Chicken Little Was Wrong
Moore, Stephen & Simon, Julian L.
Seven of the Most Surprising Trends of Human Progress "The past remembers better than it lived." -JACKIE GLEASON hen pollsters ask the public whether "America is on the right track, or...
...In nearly every U.S...
...Overworked Americans...
...At his death in 1998, JULIAN L. SIMON was professor of business administration at the University of Maryland...
...The average American has, in just the past 20 years, gained 40,000 added lifetime hours of leisure...
...29 OKING UP WITH OM WOLFE FOR NEARLY FOUR DECADES THIS CONSERVATIVE HAS BEEN AMERICA'S MOST AMAZING MAN OF LETTERS...
...In 1967 the average black woman earned 79 percent of what a white woman earned...
...1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 SOURCES: National Safety Council, Accident Safety Facts, annual (Chicago...
...26 February 2001 o The American Spectator The percentage of U.S...
...Bureau of the Census, "Housing Then and Now," www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/histcensushsg.html...
...The American Spectator o February 2001 SOURCES: CEMA Research Center, cited in the Washington Post, April 26, 1999...
...Compared to wages, energy prices become insignificant "We're running out of natural resources...
...And huge progress has been made in purifying industrial and municipal waste: by 1994, 86 percent of America's rivers and streams were usable for fishing and swimming- up from 36 percent in 1972...
...and Historical Statistics of the United States, Series Q175...
...The average number of days of poor air quality in major cities has fallen dramatically in just the past three decades...
...Ironically, it is precisely the areas of our lives where we have made the largest leaps of progress that the public constantly frets about things getting worse...
...today it is less than 40...
...Bureau of the Census, American Housing Survey for the United States in 1997...
...Hardly, as the work week continues to shrink Official {income based) SOURCES: Daniel J. Slesnick, "Gaining Ground: Poverty in the Postwar United States,' Journal of Political Economy, v10I, n1...
...If only the government will stay out of the way...
...Fortunately, this is palpable bunk...
...In the late 1800's about 40-50 percent of all families had an income below the poverty level by today's standard...
...and U.S...
...We are much less likely to die from an accident in the home or at the workplace, or even from natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, etc...
...There is a digital divide in America with a large and growing 'information underclass.'" Concerns over the so-called "digital divide" are about as silly as saying that in the 1950's we were becoming a nation of TV-haves and TV have-nots...
...Racial inequality is getting worse...
...Tell it to Gateway and AOL SOURCES: Robert Higgs, Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865-1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977...
...today the education levels between the races are approaching parity...
...Even in China, where hunger and starvation have been a routine of life for centuries on end, the fastest growing nutritional problem is now obesity...
...SOURCES: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Establishment Survey, various years...
...We are forever bombarded with bad news: global warming, homelessness, a growing gap between rich and poor, STEPHEN MOORE is president of the Club for Growth...
...today that ratio is up to 95 percent...
...ing toward two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal...
...Whether our gauge of material well-being is health, wealth, nutrition, education, the state of the environment, conditions for women, minorities, the poor or children, the amount of leisure time we have available, the level of safety in our lives, or the availability of natural resources, almost all the trends show wondrous gains for Americans over the past 20, 50, and 100 years...
...Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey, various years...
...Their book, It's Getting Better All the Time, was published recently by the Cato Institute...
...Compared even to the nostalgically recalled "fabulous fifties," life today is getting better all the time...
...The same rapid diffusion pattern is characterized by the Internet...
...But the measurable evidence indicates that today's problems are smaller than those of the past...
...Today the average American household spends about ten times as much time on recreation as it did in 1900 and about three times as much as it did in 1950...
...and New York Times Almanac, ed.John W. Wright, p. 809...
...At the middle-stage of the industrial revolution, around 1900, factories belched poisons into the air, streets were smelly and filled with garbage, and breeding disease: Typhoid, Small Pox, and Polio killed millions of people...
...Water was unsafe to drink: Water-borne diseases were associated with 20 to 30 percent of all deaths...
...In the 1950's the average white adult had roughly six more years of education than the average African American...
...At least 50 million American households are now connected to the Web, versus just 1 million as recently as 1990...
...JACKIE GLEASON hen pollsters ask the public whether "America is on the right track, or the wrong track," typically, more than half of Americans respond "wrong track" - and have been doing so for years...
...SOURCES: National Safety Council, Accident Safety Facts, annual (Chicago...
...We're a nation of'haves' and 'have-nots'-and things have gotten a lot worse for the 'have-nots.'" Most "poor" Americans today have routine access to food, health care, consumer products, entertainment, communications, and transportation inaccessible to the Vanderbilts, Carnegies, Rockefellers, or the nineteenthcentury European princes...
...Thirty years later that gap had shrunk to a 69 percent ratio...
...BY JOHN CORRY PORTRAIT BY EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER...
...A century ago the average workweek was 60 hours...
...Almost all natural resources have become more abundant over the past century...
...Pollution is getting worse...
...Forrester Research, cited in USA Today, June 22, 1999...
...Herewith, seven myths of doom and gloom punctured by the far more pleasant facts: Even in Pittsburgh the sun shines on through Denver Chicago Los Angeles New York Philadelphia Washington, D.CSOURCES: Council on Environmental Quality, Annual Report (Washington: Government Printing Office, various years...
...Official poverty rates are sharply down...
...Nutrition and diets have been improving steadily almost everywhere on the globe...
...In 1950 the poverty rate was about 30 percent-or twice the current official level...
...SOURCES: Cliff I. Davidson, "Air Pollution in Pittsburgh: A Historical Perspective," Journal of Air Pollution Control Association 29 (1979): 1035-41...
...Seven of the Most Surprising Trends of Human Progress "The past remembers better than it lived...
...and Council on Environmental Quality, Annual Report, various years...
...Infant mortality rates fell faster in the twentieth century for blacks than for whites and life expectancy, in general, climbed more rapidly for blacks...
...A Dallas Federal Reserve Board study on work and leisure found that typical Americans have three times more leisure hours over their lifetime than their great-grandparents...
...The trends in computer sales and Internet usage portray just the opposite phenomenon: The computer is one of the most democratic inventions in history, spreading the information age into the homes of more and more low-income Americans...
...Indeed, most of the threats that were really risky and frightening in the earlier parts of this century-like tuberculosis and polio -are no longer worries at all...
...The largest growth market of personal computers is middle- and lower-income Americans...
...On the heels of the Watts riots, the 1968 Kerner Commission on race concluded that "Our nation is movBlacks now stay in school as long as whites SOURCES: U.S...
...Tragedies occur every day...
...lakes, rivers, and streams usable for fishing and swimming has substantially increased SOURCE: Council on Environmental Quality, Annual Report (various years...
...For at least the past 30 years, people like Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, have warned that overpopulation is leading us to a doomsday when the Earth runs out of food, energy, minerals, and, well, just about everything we need to sustain ourselves...
...Black Americans have done particularly well for themselves...
...U.S...
...According to the Slesnick consumption survey, once you factor in government benefits the drop off in poverty is even more dramatic...
...After spending 100,000 years trying to get enough calories, mankind is now trying to consume fewer...
...Smog levels have declined by about 40 percent, and, despite that there are almost twice as many cars, carbon monoxide is down nearly one-third since the 1960's...
...We're working harder than ever before to make ends meet...
...and Charles Murray, What It Means To Be a Libertarian (New York: Broadway Books, 1997...
...Workplace fatalities have declined sevenfold since the 1930's SOURCES: Department of Energy, Annual Energy Review, various years...
...Progress since has been astonishing...
...Michael Cox, author of the brilliant 1998 book The Myth of Rich and Poor, has documented that although Americans may think they have less leisure time than ever before, we actually spend less time at work and more time on discretionary and recreational activities than ever...
...Today, about one in four does...
...The American Spectator ? February 2001 27 The rate of accidental injury deaths has dropped by half in the past century SOURCES: Food and Agriculture Organization data as cited in "Loaves and Fishes," The Economist, March 21,1998...
...Eric Schmidt, president of Novell, predicts: "At the current rate of growth of the Internet, every man, woman, and child in the United States will be connected to the Internet by 2007...
...It is a sign of how safe these times are that people have shifted their phobias to obscure and distant threats like global climate change, alien invasions, cloning, the amount of fat in breakfast cereals, and second-hand smoke...
...the real story is even better Poor Americans today are better housed and have more conveniences than average Americans in 1950 SOURCES: U.S...
...The price of food relative to our wages is now about 10-20 percent what it was in the nineteenth century and only about half what it was in the 1950's...
...28 February 2001 ? The American Spectator closing the income gap alter stalling during the War on Poverty Digital divide...
...Life is more dangerous and we face more life-threatening risks today than ever before...
...Even then it was untrue: Throughout the twentieth century blacks gained on whites by almost every standard of material well-being...
...Bureau of the Census, Measuring 50 Years of Economic Change (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1998...
...Energy too has actually been getting cheaper to produce over time and even with the recent price spikes, energy costs are lower today than 20, 50, or 100 years ago...
...In 1950 almost three of four black Americans lived in poverty...
...city, air quality is dramatically improved the AIDS epidemic, the mistreatment of minorities, the struggles of the middle class, urban sprawl, overpopulation, etc...
...and Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, National Air Quality and Emissions Trends Report, 1996, Table a-17...
...Actually, safety has greatly improved, showing an almost linear rate of progress throughout the past century...
...In 1967 black male earnings were 57 percent of those of white men...
...Today about one-fifth of computer-owning homes have incomes of $30,000 or less...
Vol. 34 • February 2001 • No. 1
