Thread by @paulkrugman

And now for something almost completely different: Max Roser has a beautiful post about the Black Death. And no, that's not a contradiction 1/ ourworldindata.org/breaking-the-m…

Roser points out and documents something I've often said, but with much less data: Malthus was right! That is, until roughly a century before he wrote, the pressure of population on land always drove living standards to the edge of subsistence 2/

There were probably interludes when this wasn't true — the economy of ancient Rome may have temporarily broken out of the Malthusian trap, with productivity rising along with population 3/ books.google.com/books/about/Th…

But basically Malthus had a profound insight that was almost completely right about the past — but, ironically, wrong about the future. Was he just unlucky? I don't think so 4/

For what allowed us to break out of the Malthusian trap? Ultimately, I'd argue, it was the spirit of rational inquiry, which led to scientific and technological progress 5/

And this very spirit of rational inquiry is the reason someone like Malthus, who basically tried to apply a simple mathematical model to human history, became possible. That is, the forces that produced Malthus also proved him wrong about the future 6/