Moment in the Sun

 From economic historian Brad DeLong,a brief summary of the extreme weirdness of our time. He presents the table below without giving any source, and the seemingly precise quantification is certainly questionable, but the basic idea is undoubtedly correct.   What ' s important is not the numbers, but the idea. Right now the income per capita of all humanity is almost 13 times what it was in 1500. Another way of looking at this is that it took 20 workers in 1870 to produce what one worker can today. And yet, we still have billions of people living in abject poverty. Even in a wealthy country like the U.S., while even most of the people we consider to be impoverished have a material standard of living and a life expectancy that vastly exceeds that of even the average person in 1870, their quality of life is probably little better. Relative and concentrated disadvantage is deeply stressful and painful, as are lack of meaningful and rewarding work and purpose, and constant insecurity. It ' s also very important to note that the bulk of that per capita income is going to a very small subset of the population, who are growing ever more obscenely wealthy.Still, for most people, this is the best time to live there has ever been. Even European kings in 1500 had much shorter lives, more disease and pain, and more stress than an average American today. Yet life expectancy in the U.S. has recently made an unprecedented downward turn, mostly because of white peopl...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs