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Things Are Getting Better All the Time

LowDown

Curmudgeon
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Tremendous progress continues to be made globally in a number of important areas such as human health and life expectancy, crime, poverty, and pollution.

This is elaborated upon in a video of a talk by Steven Pinker of Harvard University.

For example, the prevalence of extreme poverty is plummeting world wide:

ExttremePoverty.JPG

A higher proportion of people live under democratic governments than ever:

DemocracyVsAutocracy.JPG

And so on.

If you don't know about this tremendous and heart lifting progress you probably get your news from the mainstream media, which has been putting out an increasingly negative cast on world events.

Pinker thinks that this negative reporting is promoting a loss of faith in government and in nations the world over that results in political changes such as Trump's election, Brexit, and the like. There is an awfully lot of good news that the news media is just refusing to report, and there are a lot of people who refuse to believe good news.

Always predict that doom is at hand and you'll earn great profits be hailed as a great prophet.
 
Tremendous progress continues to be made globally in a number of important areas such as human health and life expectancy, crime, poverty, and pollution.

This is elaborated upon in a video of a talk by Steven Pinker of Harvard University.

For example, the prevalence of extreme poverty is plummeting world wide:

View attachment 67244896

A higher proportion of people live under democratic governments than ever:

View attachment 67244897

And so on.

If you don't know about this tremendous and heart lifting progress you probably get your news from the mainstream media, which has been putting out an increasingly negative cast on world events.

Pinker thinks that this negative reporting is promoting a loss of faith in government and in nations the world over that results in political changes such as Trump's election, Brexit, and the like. There is an awfully lot of good news that the news media is just refusing to report, and there are a lot of people who refuse to believe good news.

Always predict that doom is at hand and you'll earn great profits be hailed as a great prophet.

No news is good news because the good news doesn't get reported. This isn't because the news media is evil. It's because it isn't news that that somebody didn't get killed, didn't get mugged, didn't start a war, etc. Nor is it news that that somebody ate dinner and went to bed. News reporting has a natural bias to report bad stuff.
 
ALLTIME BLACK FRIDAY RECORD set this year = TAX CUTS WORKING.
 
No news is good news because the good news doesn't get reported. This isn't because the news media is evil. It's because it isn't news that that somebody didn't get killed, didn't get mugged, didn't start a war, etc. Nor is it news that that somebody ate dinner and went to bed. News reporting has a natural bias to report bad stuff.

But the reduction of poverty and the expansion of democracy are not those things. They are genuinely newsworthy.
 
No news is good news because the good news doesn't get reported. This isn't because the news media is evil. It's because it isn't news that that somebody didn't get killed, didn't get mugged, didn't start a war, etc. Nor is it news that that somebody ate dinner and went to bed. News reporting has a natural bias to report bad stuff.

That wasn't the way it used to be. The news used to be a lot more positive. As things have gotten objectively better the news slant has gotten more negative.
 
That wasn't the way it used to be. The news used to be a lot more positive. As things have gotten objectively better the news slant has gotten more negative.

You must be older than me. I don't remember that time.:mrgreen:
 
But the reduction of poverty and the expansion of democracy are not those things. They are genuinely newsworthy.

I admit that I found the graphs on the OP to be quite gratifying. You're right. It is newsworthy. It's also a trend that is documented over 80 years. The news reports discreet events something that happened, preferably that you can take a picture of, interview the principles or witnesses. 80 years of continuous progress doesn't fit the bill. It's a trend, not an event. That said. It's still great news!:rock
 
And yet the world is in turmoil...
 
Thanks to globalization.
 
The teachers who taught me weren't cool....
 
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