[solidsnack9000]

This is potentially a long conversation; but why would you start with rankings like this, which only go back a relatively short time?

Broadly speaking, human welfare got a lot better in the last three hundred years, due to productivity improvements that were tied to things like property rights, joint stock companies, availability of credit, &c.

We haven't really found a good alternative to it. It may seem to you that countries like Austria, &c, are doing the right thing by taking very large amounts of GDP out of the hands of private enterprise and using it "for good" instead of "for growth"; but that is just eating the seed corn. It looks good in the short term.

[i_cannot_hack]

The HDI ranking has been published for 36 years now. And for many of those countries I would feel confident claiming the trend goes back to at least WW2, altough you would of course have to use other, contemporary metrics to support that to get a rigorous analysis.

If the initial step in your theory about human wellfare is to selectively ignore the last 35 or 75 years of history in the highest wellfare countries on earth, I think you should at least consider the possibility that your theory might be somewhat out of date.

[solidsnack9000]

Most of Europe post-war was very poor. I'm not sure the trend could go back as far as that.

How are you weighing the trend you highlight relative to overall long run success of private ordering, stock companies, readily available credit, strong private property protections, &c, &c, in raising people's standard of living?