You ungrateful wretches

Brad DeLong is postingentire chapter drafts of his in-progress magnum opus. It is a sweeping economic history of what he calls the " long 20th Century " which began around 1870 and ended in November, 2016 when the liberal project ran into a ditch. I say, maybe, there ' s still hope, but that ' s a digression.We take our current condition for granted, but it is not the human condition of the 300,000 year career of Homo sapiens. As DeLong reminds us:When the Long 20th Century started in 1870, the overwhelming bulk of humanity was still so malnourished as to be constantly hungry, so ill-clothed as to be (in climates not in near-equatorial lowlands at least) often cold, so ill-sheltered as to be frequently (in non-arid climates, at least) wet. Most members of humanity had good reason to fear that it might be difficult to get their 2000 calories a day next year, and many had good reason to fear that it might be difficult to get their 2000 calories a day next week. When it ended in 2016, those fears were gone for most of humanity —it was a scandal that they remained for a significant portion. When it ended in 2016, somewhere between the top quarter and the top three-quarters of the human [sic] were wealthier than previous eras’ kings.Rudiger Dorbusch said in his oft-used introductory textbook that the fundamental problem of economics is the problem of scarcity. (I paraphrase from memory.) This is now an oversimplification. In the U.S. today, we do not face a scarcity of calorie...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs