Cheer up: The pessimists are wrong and America's future is bright

[Valin]

Washington Examiner:

Dan Hannan

December 29, 2014

 

How do you think 2015 will be for you? If you’re typical, you’ll be pessimistic; and, if you’re typical, you’ll be wrong. Only 21 percent of Americans agree with the proposition that “life for our children’s generation will be better than it has been for us” — 76 percent disagree.

 

Well, barring some unforeseeable calamity — what Nassim Taleb would call a “black swan,” or Donald Rumsfeld an “unknown unknown” — the 76 percent are mistaken. The next generation of Americans will lead healthier, happier, more fulfilled lives than the present one.

 

That sentence could have been written at any time since the Mayflower landed. It would always have been true (for the settlers, at any rate; it was a different story for the indigenous tribes). And it would always have prompted skepticism. No doubt, had opinion polls existed at the time, 76 percent of Puritan emigres, their faces grim and thunderous over their lace ruffs, would have prophesied damnation. And I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if 76 percent of Americans in 1776 weren’t hanging their white-wigged heads in despair at the debt level (or whatever the fashionable panic of the day was).

 

Anxiety about some imminent catastrophe seems to be hardwired into our genome. We are killing the planet! Our borrowing is unsustainable! Immigration will overwhelm us! The world is frying! We’re overdue for an ice age! We’re overdue for an epidemic! We’re overdue for an asteroid strike!

 

(Snip)

 

H/T Hot Air