↩ Give me a break: American life wasn't better 50 years ago

Also: 5+ Quick Questions for … infrastructure economist Rick Geddes on hyperloops

Quote of the Issue

“In every age everybody knows that up to his own time progressive improvement has been taking place; nobody seems to reckon on any improvement in the next generation. We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who say society has reached a turning point — that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with just as much apparent reason.” - Thomas Babington Macaulay

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The Essay

1970s Times Square as imagined by Midjourney

↩ Give me a break: American life wasn't better 50 years ago

Call it the Great Stagnation, Long Stagnation, or maybe even the Progress Pause. I frequently refer to the past half-century downshift in productivity and economic growth. Indeed, the purpose of this newsletter is to argue for a 21st Century Great Acceleration.

That said, I don’t want to give the wrong idea. While the past five decades have been a disappointment in many, many ways compared to the super-optimism of the 1950s and 1960s, America hasn’t been stuck in amber, economically speaking. The stagnation has been relative to expectations and potential, not in absolute terms. Some people believe the latter, of course. Too many, as a recent Pew Research survey suggests:

Around six-in-ten (58%) say that life in America is worse today than it was 50 years ago for people like them. Only about a quarter (23%) say life today is better, while 19% say it is about the same. The share of Americans who say life today is worse than in the past is up 15 percentage points since the summer of 2021. The share who say life is better has decreased by a similar margin. Republicans and Democrats alike are now more likely than in 2021 to say that life is worse for people like them, though this view continues to be more prevalent among Republicans than Democrats. Roughly seven-in-ten Republicans (72%) say that life is worse today, up from 59% who said this in 2021. Among Democrats, 43% now say this, up from 30% two years ago. While both older adults and younger adults are much more likely to say that life today is worse for people like them than to say life is better, there is a sizable age gap on this question. Adults 50 and older are 46 points more likely to say that life is worse today for people like them than they are to say that life is better (65% vs. 19%). Adults ages 18 to 49, by comparison, are 24 points more likely to say life today is worse (51% vs. 27%).

These numbers are hardly surprising I guess. When you’re constantly told that civilization is on the precipice of collapse, it makes some sense to look back fondly to a time when that precipice was a bit further away. Many of us would rather live without the internet than, say, exist in a climate-shattered world that’s under the new management of our AI overlords. And to focus more on economics, why should we expect higher living standards in the future when everybody knows wages haven’t budged since the age of Watergate and Vietnam? Past performance is likely indicative of future results, yes?

A few gloom-dispelling facts that should be deeply considered by backward-looking pessimists: