| This pattern continuing indefinitely without the need for analysis would be certainly nice but we do need to confront recent data. In the US, multiple metrics of quality-of-life peaked around 2015 and have declined since then, with some showing 11% decline while US total wealth has doubled! (with the majority of that decline pre-covid and pre-AI) [0][1][2]. What forces act on this trend? How can we make predictions? An interesting metric, which tracks the aggregate of many complex factors is the distribution of wealth, which could be seen as proxy for the distribution of power or agency of a person in their society. Median income as a fraction of total wealth decreased nearly 50% in real terms over this same period. [3] Now inversely, during the period where life quality increased most the last century (1920 - 1980) inequality was _falling_. How is super-human AI advanced through 2030, 2040, 2050 likely to affect things? Will it sharpen the inequality or relax it? With AI the cost of raw resources to products goes down, but it's likely inequality increases. It's not obvious which force has a bigger impact on human quality of life as things shake out. However, I think the strongest argument – which also explains the steady improvements in QoL through previous changes you mentioned – has been to follow inequality, or median share of power in society. - [0] https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/indices_explained.jsp - [1] https://www.socialprogress.org/social-progress-index - [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGZ1FL192090005Q - [3] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58533 |
>- [0] https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/indices_explained.jsp
It's hard to take that metric seriously when the top city is Raleigh, NC. If that were the best city you'd expect people to vote with their feet and move their in droves.