There are an estimated 12-27 million people currently in slavery[1]. With a current world population of 7 billion, this proportion is between .0017 and .0038, a

There are an estimated 12-27 million people currently in slavery[1]. With a current world population of 7 billion, this proportion is between .0017 and .0038, a dramatic decline, and probably the lowest in history. Regarding incarceration in the United States, despite a 10X increase in population from 31.4M to 311.8M and mandatory sentencing policies associated with the War on Drugs, the absolute number of Americans incarcerated in 2011 (2.2 million) was still less than the absolute number of Americans in slavery alone in 1860 (3.9 million).[2][3] If you wish to move on to economic issues and contend there has been no progress in living conditions, a point the author of this article does not argue, I would challenge you to produce some actual metric and numbers for a similar period of time (after the dawn of philosophical liberalism) showing the average worker to be no better off, keeping in mind the enormous increase in life expectancy and GDP per capita which has occurred. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_Census https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_Census [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...