Good times? It’s all relative
According to right-wing doomsayers (and many on the left), America is on a downward spiral toward an apocalyptic end as the world goes to hell in a hand-basket. But from a more realistic viewpoint, I think just the opposite is true. Let’s start with the economy.
George W. Bush’s second term brought on the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. But by the end of Obama’s first term most economic indicators were again headed in an upward direction and have continued virtually uninterrupted ever since. Continued economic growth, a rising stock market and expanding private-sector job creation, all begun under Obama, point to better times ahead. But what about social conditions, specifically poverty and crime?
Although still the world’s most murderous affluent society, the U.S. recently saw its homicide rate plunge by almost half in nine short years. During that same period New York City’s murders declined by an astonishing 75 percent. On the other hand, a quarter of the world’s killings took place in just four Latin American countries: Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico. Social change is rarely universal.
Although NAFTA, globalization and other economic innovations have been blamed for continuing world poverty, poverty is actually on the decline most everywhere. In this country we have very little absolute poverty. What we have is relative poverty accentuated by a mal-distribution of income. In a typical American household living below the official poverty level there is most always electricity, water, heat and sewer service. And there is often a color TV, and maybe even a computer and an old car. Compared to most third-world countries America’s “poverty” lifestyle is luxurious.
Born in 1931, I grew up during the Great Depression. From that experience I can assure readers that what we have today is far from the abject poverty I recall. But speaking of today’s continuing mal-distribution of wealth, the share of national income going to the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent grew from 8 percent in 1980 to 18 percent in 2015, a 225% increase. Meanwhile, the
share going to the richest one-tenth of one percent grew from 2 percent to an astonishing 8 percent over the same period. These rather extreme figures might suggest that overall economic growth has failed to improve the general human condition very much. But that is not the reality.
Noted Harvard neuroscientist, researcher and author Steven Pinker, in his definitive work “Enlightenment Now,” graphically illustrates that although between 1979 and 2014 the already rich got a lot richer a lot faster than the middle class and the poor, practically everyone is much better off than before. As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats, but not always equally. In fact, in the real world, never equally.
In his 1854 “Walden” transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men leads lives of quiet desperation.” And this gloomy outlook represents the sentiments of many Americans today. But how a semihermit living in isolation on a remote New England pond could be considered an authority on today’s human frustrations is beyond me. By most accepted economic and social measurements, including the World Happiness Scale, humankind today is enjoying unprecedented progress, security, safety and contentment.
George B. Reed Jr., who lives in Rossville, can be reached by email at reed1600@ bellsouth. net.