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> the world today still is a better world it was say 20 or 30 years ago Are you sure? Can you tell me why you think this? Domestic crime has increased. We're b

> the world today still is a better world it was say 20 or 30 years ago Are you sure? Can you tell me why you think this? Domestic crime has increased. We're bombing seven countries. Civil rights have been diminished. Human rights have been diminished. The last administration went to far greater lengths to go after whistle blowers and journalists than any in history. Income inequality is at all time highs. More than ever struggle to afford a home or to pay off debt (student loans). The biggest improvements seem to have been isolated to those in technology.

RangerScience 10y ago
Google variations on "graphs to make you feel better about the future". http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-that-will-restore-your-faith-in-humanity-2013-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-that-will-restore-your...
- andai 10y ago
  Thanks, that's somewhat uplifting.
  - RangerScience 10y ago
    You're welcome! There's also a good Ted Talk with an animated graph of life expectancy v wealth, with country blobs moving around from ~1700ish? to now. Hint: Everything goes up and to the right, although in some pretty interesting ways.
iainmerrick 10y ago
Not all those things are actually getting worse! Crime is falling in the long term, not rising, at least in the US. Much of the world now allows same-sex marriage, which I think is an important civil rights advancement. I take your points on war, the crackdown on whistleblowers, income inequality. But on the upside, we have tremendous advances in medicine (is that "just" technology?) It's a mixed picture, not a universally gloomy one.
- wallace_f 10y ago
  > Crime is falling in the long term, not rising, at least in the US. According to this[1] crime rates in the USA are higher than they were in 1960 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
  - iainmerrick 10y ago
    I'm very happy to let the chart on that page speak for itself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Property_Crime_Rates_in_the_United_States.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Property_Crime_Rates_in...
Hondor 10y ago
That's sort of backwards. Over the past 30 years, poverty has fallen massively, democracy has spread to more people, child mortality has fallen, literacy and education have risen [1], and rate of war deaths has fallen [2]. Maybe the direct death-and-suffering problems have now mostly been solved and that causes us to look to more intangible problems like human rights, freedom of speech and inequality. It's a common misconception that the world is getting worse but it's actually getting better. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts/ https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/ https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/ Maybe the great lengths they went to against Manning and Snowden were because they released massively more data than anyone in history? People selling secrets to the soviets were dealt with just as harshly despite releasing far less information.
- wu-ikkyu 10y ago
  >over the past 30 years, poverty has fallen massively This appears to be false[1], at least in the US. Moreover, most statistics positing a reduction in poverty can be misleading because the massive growth in population is ignored by nature of percentages. While there may be more people living above the poverty line than ever before, there are also more people living below it than ever before, about 3,000,000,000 people. There are roughly as many people living in poverty today as the total world population in 1960. [1]http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/may/07/jeb-bush/poverty-rate-higher-now-1970s/ http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/may/07/jeb...
Arizhel 10y ago
20 years ago in the US was an anomaly. Remember "The Matrix" when Agent Smith said that 1999 was our society's peak? He was right, the movie makers just didn't realize how right they were at the time. Many things have indeed gone downhill since then, thanks to Bush. For the stuff about war, what you're forgetting is all the stuff that came before: Vietnam, Korea, WWII, various other police actions, Beirut, etc. The 60s and 70s were a particularly turbulent time in recent American history. Do you see the National Guard out, shooting American protesters today? Nope. But they did exactly that in the 60s. You're factually wrong about many things here. Civil/human rights were much worse in the past; just look at how hard it was for black people before the Civil Rights Act of the late 60s. You think today's incidents of cops shooting unarmed black people in the back is bad? It was a lot worse in the past, people just didn't care and no one had cameras to record it all. Rodney King was the first big instance of this being recorded by a bystander. Someone else mentioned gay marriage; 30+ years ago gay people had to hide in "the closet", many of them marrying heterosexually just to hide themselves. Crime is lower today than in the past, despite what some alarmists would have you believe. Go look up the actual stats. Crime in America has been on a downward trend for decades. Income inequality is not at an all-time high. It's a lot worse than it should be, I agree, but go back to the Gilded Age and compare. It was worse back then. They didn't even have simple worker protections like 40-hour work weeks and OSHA to keep from getting maimed or killed on the job. Yes, in many ways (but not all), things are definitely worse for Americans than in 1997, but overall things are a lot better than there were in the past before that. The 90s were simply an exceptional time, especially if you were a white American: the economy was booming, we were in a big lull between military adventures, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the Cold War was over, the Internet was becoming a household item (much like electricity or the telephone or the automobile became commonplace decades before, radically changing society). It was a great time to make money, buy a house, not worry about nuclear annihilation, etc. About the only people who were having a really bad time were the people in former Yugoslavia.
- bzbarsky 10y ago
  > About the only people who were having a really bad time were the people in former Yugoslavia. Or the people anywhere in the vicinity of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War (which conveniently didn't appear in the news much). Pretty sure they were having a much worse time than people in former Yugoslavia...

RangerScience 10y ago

Google variations on "graphs to make you feel better about the future". http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-that-will-restore-your-faith-in-humanity-2013-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-that-will-restore-your...

andai 10y ago
Thanks, that's somewhat uplifting.
- RangerScience 10y ago
  You're welcome! There's also a good Ted Talk with an animated graph of life expectancy v wealth, with country blobs moving around from ~1700ish? to now. Hint: Everything goes up and to the right, although in some pretty interesting ways.

iainmerrick 10y ago

Not all those things are actually getting worse! Crime is falling in the long term, not rising, at least in the US. Much of the world now allows same-sex marriage, which I think is an important civil rights advancement. I take your points on war, the crackdown on whistleblowers, income inequality. But on the upside, we have tremendous advances in medicine (is that "just" technology?) It's a mixed picture, not a universally gloomy one.

wallace_f 10y ago
> Crime is falling in the long term, not rising, at least in the US. According to this[1] crime rates in the USA are higher than they were in 1960 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
- iainmerrick 10y ago
  I'm very happy to let the chart on that page speak for itself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Property_Crime_Rates_in_the_United_States.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Property_Crime_Rates_in...

Hondor 10y ago

That's sort of backwards. Over the past 30 years, poverty has fallen massively, democracy has spread to more people, child mortality has fallen, literacy and education have risen [1], and rate of war deaths has fallen [2]. Maybe the direct death-and-suffering problems have now mostly been solved and that causes us to look to more intangible problems like human rights, freedom of speech and inequality. It's a common misconception that the world is getting worse but it's actually getting better. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts/ https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/ https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/ Maybe the great lengths they went to against Manning and Snowden were because they released massively more data than anyone in history? People selling secrets to the soviets were dealt with just as harshly despite releasing far less information.

wu-ikkyu 10y ago
>over the past 30 years, poverty has fallen massively This appears to be false[1], at least in the US. Moreover, most statistics positing a reduction in poverty can be misleading because the massive growth in population is ignored by nature of percentages. While there may be more people living above the poverty line than ever before, there are also more people living below it than ever before, about 3,000,000,000 people. There are roughly as many people living in poverty today as the total world population in 1960. [1]http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/may/07/jeb-bush/poverty-rate-higher-now-1970s/ http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/may/07/jeb...

Arizhel 10y ago

20 years ago in the US was an anomaly. Remember "The Matrix" when Agent Smith said that 1999 was our society's peak? He was right, the movie makers just didn't realize how right they were at the time. Many things have indeed gone downhill since then, thanks to Bush. For the stuff about war, what you're forgetting is all the stuff that came before: Vietnam, Korea, WWII, various other police actions, Beirut, etc. The 60s and 70s were a particularly turbulent time in recent American history. Do you see the National Guard out, shooting American protesters today? Nope. But they did exactly that in the 60s. You're factually wrong about many things here. Civil/human rights were much worse in the past; just look at how hard it was for black people before the Civil Rights Act of the late 60s. You think today's incidents of cops shooting unarmed black people in the back is bad? It was a lot worse in the past, people just didn't care and no one had cameras to record it all. Rodney King was the first big instance of this being recorded by a bystander. Someone else mentioned gay marriage; 30+ years ago gay people had to hide in "the closet", many of them marrying heterosexually just to hide themselves. Crime is lower today than in the past, despite what some alarmists would have you believe. Go look up the actual stats. Crime in America has been on a downward trend for decades. Income inequality is not at an all-time high. It's a lot worse than it should be, I agree, but go back to the Gilded Age and compare. It was worse back then. They didn't even have simple worker protections like 40-hour work weeks and OSHA to keep from getting maimed or killed on the job. Yes, in many ways (but not all), things are definitely worse for Americans than in 1997, but overall things are a lot better than there were in the past before that. The 90s were simply an exceptional time, especially if you were a white American: the economy was booming, we were in a big lull between military adventures, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the Cold War was over, the Internet was becoming a household item (much like electricity or the telephone or the automobile became commonplace decades before, radically changing society). It was a great time to make money, buy a house, not worry about nuclear annihilation, etc. About the only people who were having a really bad time were the people in former Yugoslavia.

bzbarsky 10y ago
> About the only people who were having a really bad time were the people in former Yugoslavia. Or the people anywhere in the vicinity of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War (which conveniently didn't appear in the news much). Pretty sure they were having a much worse time than people in former Yugoslavia...