1. The World Is Getting Quietly, Relentlessly Better
If you spent 2018 mainlining misery about global warming, inequality, toxic politics or other anxieties, some good news to break your addiction: The world got better last year, and it is going to get even better this year.
If you spent 2018 mainlining misery about global warming, inequality, toxic politics or other anxieties, some good news to break your addiction: The world got better last year, and it is going to get even better this year.
2. Poverty around the world is plummeting; half the world is now middle class; and illiteracy, disease and deadly violence are receding. These things don’t make headlines because they are gradual, relentless and unsurprising. That is why they are worth highlighting. 
3. Rising incomes alone cannot capture how much better life has gotten. Nathan Rothschild was the richest man in the world when he died in 1836. But the cause of his death was an infection—a condition that can now be treated with antibiotics sold for less than a couple of cents.
4. Look at the data and you will be stunned by how much better life has become in just the last few decades: Child mortality, illiteracy and deaths from violence have all plummeted, and life expectancy has gone up.
5. As with disease, poverty is being eradicated not through technological miracles but basic rules of growth: Invest more in your human and physical capital, open yourself to markets and trade—that’s right, globalization is good—and incomes will rise.
6. Allow this growth to continue long enough, and something else momentous happens. As of September, more than half the world—3.8 billion people—are middle-class or rich.
7. Money and well-being aren’t the same, but research shows that moving from poor to middle class does correspond to a big jump in happiness and much greater demands on governments to deliver affordable housing, education, health care and safety.
8. If the world is getting so much better, why does everyone seem so miserable? Perhaps because in the U.S., life is improving more slowly than in poorer countries, because as things improve, the pace of improvement can often get slower from a higher baseline.
9. Yet for most Americans, life is getting better: Median incomes are rising, average health is improving, and violent crime, divorce and teen pregnancy are all trending down.
10. But partisan politicking by liberal mainstream media strives hard to make people in the U.S. feel miserable even when things are going well. For example, 2018 was a pretty good year for the U.S., but you would hardly know it from MSM. That deserves a separate thread.
The End
The End
Let us do a deeper dive on the U.S. now.
