| I found the article quite weird for some of the points. But following the optimism spirit, first are things that I found optimistic: >Child mortality, childbirth death decrease
>Child labor.
>Life expectency
>Literacy increase
>Smoking decrease For others, there's possibly quite a large room for cherry-picking data. I'm very happy if the following can be proved to be negligible ( or wrong ): >Extreme poverty falling
I'm not sure how the math ($1) can already be an adjusted for inflation / price variances. Probably should be using the income / wealth equality instead. >People in developed countries have more leisure time
But not in developing countries. Following the links, I find our working levels stay pretty much the same above the 2000h line. Also I'm interested in how much we compare to pre-industrial level. >Smoking is down, but not so much in developing countries
>Homicide rates have fallen dramatically, but only counting US and EU
>The share of income spent on food has plummeted in the US
No mention of developing countries. World-wide the homicide rates looks to be about the same-ish ?. >People have been getting taller for centuries
There are more to nutrition than height, and world-wide looks like it has been same-ish since 1970. >More people in the world live in a democracy now
50/50 on this one, mainly cause I'm not sure if the democracy index is measured objectively, or they just extend to whatever countries on good terms with the US. >Tech & Moore's law
I'm skeptic of more tech leads == better life, particularly when more people reported more internet time ~= decreased mental health. |