Maybe you’re right (I am missing references to data points supporting your claims). Yet: you have to correct for total people on the planet. The total populati

Maybe you’re right (I am missing references to data points supporting your claims). Yet: you have to correct for total people on the planet. The total population has gone from 1 billion to 8 billion. Integrating over all human beings you can be sure that the sum of “being better off” is much higher than 200 years ago. Now we can endlessly debate what “better” is. I just think it’s totally fair to start at a point where population growth started to take off exponentially.