⤴️ An Up Wing future is possible: A Quick Q&A with … the authors of 'A Century of Plenty: A Story of Progress for Generations to Come'

'We arguably have the biggest opportunity to accelerate progress humanity has ever had.'

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in the USA and around the world:

Think of the world one hundred years ago. To those living at the time, our world would be completely unrecognizable—and I don’t mean because of spaceflight or refrigeration or widespread antibiotics.

From a February 2026 Project Syndicate article:

A hundred years ago, life was fragile and insecure. The average person could expect to live between 30-40, and one in three children died before the age of five. Some 60% of the global population lived in extreme poverty, while only about one-third could read or write.

Now, global average life expectancy is 73, less than 10% of the global population lives in extreme poverty, and nearly 90% are literate. Living standards were transformed. After stagnating for centuries, per capita incomes doubled in the 19th century and surged sixfold between 1925 and now.

When I wrote about that piece back in February, I agreed with the authors that the main barrier to continued prosperity is our own reticence. Their book, which also came out this year, makes a bold claim, that by 2100, the poorest country in today’s world should be as prosperous as modern-day Switzerland.

I asked Sven Smit, Chris Bradley, Nick Leung, and Marc Canal a few quick questions about their high hopes for the coming century and why we need to stop thinking of economic growth as a zero-sum game.

Smit, Bradley, Leung, and Canal are top researchers at McKinsey Global Institute and the authors of A Century of Plenty: A Story of Progress for Generations to Come.

---

1/ What are the strongest reasons to think the 21st century will be defined by acceleration instead of stagnation?

First, history. Put yourself in 1925. Our grandparents had no reason to believe in a century of plenty. They were in between two world wars, facing a depression, and witnessing the rise of totalitarianism. And there was no template. Growth like this had never happened before. But humanity delivered an extraordinary century of progress. It wasn’t smooth. There were wars, oil shocks, and other major inflection points, yet progress kept accelerating. We can do it again. Second, we start from a much stronger base: more educated people, more capital, and far more powerful technologies, including AI. We arguably have the biggest opportunity to accelerate progress humanity has ever had.

2/ What is fueling the global sense of public pessimism and what can we do to redirect those narratives?

Country differences are large. Only six percent of French people think the next generation will be better off, compared to 56 percent of Chinese. Pessimism in advanced economies is probably explained by a new era in which geopolitics, energy, demographics, technology, and macroeconomics are changing fast. We are all used to the “era of markets,” we need to adjust the dial to the new era. Additionally, economic growth has been sluggish for decades now. It is hard to believe in something one has seen little of. Finally, we are surrounded by pessimistic messages. This is why we advocate a new narrative, a politics of building, visible progress, and a renewed culture of growth that reconnects people to the idea that the future can be better than the present.

3/ What might happen if we popularized your idea of an “empowerment line” in addition to the “poverty line”?

It would shift the debate from mere survival to real economic agency. The poverty line asks whether people can avoid extreme deprivation, while the empowerment line asks whether they have enough security and breathing room to shape their lives, invest in themselves, and build a buffer against shocks. Popularizing it would likely push governments and institutions to focus more on essentials like housing, health, transport, education, and energy affordability, not just income floor programs. Interestingly, focusing on plentiful housing, transport, energy, etc. would likely have a very large impact both on the empowerment and the poverty line.

4/ What would it take to get global prosperity up to the level Switzerland is currently at?

In growth terms, nothing extraordinary: 2.6 percent global annual GDP per capita growth, very similar to the 2.3 percent we have seen in the last 25 years. The poorest quartile would need to grow faster, close to 4.5 percent, still slower than several real historical cases. This would of course require continued innovation to raise productivity growth, but also a massive physical transformation. Two to three times more energy and 30 times more clean electricity. Many times more minerals and materials, some like steel doubling, others like lithium 125x-ing. And higher agricultural yields. In the book we show this is all physically possible and within planetary boundaries, the limits to growth are not physical, they are institutional, in our hearts and minds.

5/ As a rising tide raises all ships, would currently-poor countries see themselves still economically disadvantaged in comparison to currently-rich countries in the future you depict?

In our imagined scenario Burundi reaches the living standards of Switzerland, but Switzerland and the rest of advanced economies keep growing at around 1.5 percent per year. So in relative terms there would still be a gap, but it would be a much smaller one than today, and most importantly, everyone would be prosperous. Emerging economies do need faster growth than advanced ones, but we firmly believe all countries should pursue economic growth. Many advanced economies still have around 20 percent of people below the empowerment line. And they will be facing a demographic drag and increasing spending commitments around healthcare, pensions, energy and many more. Without growth, trade-offs will become really tough.

6/ Is clean energy at scale more of an innovation challenge or a deployment/policy challenge?

Deployment. Innovation matters, and we will surely see much more of it including nuclear fusion, but many low-emissions technologies with which we could achieve the transition already exist and have fallen substantially in cost. The harder problem is scaling them: building grids, storage, transmission, heat pumps, nuclear, critical-mineral supply, and industrial processes fast enough. The transition is still in its early stages and deployment is below 15 percent of what is needed, so the core challenge is building and coordinating at speed.

7/ Will emerging economies need to rely on wealthier economies to innovate and popularize new technologies before they can reasonably afford to implement them and reap the benefits?

Emerging economies will benefit from frontier innovations originating elsewhere. Capital embeds the knowledge of civilization, so countries can catch up by investing in existing technologies. But that is not the only channel. China is substantially poorer than the US, and it is one of the most innovative countries in the world across industries. And do not underestimate the potential of AI. It is unlikely that the next big advanced chip will be created in an emerging economy (outside China), but the barriers to adoption in cost and skills are substantially lower than for past technologies. Anyone can boost their productivity, thanks to AI, for a few bucks and with basic literacy, there’s no need for big investments or degrees in computer science.

---

On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised