Recency bias and polycrisis
I first became a history autodidact in my 20s, trying to understand the difference between my worldview and those of my parents and in-laws. >100 histories and biographies later, I have a great appreciation of just how awful the 20th century was. In my lifetime, I remember political assassinations, race riots, the Vietnam war, recessions, 9/11, the anthrax scare and the US invasion and military occupation of Iraq. Not to mention COVID-19, which is still with us and mutating.
It’s easy to be swept up in the present polycrisis and to believe things have never been worse. But over at jabberwocking.com, Kevin Drum provides a valuable antidote to recency bias:
“The Great Recession peaked at 10% unemployment and stayed above 5% for seven years—compared to 11% and 27 years between 1970 and 1997. Wages for blue-collar workers went up during the Great Recession compared to a 7% decline during the Volcker Recession and a 40% decline during the Great Depression. The combination of 9/11 and both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars killed about 10,000 Americans over a decade—the toll from a single year of Vietnam or a single month of WWII. COVID was half as deadly as the Spanish Flu in the US and a thirtieth as deadly worldwide. There are ten times as many democracies in the world as there were 80 years ago—and fears to the contrary notwithstanding, they’re in pretty good shape. Racism may still be our original sin, but it’s plummeted compared to the days of Jim Crow, redlining, literacy tests, and Bull Connor. Our standard of living is triple what it was at the start of the postwar era. Inflation recently rose above 5% for two years, but that compares to nine consecutive years from 1973-82. The murder rate spiked to 6.8 per 100,000 a couple of years ago but is still a third less than it was three decades ago.”
This isn’t to say we shouldn’t strive to make things even better. And Kevin doesn’t mention climate change, which is only now making itself felt in resource wars in the Middle East and Central America. We can honor the previous generation by investing in the future.
How bad are things, really?
Yep. How about how much fun native Americans and African Americans had in the 19th century?
And their descendants are having today …
I assume the numbers for the Great Depression are in the abstract.
@Ken,
Good catch. Drum appears to be off by a factor of two–should be more like a 20% decline in blue collar wages during the Great Depression. Still much worse than more recent recessions, which is really Drum’s point.
My father turned 17 in 1929. Kevin’s not that old.
@Ken,
Kevin is younger than me, but I wasn’t born in 1912 either.
Ken,
My father was born four years after yours. His father was born in 1875 and my dad’s half-Cherokee mother was born in 1880. Her and two of his siblings died in 1919, when my dad was only 3YO.
Over the long arch, it appears that mankind takes two steps forwards and then one step backwards at intervals of about one-half century between movement directions. So, there is continual progress when the arch of history is smoothed, but in the midst of it, then it is neither smooth nor graceful. About a half century ago we were still moving forwards in the aftermath of two world wars flanking the Great Depression. If anyone is around for the second half of this century then it should be a whole lot better than what we have now. However, there are no guarantees. Climate change could be the end game.
Professor Heather Cox Richardson is a believer in the cycles of history:
I think that we are in a unique time of transition; that all bets are off.
Have not noticed such. Left a long comment there this morning on Palestinians and Israelis
I remember the Calpundit – leadup to the Iraq Invasion – heyday of blogging – days well.
@Ken,
Me too. Followed Kevin ever since then. He hasn’t always been right, but he’s usually been data-driven.
One thing I have past thought is that in the post-war period we were willing to invest in the countries future. Rural electrification, GI Bill, federal highways, …
Now I have to wonder if that worked when we saw that as investing in nuclear families headed by guys destined to be old white men.
To rephrase myself (and perhaps go farther off topic):
Is the economic slowdown partially due to the fact that – the investment that old white guys were once willing to put into young white guys spilled over onto everyone such that the current batch of old white guys is unwilling to continue the investment?
@Arne,
Perhaps it could be those that grow up in the good times with such advantages as to benefit from those good times mature into a false sense of their own superiority such that really bad times must return for folk to grow up realistic of their own vulnerabilities. IOW, they are raised in privilege to have a false sense of entitlement.
Unfortunately on the WWW too many idiots conflate this to be narcissism (which it is in a narrow sense) that further confuses it with the developmental disorder of NPD or sociopathy which evolves from the relationship between the child and primary caregiver, particularly in child ages 2 to 4, but with a sexual component of abuse also up until puberty and adolescence. It is possible to have both. According to Mary Trump’s book Too Much and Never Enough, the Big Orange POTUS had both.
Mary Trump is Fat Donnie’s own niece, which serves as more evidence of a loveless family to wit further support her book’s indictment of Donald Trump.