As the aphorism goes: History may not repeat but it sure does rhyme.
History shows that things can and do improve when people try. The overall trajectory has been positive, even if bumpy.
We're definitely in a decline as of now, where we arguably had progress from 80 to 50 years ago.
If so, I would agree, but for fairly narrow definitions of “we”.
Globally, the median human is wildly better off than 50 years ago.
Even in the US, I see your point for straight white men (of which I’m one), but would the median woman be better off fifty years ago? What about if you’re gay, disabled, black, etc? That’s not even getting into things like medical conditions, life expectancy, violent crime rates, etc. Infant mortality was more than 3x higher fifty years ago than it is now.
Socially speaking, it's been a much better curve, albeit not without its own share of slumps. Especially recent updates on Roe v.Wade. There's certainly a conversation for that as well, but economics makes sure those marginalized classes remain marginalized.
I don’t know enough about macroeconomics in the global sense to say about the first one though. My sense is that we’ve gotten much richer, more innovative, more technologically advanced, etc as a nation over the last half century. More so than basically anyone else. And no one is really catching up to us in those areas, with the possible exception of China. Is that wrong?
I agree that we seem to have destroyed a lot of institutions and safeguards that might precipitate our decline, but those things seem very subjective and qualitative. If we look at it quantitatively and holistically, we see pockets of decline all over, but the overall picture of the metrics doesn’t look like decline, does it? But I suppose that depends on how you weigh the pockets of decline against the pockets of advancement.
I guess maybe a better way to frame the question would be: what would you expect to see from the US economically over the last 50 years if we had not been in the decline you’re claiming?
I genuinely dont like what history sais follows after times like this.
The pace of learning for our spieces is devastatingly slow. We rather regress faster than learn.
We are closer to idiocracy, due to knowledge and skills atrophy (not only due to AI).
But this is. This sort of violent partisanship that self ensconces around identity versus issues is exactly what tears apart democracies and republics.
Even the identity part isn't new; even among Caucasian males only, see how many times society's woes will be blamed on whatever convinient immigrant there is in that period.
Neither, it's better to be the person who realizes we're in for a bright future no matter what doomers think.
- sees a waterfall in every river, even when one is not there?
- sees the waterfall, and is resigned about their fate?
- sees the waterfall, then struggles for survival no matter how hopeless the situation seems to be?
- is completely ignorant of the waterfall?
You could consider that a variant of the voter's dilemma.