I was very much struck by a single thing when I read Joakim Book’s lament at The Daily Economy for his loss of confidence in human progress. Here are some sample excerpts:
The most obvious and direct answer to that puzzling question is that most people haven’t seen much progress in a while. We’re not irrational, blind, or technophobic; we legitimately have not enjoyed the promised progress.
The Survey of Consumers put out by the University of Michigan has recorded near-record-low consumer sentiment for months, in an ostensibly thriving economy with lots of technological progress and trillion-dollar AI investments.
If the map and the territory disagree, one option is to follow the map, blame reality, and call the consumers fearful or irrational. The more serious avenue would be to consider that maybe, just maybe, the irrational subjects know something you don’t.
and
In fact, admitting that there has been no progress for years would clear up these supposed puzzles at once: both the surveys that show Americans so surprisingly sour on the economy when headline figures (growth, unemployment, investments) seem positive, and Omary’s conundrum of why we “fear” progress.
[…]
Most of the measures on which the progress movement has made its intellectual and popular reputation have stayed high, but stopped moving.
On child mortality, the incredible fall from double digits about a century ago to hugging zero percent in the Nordic welfare states is an astonishing development worthy of all praise. (Even a generation ago, the US posted an inexcusable one percent child mortality.) The downside is that once you’re at 0.2 percent there’s hardly any more progress available — diminishing returns and all that. Also, zoom in on that celebrated downward-sloping graph: the richest European countries have seen no change in the last twenty years.
What struck me was that the words “China” and “India” appear nowhere in his post. That suggests his definition of “human” is highly eccentric and, frankly, Euro-centric. Let’s frame the question as a series of questions:
- Has there been notable human progress over the last 30 years?
- Is material progress in China and India compatible with continued material progress in Europe, the United States, and Canada?
- Is material progress in Africa commensurate with the rise of China and India?
- What would be necessary for continued material progress in the U. S., Canada, and Europe?
Has there been notable human progress over the last 30 years?
When you include China and India, the answer is obviously “yes”. In terms of total GDP, per capita GDP, personal income, life expectancy, and other measures China and India have progressed enormously over the last 30 years. Since roughly a third of the human species lives either China or India, that means there has been enormous human progress. It just hasn’t been in the United States, Canada, or Europe.
According to the the World Bank’s revised estimates indicate that approximately 1.5 billion people escaped extreme poverty between 1990 and 2022
Is material progress in China and India compatible with continued material progress in Europe, the United States, and Canada?
The verdict isn’t in on this question but the answer may well be “no”. The progress in China and India has resulted in the prices of many of the things that people consume falling while wages have stayed stubbornly the same and underemployment has soared.
Is material progress in Africa commensurate with the rise of China and India?
The verdict isn’t in on this question, either, but the answer to this one may well be “no” as well. The extremely abbreviated version of the explanation for that is that China’s enormous over-investment in productive capacity has foreclosed the mechanism that Japan, South Korea, and China used to progress from the countries of Africa.
What would be necessary for continued material progress in the U. S., Canada, and Europe?
This subject rightfully would require a whole volume rather than a brief answer. The TL;DR answer is it would require a lot of things that people in the United States, Canada, and Europe would find highly objectionable including
- reduce dependence on international trade, particularly for strategically important goods and services
- restrain increases in the costs of housing, health care, education, energy, and other necessities
- increase labor-force participation, extend working lives where practical, and improve productivity
- break up enterprises whose market power inhibits competition, innovation, or the development of smaller competitors
- discourage offshore outsourcing that erodes domestic employment, productive capabilities, and institutional knowledge
The question isn’t whether humanity has made progress over the last thirty years. It plainly has. The question is whether the countries that enjoyed the greatest prosperity in the twentieth century can continue to prosper in the twenty-first and whether the countries that have not yet achieved comparable prosperity can follow the same path. Neither answer is obvious. Both questions deserve considerably more attention than whether Americans are pleased with their washing machines.
