This is basically the thesis of Hans Rosling's 2006 Ted talk* . Things, on average are better.<p>What bothers me about this way of measuring progress is that for some, e.g. drug addicted or abusive families, people living in war torn regions, things are not better. For some, things are bad and have been for generations.<p>For this reason I try to refrain from "things are better" rhetoric, because it feels cruel to those people. Like I'm saying "I know it's bad for you, but I don't really care because it's better for many".<p>And personally I think from a moral standpoint we have the same responsibility to lift up the bottom as we do to lift the average. The trouble is people at the bottom are often at the intersection of multiple intergenerational disadvantages, which makes helping extremely difficult.<p>It's exactly this reason that I think it's so important not to say "things are better" without qualifications. If we can't help these people, the least we can do is acknowledge their situation.<p>* <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen" rel="nofollow">https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_...</a>
This sentiment coming from Barack Obama plays directly into Peter Thiel's claims that the liberal elite are ignoring the plight of so many Americans. The fact that nearly 50% of the population support Donald Trump and his message "Make American Great Again" should make that clear.<p>See Thiel's pro Trump speech from this afternoon:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfYLEPRiIyE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfYLEPRiIyE</a>
All these advances in medicine are great; It's so wonderful to know that rich and powerful people like Obama and Hillary Clinton will live to be 150 - I'm so happy for them - With all the stress I'm under, I'd be surprised if I make it to 50. Maybe the elites can harvest my organs when I'm gone; it's nice to give back to this wonderful society that the elites have created for us.<p>Yes, social media is great; I have lots of friends on Facebook! Except that in real life I can't even see them because I had to move to a different country to escape the high property prices and high cost of living... And I'm actually one of the lucky ones - Most people don't have the option to work remotely and are stuck paying half their income in rent.<p>I can't even buy a house because some reserve bank somewhere will mess with the interest rates and cause another housing crash (at the most inconvenient time possible) and I'll have to declare bankruptcy and watch the big banks reprocess my home.<p>Regarding global warming - I don't care about it at all! With the way things are going, AI will probably destroy us before global warming ever becomes a problem (and by 'us', I mean 'those who are not elites').
I guess this article is part of the democratic campaign, in which the obamas are the shining beacons. The US president may know better than anyone if his country is in its best state ever, but the rest of the world is not. My country greece has not seen bodies of drowned refugees being washed in our shores since 1922. It's a shocking reality that we never expected we 'd see. The US campaigns in the surrounding region have been failing so abysmally and for so long that we, as a globe, have acquired learned helplessness with regards to wars. War is not the only possible answer to everything, and when its used, it must be used wisely. For that reason alone, i hope trump's inward-looking, anti-inverventionist agenda wins.
Bullshit. The 90's were much greater. People had money to spend their way into economic growth that was measureable at the street level. And "asset based recovery" was a term yet to be coined.
"That’s one reason why I’m so optimistic about the future: the constant churn of scientific progress. Think about the changes we’ve seen just during my presidency. When I came into office, I broke new ground by pecking away at a BlackBerry. Today I read my briefings on an iPad and explore national parks through a virtual-reality headset."<p>Those changes are relatively minor.
>> Once-quiet factories are alive again, with assembly lines churning out the components of a clean-energy age.<p>Has he been to the rust belt? How can he say that with a straight face?
I agree that more funding in science and technology is what we need. But Barack Obama had more in common with the status quo than with what his commentary is suggesting.<p>There also seems to be a disconnect between what is being said in this article versus the reality. Yes there have been improvements in crime and poverty perhaps, but the quality of employment, the quality of general life for the average person in the West seems to have only degraded in the last decade or two.<p>I would also argue that the pace of technological advancement has decreased. Despite on-going advances in computer science, we have stalled in many other fields since the end of the cold war, in particular space.
...unless the military of the USA has decided that you need to be annihilated via drone strike.<p>The man commands more violence than most of us can comprehend. It feels out of place for such a person to tell the rest of us how great things are going. The cost of progress of the United States is measured in human lives and the ones doing the killing are the ones deciding it is justified. That's some nasty accounting.
Poverty is down absolutely, but never have it been so high relatively. Rich people never lived so well and poor people never struggled so hard to try to live 1/10 of what money provides today. People don't feel less poor when they have a 2000' car and everyone in Instagram has a brand new.
People do not respond to authenticity. Obama was the greatest president of my generation, and from the looks of it, that is not going to change anytime soon.