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| The Y-axis is multiple of what you get in 2003 vs 1901 for the same amount of work. Our World in Data |
What you get for 1 hour of work today, compared with 1850, based on American stats:
- Pork: 63 times as much
- Rice: 41 times as much
- Wheat: 31 times as much
The same is true for all commodities: Nickel, Copper, Phosphates, Coffee, iron, oil. And so on. We are much more productive and much less poor, as a planet, than we used to be. Optimism should reign. Yet we are pessimistic.
Living standards in then last 40 years alone have risen by 250% as a global average. Compared with zero change for most of human history. While our population has doubled. Yet most people, many Occasional Readers of this blog, are pessimistic.
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* Marian Tupy is the editor of HumanProgress.org and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. He specialises in globalisation and global well‐being and politics and economics of Europe and Southern Africa. He is the co-author of ‘Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet'.
