At Odds With Reality

[Riddick]

Edited & Excerpted From Steven Greenhut's column:

We're deep into another presidential election. It's a time when a few of the wealthiest, most cossetted and least appealing politicians and policy wonks of all stripes have a vested interest in depicting the world as far worse than it really is. It's not hard to understand. No one follows a candidate, or pays much attention to their policy proposals, if they argue life is pretty good and mostly getting better.

Not to downplay enduring problems but the nation is doing well by almost any measure. Obviously, in a land of 329 million flawed human beings one can always find stories of people who are living on the streets, lacking proper healthcare, addicted to drugs and whatnot. Some people are sick, unhappy, out of work and living crummy lives. The only thing lacking from these analyses is a little perspective about the human condition—and about the limits of government uplift.

Before we get taken in by grandiose political promises or radical political platforms, it's worth recognizing this point made by the Brookings Institution: "Something of enormous global significance is happening almost without notice. For the first time since agriculture-based civilization began 10,000 years ago, the majority of humankind is no longer poor or vulnerable to falling into poverty." Consider, also, that poverty today is a far cry from what it was in the past given the level of technological innovation.

There's an entertaining little book from 1974 called "The Good Old Days—They Were Terrible!" It reminds Americans of the days of sweat shops, tenements, widespread opium addiction, of rampant crime and cities where horse poop (in the days before automobiles) was piled high on nearly every corner. We worry about air quality now, but it's nothing compared to the Industrial Revolution.

"(I)f we say [people are] poor because we rich people stole everything then the correct policy is going to be rather different from if we acknowledge reality," argues Tim Worstall of the Adam Smith Institute in London. "Which is that abject poverty is the natural state of mankind and it's wealth that is the thing that needs to be created to end it."

Of course, we should try to fix problems and make life even better for more people, but we need to start with some real-world understanding. That begins with recognizing that freedom and the free marketplace are the sources of wealth—and that candidates peddling doom and gloom with tales of woe and suffering, trying to convince us America is an impoverished wasteland filled with untold suffering and blight, are likely only to make us poorer and miserable.