutting out ~2 hours of commuting each day

That's thanks to COVID dragging the market kicking and screaming into this new reality, and with the pandemic over, the businesses are trying to decide which jobs to force back into office, and which to offshore. Neither is really a win.

(Also, it was hardly an ability - everyone was forced into it. Commute doesn't look all that bad compared to two working parents and all the kids trying to simultaneously remote-work and remote-learn in an apartment not sized for this.)

> By every metric, the world is DRAMATICALLY better today for virtually everyone than it was in 1960

What about it no longer being possible for most couples to live on a single income?

> maybe you're depressed

Funny you should mention depression - yes, support for dealing with it is better than ever, but it's also not accessible to most.

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