Where 94% of the world’s population still lived in extreme poverty in 1820, by 1981 that percentage had dropped to 44%, and now, just a few decades later, it is under 10%.
Per capita income is now ten times what it was in 1850. The average Italian is 15 times as wealthy as in 1880. And the global economy? It is now 250 times what it was before the Industrial Revolution
By the year 2013, six billion of the globe’s seven billion inhabitants owned a cell phone.
According to the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, the number of war casualties per year has plummeted 90% since 1946.
There has been a sharp rise in self-esteem since the 1980s. The younger generation considers itself smarter, more responsible, and more attractive than ever.
the average child living in early 1990s North America was more anxious than psychiatric patients in the early 1950s.
In the 1950s, only 12% of young adults agreed with the statement “I’m a very special person.” Today 80% do
In 1933, the U.S. Senate approved legislation introducing a 30-hour workweek.
In 1938, legislation protecting the five-day workweek was finally passed.
In the mid-1960s, a Senate committee report projected that by 2000 the workweek would be down to just 14 hours
In the U.S., working mothers actually spend more time with their kids today than stay-at-home moms did in the 1970s.
Productivity and long work hours do not go hand in hand. In the 1980s, Apple employees sported T-shirts that read, “Working 90 hours a week and loving it!” Later, productivity experts calculated that if they had worked half the hours then the world might have enjoyed the groundbreaking Macintosh computer a year earlier.
What does working less solve?
- Stress: Countless studies have shown that people who work less are more satisfied with their lives
- Climate Change: A worldwide shift to a shorter workweek could cut the CO2 emitted this century by half.
- Accidents: Long workdays lead to more errors
- Unemployment
- Emancipation of women: Countries with short workweeks consistently top gender equality rankings.
- Inequality: countries with the biggest disparities in wealth are precisely those with the longest workweeks.
The Economist had to conclude that the “most efficient way to spend money on the homeless might be to give it to them."
According to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Give Directly’s cash grants spur a lasting rise in incomes (up 38% from before the infusion) and also boost home-ownership and possession of livestock (up 58%), while reducing the number of days that children go hungry by 42%
Research has correlated unconditional cash disbursements with reductions in crime, child mortality, malnutrition, teenage pregnancy, and truancy, and with improved school performance, economic growth, and gender equality.
Poverty is fundamentally about a lack of cash. It’s not about stupidity.
In the United States, the real salary of the median nine-to-fiver declined 14% between 1969 and 2009.
Being just fractionally better than the rest means you’ve not only won the battle, you’ve won the war.
Scholars at Oxford University estimate that no less than 47% of all American jobs and 54% of all those in Europe are at a high risk of being usurped by machines.
“labor market polarization” is the widening gap between “lousy jobs” and “lovely jobs.” Though the share of highly skilled and unskilled jobs has remained fairly stable, work for the average-skilled is on a decline.
The younger the age at which children escaped poverty, the better their teenage mental health.
People who experience a sense of scarcity are good at managing their short-term problems. Poor people have an incredible ability – in the short term – to make ends meet, the same way that overworked CEOs can power through to close a deal.
Lifting an American family out of poverty takes an average of about $4,500 annually
In the end, the return on this investment, per child, would be:
- 12.5% more hours worked
- $3,000 annual savings on welfare
- $50,000–$100,000 additional lifetime earnings
- $10,000–$20,000 additional state tax revenues
Depression, burnout, drug abuse, high dropout rates, obesity, unhappy childhoods, low election turnout, or social and political distrust, the evidence points to the same culprit every time: inequality.
State economists calculated that a drifter living on the street cost the government $16,670 a year (for social services, police, courts, etc.). An apartment plus professional counseling, by contrast, cost a modest $11,000
President Nixon made a plan that would have been a massive step forward in the War on Poverty, guaranteeing a family of four $1,600 a year, equivalent to roughly $10,000 in 2016.
Basic income didn’t cause poverty, but was adopted in precisely those districts where suffering was already the most acute
It goes without saying that the rule of law is necessary for a country to prosper. But now that the U.S. has 17 times the number of lawyers per capita as Japan, does that make American rule of law 17 times as effective?
The fact that something is difficult does not automatically make it valuable.
Studies show that countries with more managers are actually less productive and innovative
“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,”
For every dollar a bank earns, an estimated equivalent of 60 cents is destroyed elsewhere in the economic chain. Conversely, for every dollar a researcher earns, a value of at least $5 – and often much more – is pumped back into the economy.
Technological advances figure as little more than pocket change in the GDP. Free products can even cause the economy to contract (like the call service Skype, which cost telecom companies a fortune).
If you were the GDP, your ideal citizen would be a compulsive gambler with cancer who’s going through a drawn-out divorce that he copes with by popping fistfuls of Prozac and going berserk on Black Friday.
Countries that score high on well-being, like Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, have a large public sector.
Deworming children with intestinal complaints has been shown to yield 2.9 years of additional schooling for the absurdly small investment of $10 worth of treatment.
$100 worth of free meals translates into an additional 2.8 years of educational attainment
Only 3% of the world’s population lives outside their country of birth.
A study by the Center for Immigration Studies – a think tank that opposes immigration – which found that immigration has virtually no effect on wages.
If you correct for income and job status, immigrants actually take less advantage of public assistance.
Educated people are more unshakable in their convictions than anybody
The word “crisis” comes from ancient Greek and literally means to “separate” or “sieve.” A crisis, then, should be a moment of truth, the juncture at which a fundamental choice is made.