For all those people who seriously,
genuinely think that the world is going to hell and that America is not a great nation, Pinker uses facts and statistics and reason to cut through all the emotion and hyperbole and outright lies and distortions dominating the news and social media. By taking a larger, longer perspective of centuries rather than news cycles, Pinker shows how the standard of living has risen for most of the planet. To every American worker who has lost his job to foreign labor there is a foreign
human being who has obtained clean water and enough food to eat and an extended life span and all the other basics that Americans take for granted. Read the book, then refute the pessimists who complain about the world economy while smoking a cigarette in one hand and scarfing pizza in the other as they sit in their air conditioned house watching TV. As I mentioned in my book, we have become a nation dying of our excesses while living better than the kings of old..I did not so bluntly mention that some of us are complaining all the while..We elected a president who emphasized the negative rather than the positive as if that simplistic message told the whole story. The real question is why do so many Americans believe their lives are so bad??
Here is one small excerpt:
"Together, technology and globalization have transformed what it means to be a poor person, at least in developed countries.The old stereotype of poverty was an emaciated pauper in rags. Today, the poor are likely to be as overweight as their employers, and dressed in the same fleece, sneakers and jeans. The poor used to be called the have-nots. In 2011, more than 95% of American households below the poverty line had electricity, running water, flush toilets, a refrigerator, a stove, and a color TV...Almost half of the households below the poverty line had a dishwasher, 60 percent had a computer, around two-thirds had a washing machine and a clothes dryer, and more than 80% had an air conditioner, a video recorder, and a cell phone. In the golden age of economic equality ( ...the 1950's and 60's) middle class 'haves' had few or none of these things... The rich have gotten richer...Warren Buffet may have more air conditioners or better ones, but by historical standards the fact that a majority of poor Americans even
have an air conditioner is astonishing."
