As of 2013 Things Are Looking Pretty Good

Well the stock market is up big this year and it seem global growth is accelerating as well. It seems there shouldn't be very much room for pessimism at all.

“The airwaves are crammed with doom. In my own adult lifetime, I have listened to implacable predictions of growing poverty, coming famines, expanding deserts, imminent plagues, impending water wars, inevitable oil exhaustion, mineral shortages, falling sperm counts, thinning ozone, acidifying rain, nuclear winters, mad-cow epidemics, Y2K computer bugs, killer bees, sex-change fish, global warming, ocean acidification and even asteroid impacts that would presently bring this happy interlude to a terrible end. I cannot recall a time when one or other of these scares was not solemnly espoused by sober, distinguished and serious elites and hysterically echoed by the media. I cannot recall a time when I was not being urged by somebody that the world could only survive if it abandoned the foolish goal of economic growth. The fashionable reason for pessimism changed, but the pessimism was constant.”

I have to agree with the 24 hour news cycle and with the immediacy of social media like Twitter it amplifies any tragedy that comes along. So if there is a school shooting or something it resonates quite a bit more then it did in the 90s or the 70s. When the news cycle gets running it turns a crazy person with a gun into a national issue about gun control with everyone choosing sides. I mean two guys with pressure cookers shut down the entire city of Boston.

 

You add to this fact that quite a few climate scientists make a pretty decent living out of gloom and doom you have even more "wall of worry" material. Even though climate change might be happening the polar ice sheets have not melted totally away like Al Gore claimed. Also there aren't more typhoons and twisters than ever before there seems to be much less.

Things are just so much better and people cannot put them into perspective. Our phones are more powerful than super computers in the 1970s. Our TVs are larger, thinner, and lighter then they have ever been in history. Even if you have a minimum wage job you can afford quite a few things that only a corporate CEOs had in the 1980s. I mean a cell phone cost $3500 and was 85 cents a minute in the 80s. Now a tablet that costs $225 is more powerful than a $2500 Apple Macintosh. Technology is so accessible and easy to use that it is mind-boggling. 

I think part of the problems with the GOP is that they are the fear party. Obamacare will destroy America. Atheists are killing Christmas. Run away spending will leave our children destitute etc. I remember Reagan was quite optimistic (the shining city on the hill) and didn't try to out-scare everyone else. The GOP needs to take back the the future is so very bright mantle.