Terrified of Today? The World's Long March to Better

I’m a news junkie.?I’ve missed many morning workouts because I started scrolling through my iPhone news feed from my bed at 5 am and looked up a “few short minutes later” to realize I’d scrolled my way through my workout time.?These days, my news habit isn’t just bad for my workout, however, it is bad for my mental health. Between the murders, riots, global threats, protectionism, inflation, and COVID, I get sad.?But then I turn to politics, something that used to be my favorite subject.?Our politics have devolved into simply standing back in a crowd of people we agree with and screaming epithets at the other side.?The whole thing is enough to make me want to crawl back under the covers.?

But are things really getting worse??Are we truly driving our collective car down the Road to Perdition at 100 miles per hour??I got so upset about it this past weekend, that I began digging.?The results encouraged me, so I figured I’d share them.??

The first thing I learned was that while we are divided over many things, we generally agree that we THINK things are getting worse. According to the Pew Research Center, “In 20 of 24 Gallup surveys conducted since 1993, at least 60% of U.S. adults have said there is more crime nationally than there was the year before.” Another recent poll found that 58% of Americans believe that the next generation will be worse off financially than this one. People over 50 are even more pessimistic, despite the fact that the US economy has been on the longest bull run in its recorded history and last week’s jobless claims are at their lowest level since 1969.?

We’re also pretty sure that the next generation is terrible. A 2016 article referred to Millennials as “out-of-touch hipsters who spend too much on coffee and too little on facial hair care. Many are spoiled, entitled, or both.”?Piers Morgan -- not exactly a bastion of conservative thought -- was more blunt, “The tragic truth is that America’s millennials are a bunch of phone-addicted, selfie-obsessed, hashtagging, snapchatting, kale-munching, twerking, lazy, whining, ill-informed, politically correct, cossetted narcissists who find absolutely everything mortally offensive and believe there are 165 ways to sexually identify.”

But as President John Adams pointed out, “Facts are stubborn things.”?Yes, Covid sucked and still sucks.?The country is closely divided politically and people are stressed out.?Crime is up recently.?And we have a whole slew of other serious issues like race and global warming. But if we step back -- really step back -- and take a decades-long view, the trends are factually clear. The world is a much better and safer place than it used to be.???

Crime.?Let’s start with crime.?Across the US, there were 25% more murders recorded in 2020 than in 2019.?But the murder rate is still close to half what it was in the early 1990s.

The same is true for nearly every category of crime.?Using the FBI data, the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2019, with large decreases in the rates of robbery (-68%), murder/non-negligent manslaughter (-47%) and aggravated assault (-43%). (It’s not possible to calculate the change in the rape rate during this period because the FBI revised its definition of the offense in 2013.) Meanwhile, property crime fell 55%, with big declines in the rates of burglary (-69%), motor vehicle theft (-64%) and larceny/theft (-49%).??

Our children are safer too. ?

It has literally never been safer to be a child in the US.?The child mortality rate in the United States has dropped over ten times in the last 80 years.?In 1935, there were nearly 450 deaths for every 100,000 children aged 1 to 4. Today, there are fewer than 30.?Rates of child neglect are down 13% since 1990.?Physical abuse is down 56% and sexual abuse is down a staggering 62%.??

Kidnappings are down over 80% from the 1950’s. Leave it to Beaver??Those kids were at risk. Random stranger abductions??They make the news exactly because they are now incredibly rare.?According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, only 1 in 1,000 missing children’s cases are what we would classify as a “stereotypical kidnapping.”?In a country of nearly 333 million people, less than 100 children a year are abducted by strangers.??

School shootings are rightfully terrifying and make a lot of news, but schools are as safe as they have ever been. Check the chart.?

Scared about your kid getting hit by a car while riding their bike or playing in the neighborhood??Don’t be.?Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that between 1993 and 2013, the number of child pedestrians struck and killed by cars fell by more than two-thirds, from more than 800 deaths to fewer than 250.?

The list goes on.??

Traveling for the summer??Let ‘er fly! According to the National Safety Council, the 2019 lifetime odds of dying as an aircraft passenger in the United States were literally too small to calculate.??

Driving??It’s never been safer. Vehicle deaths are down over 75% since 1970 and 45% since 1990.?Your parents may love the “big tanks” of yesterday but the roads and cars of today are a heck of a lot safer.

Headed to the office??Sure, the labor market is tight, but that drives wages up.?And last time I checked most of us get a paycheck every two weeks from our employer.?As for workplace safety??You know I love it.?We might complain about safety rules, steel toed boots and safety glasses, but PPE and process safety work.?Work related deaths are down nearly four-fold since 1973, from 11 injuries per 100,000 hours worked to 2.8.

Terrorism and War? ?Thanks in large part to the spread of democracy and the United State’s leadership in world security, the world has not seen a period of large-scale peace like we’ve experienced since the end of World War II since the late Middle Ages.???

Millennials.??

Finally, let’s talk about the future — the millennial generation.?First, let’s try another quote.??

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

Who said it??Socrates...somewhere around 470 B.C.!?Since the dawn of time, older people have sworn up and down that the next generation is going to ruin everything. If Socrates can’t convince you, check out the link below which has some great quotes from across time.??

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20171003-proof-that-people-have-always-complained-about-young-adults

Back to Millennials, study after study indicates that they are hard-working, dedicated, and financially conservative people.?They grew up in the Great Recession and are cautious and hard working.?They may not simply be willing to shut up and grind, but if they believe in the work, they will work incredibly hard, more likely to work overtime, more likely to work for a cause, and more likely to put their money where their mouth is. They may be loud, but that is only because they are unwilling to accept the world as it is, unwilling to secede the future to our current leadership.??

So if you find yourself getting down or wanting to crawl into a hole over the state of our world and our nation, take a break, step back and try to look at the long arc of history.?We’ve come through nearly two years of a global pandemic, we’ve got a strong economy, and we live in a fantastic age. Even with Russia and Ukraine, the world is largely at peace. Work is generally safe and we kiss our families goodbye each morning with the clear expectation that we’ll be home safely at night. Crime is down. It has never been safer to raise children.

To be clear, there is much to be done and the danger of backsliding is real.?But thanks to the hard work of people and governments around the world and the spread of democracy, the world is as safe a place as it has ever been.?Humanity’s long march towards a more peaceful, more just, and more prosperous future continues.

So turn off the news for a bit, hug your family, keep your head up, let your kids out to play, trust your neighbors, visit our great cities or explore this fantastic country by car or by plane.?Don’t let the news or the cynicism of the day stop you.??

Onward!

Jeff