So, what was the median lead concentration in the blood of children when you were born? For me, it was around 5 micrograms per deciliter [0], but children born

So, what was the median lead concentration in the blood of children when you were born? For me, it was around 5 micrograms per deciliter [0], but children born in my country (the US) today are showing much less exposure to this horrid toxic metal. This may also just seem like another cherry-picked metric, but I don't have enough time to show you all the ways things are better now than they were in the not distant past, and it's because we can solve hard problems. I was a doomer myself not too long ago, but after seeing humanity design an efficacious COVID vaccine in just a couple days [1] and get mass production and distribution set up in under a year, I'm pretty confident that we can continue to solve whatever problems come our way. I graduated from undergrad in 2010 with degrees in physics and M.Eng. The economy was a dumpster fire and after a few months of job hunting, I managed to get a job at McDonald's, working 39.5 hours a week and getting a weekly ~$220 check that felt like a slap in the face. So for your question on "how many more economic crises before we fear the next", it's none more. But at present, the unemployment rate is under 4% and real wages (ie wages after inflation) are increasing for the lowest earners [2], thanks to upward pressure from the hot labor market and to min wage increases by major employers like Amazon and Walmart. I doubt their wages keep pace with inflation over the time it will take to reforge supply chains, but so far, it's the middle and upper class workers who haven't used the hot job market to hop into a more productive (or at least higher paying) position who've taken the hit. The plot of net wealth for millennials [3] shows a very recent downhill trend, but in general, the 2013 to 2019 was a period of net wealth generation for millennials after a decade where annual change in net wealth was consistently negative (save a blip in 2007). Oh, and on the "rise in crime", professionally, I'm a homicide researcher in Chicago, and I am intimately familiar with crime data. You may be shocked to learn that the rate of crime is actually down [4], as rates in property crime have fallen more than enough to offset the increase in rates of violent crime. As a homicide researcher, I don't care much about property crime up until the point that it becomes violent, but if you're talking about crime rates they're lower than they were in very recent pre-pandemic history, and even if you do restrict discussion only to violent crime rates, things are way, way better now than they were in the the 1980's and 1990's [5], at least for the vast majority of the world's population. I agree the vibe right now is terrible. But the data just doesn't really back up the vibe. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/lead-blood-usa-children?country=95th+percentile~Median https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/lead-blood-usa-children?c... [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/moderna-designed-coronavirus-vaccine-in-2-days-2020-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/moderna-designed-coronavirus... [2] https://rooseveltinstitute.org/2022/04/04/increasing-wages-for-low-income-workers-is-key-for-a-full-economic-recovery/ https://rooseveltinstitute.org/2022/04/04/increasing-wages-f... [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXUCHGASLILB0403M https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXUCHGASLILB0403M [4] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/america-having-violence-wave-not-crime-wave/620234/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/america-ha... [5] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~USA~European+Region+%28WHO%29~North+America+%28WB%29~Middle+East+%26+North+Africa+%28WB%29 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate?tab=chart&c...