 Hi I'm James. And I'm Anthony. And this is Words and Numbers. This weekend, you know, I was watching YouTube clips the other night, the way I do sometimes when I'm bored beyond repair and don't want to do anything meaningful. And I came across this classic Louis CK clip, I think it was from The Tonight Show, when he sat back and he said, everything is amazing and nobody's right. I know the one. This is great. You know, you know the one I'm talking about, right? And, you know, I got to thinking about that and he's exactly right. I think everything is kind of amazing and nobody is happy. Everybody complains about everything all the time. Right. Yeah. Well, we're so used to things being nice that now that's where the first world problem phrase comes from, right? We're used to everything being wonderful. So one thing goes wrong and then all of a sudden everybody's annoyed. Yeah, first world problems that you know, I tend not to think about that too much, but there's something to that, isn't there? When you really think about it, we whine about all kinds of things that even our grandparents would likely travel through time and slap us in the mouth over. I think so. And it's not just things we whine about, but it's also serious things that aren't as bad, although they are bad, aren't as bad as we make them out to be. Take firearm deaths, which most Americans think have been increasing over time, which you'd imagine is true if you watch the news. And yet, if you look at the FBI statistics, firearm deaths in the United States have declined 50% over the past generation and felonies committed with a firearm have declined 75%. Gun violence is a shadow of what it was a generation ago. Right. And it's even more ridiculous than that in a lot of ways, right? Because most people would say, well, okay, maybe gun violence is down, but surely there are more mass shootings now than there have ever been. Right. And that's just not the case either, right? A cursory glance at the data, data provided cheerfully by the FBI, I might add, indicates that no, actually, all forms of gun violence are way down. And I think the dividing line was about what, 1968? I think so. Approximately there, it started declining, just kept on declining. I mean, case in point, you're more likely in the United States today to be killed by someone else's hands and fists and feet than you are by someone else's rifle. Yeah, no, it does. It's a strange set of circumstances, right? If you really sit back and think about this, I think what we've got is a case where the 24 hour news cycle, internet news, this sort of thing really leads people to conclusions that they ought not be led to. At the end of the day, I think it's the case that these strange circumstances, right? Anything that gets reported in the news cycle is by definition an outlier. We don't report things that happen every day. So when the outlying events get reported and dwelled upon the way they do, it shouldn't really come as much of a surprise that people start to think that they're the norm, that they're the rule, not the exception. Yeah, and this is interesting because it's actually at least partially a market phenomenon, right? Because bad news sells. People like this. It's titillating. You watch this. Good news isn't that interesting. And so consequently, if you're trying to sell advertising, you show the bad news. And so what happens is the news media have a direct incentive to present on the news things that are out of the ordinary. And the way I describe it to people is, generally, the news is a litany of things that won't harm you. Yeah, no, that's right. And the way it goes, right? When we really sit back and think about what life is like, not what we see on the news, but what our average every day lives are like, they're actually quite peaceful. They're quite comfortable. And they're becoming more so with each passing year. Yeah, and the firearms numbers, of course, apply to the United States. But if we look more broadly across the world, during World War II, 300 out of every 100,000 people on the planet died in war. By the Korean War, it was down to 20 people out of every 100,000. Today, and of course, you see wars all over the planet, you know, but today, it's one person out of every 100,000 who are killed in war. Even wars are becoming more peaceable. Yeah, no, that's right. And if you were to ask people at random, as they walked past you on the street, they would not guess that that's the correct answer. That's right. Right. They would think that the world is a far bloodier place than it actually is. Yeah. And that's kind of telling when you think about it. And, you know, so we're talking about violence, right? And of course, this is an issue, but a related issue perhaps is poverty. A lot of people say these two things go together. And yet, if you look at poverty, the same kind of thing is happening. In 1900, 70% of humans lived in what the UN defines as extreme poverty. By the 1950s, it was down to 50% of humans. In the 1990s, it was 30%. Today, fewer than 10% of the human race lives in poverty. The human race has never had numbers like that since the dawn of Homo sapiens. And when you really think through what that means, it runs counter to the assertion. And it's an assertion we hear every single day. The richer getting richer and the poorer getting poorer. Absolutely not. That is absolutely incorrect, categorically incorrect. The rich are in fact getting richer and the poor are in fact getting richer. Yeah, and I think it's worth noting here that you can always find individual outliers, right? I can find without too much trouble a poor person who has become poorer. And I can find a rich person who has become richer. But what's important, particularly when we're talking about policy, is not what happens to specific individuals, but what happens to us in general. In general, poor people have become richer. In general, rich people have become richer. In general, and this is where the people talk about the middle class disappearing, it is because in general, the middle class has become richer. You know, everybody's shifting to the right hand side, right? That's right, yeah. And that's both a global and an American phenomenon. It is. And it goes beyond just income. Child labor rates worldwide are 50% down from where they were a generation ago. Inequality measures, both income inequality and gender inequality, is down significantly from a generation ago. So people who will say, well, maybe life is better in the United States, but it's becoming better because you're building a better life on the backs of the poor and the exploited. And clearly that's not the case. The numbers are trending the same direction for everybody across all sorts of dimensions. Yeah, so what we've got here are a lot of people who are willfully avoiding looking at the data. Right, right. But, and I think even more importantly, they're not willing to extrapolate from what they see in their everyday lives. Yeah, if you just sit back and think about what you see in your regular, everyday working or middle class life, it's absolutely unprecedented in human history. Right, we have indoor plumbing. We have heating and air conditioning. We can keep our homes at a constant 68 degrees, just because we feel like it. We have medications that keep us relatively healthy throughout the balance of our lives, which are getting longer by the generation. Yeah, this brings up a good story. Andrew Carnegie, who at the time was one of the richest men in the world. And if you adjust for inflation, he was probably one of the richest people that ever lived. His mother-in-law dies of tuberculosis. He, with all his wealth, could not prevent her dying from tuberculosis. Today, poor Americans can afford the cure that would prevent tuberculosis. So nowadays, almost nobody dies of tuberculosis. Well, it's worse than that, aunt. Nobody gets tuberculosis. Right, right, right. That's the simple fact of the matter. This is how life improves generation over generation. Not one person I know has ever had tuberculosis. Right, or polio. When the vaccine was invented and announced, people danced. This is literally true. People danced in the streets. Yeah. And they said, now our children don't have to die. Yeah, right, right. Right, and it's kind of difficult to think that way at this point. And remember, this is a great discovery and invention that has benefited not just the rich, it has benefited all Americans all the way down to the poor, and in fact, it's benefiting, you know, the poor and other countries as well. And when you sit back and think about our regular lives, right, the things that we just take for granted, the places that we sit in the evening, the way we watch a ball game on TV, right, in our climate-controlled environments with hot and cold running water, beverages and food to our hearts' content, it's really quite astonishing. Yeah. And if you sit back and think about it, it's really something that we live this way. And even then, you can say, well, not everyone shares in that. And that's absolutely true, you know, even in the United States. There are people who don't have enough to eat. However, and I'm not saying that this is something we should ignore, but put it in context, even people in the United States today who we consider poor, 100 years ago, they would have been considered very well off. 200 years ago, they would have been considered a royalty. It's better than that, because the average working-class person in the United States today lives better than the average monarch in Europe did in the 18th century. Right. Economics teachers often say this to their students, right? I like to do it the other direction. I say to my students, imagine the life you have now, right? So you've got television, you've got cell phone, you maybe your parents have one or two cars, whatever it is. You don't worry where your next meal is coming from. Your grandchildren, when you tell them about your life, quite seriously, they will look at you and say, how did you survive? You were so poor, because this is the general trend that humans are experiencing. I don't doubt that things are going to get better over the next 20, 40, 60 years, you know, the typical cycle of a generation, 20 years, give or take. I do hope, though, that I finally get a flying car. I was promised a flying car once. That's right. Where are the flying cars? I was told that by the year 2000, I would have a flying car. Yeah, but then this is even interesting, because of course, in science fiction, people talked about flying cars back in the 1950s. What they didn't imagine is, in my book, even better. It's the self-driving car, which is probably just five or 10 years off, you know, for the mass market. My 12-year-old son might never actually drive a car. That's astounding. Now, think backwards. There was a generation, and there are probably some of them still alive today, who were the first generation that did not have to learn how to ride a horse. And now we're looking. Our kids are the first ones who are not going to have to learn how to drive. Right. I thought it was a big deal when people didn't have to learn how to drive a stick. Exactly. That was actually a big deal. Now you might not have to learn how to drive. And imagine what kind of world that opens up when you can get in your car at 11 p.m., tell it where you want to be by 8 a.m., and just go to sleep. Right. Yes. Yes, absolutely. That's really quite astonishing, right? And when you think about all of the creative forces that will be unlocked when we save all of our time and effort, that now goes into transporting goods across the country. Yeah. And you know, we're talking about driving to more extreme case. You just got back from a trip from Europe, right? I did. And you know, it was the greatest thing, right? Because I left my house here in Salt Lake City and flew to Central Europe. I think I had like $40 in my pocket. I didn't even think about money, right? Once upon a time, I would have had to arrange for traveler's checks a month in advance. Right. But I just hopped on a plane. I looked in my pocket, made sure I had my passport, and off I went. And frankly, a trip to Central Europe cost less for me than a trip to Cincinnati, Ohio. Yeah. Let's just keep it in perspective, right? Yeah. This is not the kind of trip a wealthy man can, only a wealthy man can take. A working class guy can get on a plane and go to Europe at certain times of the year. When I got there, I looked around the airport. I found that magic hole in the wall. I stuck my debit card in it and got money out. And it was in the local currency at a very favorable exchange rate. Right. From there, I thought, well, gee, I should probably get to where I'm going. I whipped out my cell phone, which incidentally worked in a foreign country. Right, right. It just, right. Not that a cell phone is miraculous enough, but mine works all over the globe. Right. It costs me a grand total of about $25 a month. Did you get an Uber? I did. I just added in the address of the place I wanted to go. And a gentleman who didn't speak my language showed up at the airport, pointed at me. I got in his car and we drove to my Airbnb, another little miracle of modern life. We drove to the Airbnb without ever speaking word. We tried to gesticulate to one another a couple of times, but it seemed kind of pointless. We both laughed at that. He dropped me off where I was going. He got paid. We were all perfectly happy. Yeah. Right. And the beautiful part of all of this is, look what I did without ever once considering my own safety. Right. That's what strikes me is we're talking about buying goods and services and how easy this is and affordable. And there's this underlying current of, oh, by the way, all of it is peaceable. You can put your card in the ATM machine and not have to worry that someone's going to steal it or they're going to take your numbers or whatever. You can get in the car with this guy who doesn't even speak the same language and not be worried he's going to drive off with you and rob you somewhere. Interactions between individuals, in addition to all the other wondrousness, interaction between individuals is becoming more peaceable. Hard to see what could be better than that as a last word today. So, well, one thing I would encourage everyone to think about is we think about all these wonderful things that we take for granted and how much better the world is becoming. Remember that all of this has occurred against the backdrop of over the past generation, two generations, a 50% increase in the world population. Not only is life getting better, but it's getting better for more and more people. And I think that the take-home message from all of that is that there's something we're doing that's right. And we need to identify what that is and do more of it. And maybe we'll talk about that on an upcoming Words and Numbers, but that's all we've got time for today. Thanks for watching and feel free to leave comments in the box below. Ask a question if you like or just tell us what's on your mind. If you like this episode, feel free to subscribe and do check out fee.organ at feeonline for all of your social media needs. They'll keep you nice and busy. We'll be up with a new episode next Wednesday at about noon. And we'll see you then, and I'll see you next week. See you next week, James.