Guest Post by John Stossel
Worried about Tuesday?
Remember: The most important parts of life happen outside politics.
Love, friendship, family, raising children, building businesses, worship, charity work — that is the stuff of life! Politicians get in the way of those things. But despite the efforts of power-hungry Republicans and Democrats, life gets better.
You may not believe that. Surveys show most people think life is getting worse.
But it isn’t, as Marian Tupy and Ron Bailey point out in their new book, “Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know.”
“Child labor was once ubiquitous. Now it’s limited to a few countries in Africa. Women did not have a vote (until New Zealand granted it at the end of the 19th century). Today, women vote everywhere except for the Vatican,” Tupy reminds us.
“Gays and lesbians, persecuted for millennia, are free to marry. Slavery was universal; now it is illegal. The world has never been more peaceful, more educated and kinder.”
But the nastiness of today’s politics may stop progress! Make life worse!
It’s possible, but “worse” compared to what?
I’ve lived through the Vietnam War, a military draft, 90% income tax rates, price controls, indecency laws, widespread racism and sexism, Jim Crow, the explosion of crime in the 1970s…
Overall, life got better.
With Donald Trump and Joe Biden claiming the other will destroy what’s good, it’s hard to see improvement. But the world has made progress, largely thanks to libertarian ideas.
“For millennia the world was marked by despotism, slavery, hierarchy, rigid class privilege, and literally no increase in the standard of living,” says Cato Institute Vice President David Boaz in the May/June 2020 Policy Report.
“Then libertarian ideas came into the world. Of course, they weren’t called that at the time. … (T)hey were the ideas of human rights, free markets, property rights, religious toleration, the value of commerce, the dignity of the individual – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
These ideas created a wave of progress unlike anything in history.
“Look at the chart of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, or any measure of economic growth,” adds Boaz. “It looks like a hockey stick: flat for almost all human history, and then it rockets upwards.”
The media shriek hysterically about every problem, and we have problems: pandemic, lockdowns, unemployment, wildfires, bad cops, violent riots, crime…
But no matter who wins on Tuesday, life will probably get better.
Entrepreneurs will invent cool things.
This year, while Democrats and Republicans fought, the private sector found cheaper and better ways to send people into space.
The World Bank complained about governments not providing all people clean drinking water. So private companies are doing it. A billboard in Peru turns humidity into potable drinking water. A drinking straw, LifeStraw, removes bacteria and parasites from water.
Forests are expanding because modern farming uses less land, allowing the forests to regrow.
Thanks to often-despised free markets, poverty continues to decline. In 1981, 42% of the world lived in extreme poverty. By 2018, only 8.6% did. Do politicians ever highlight those gains? No.
Probably because most of those good things happened in spite of them, not because of them.
Most good things do.
Yes, we still have lots of problems: trillion dollar deficits, mental illness, crushing regulation, endless wars (although fewer of them), criminal injustice, inequality, climate change…
But it’s always been that way. Evolution programmed humans to focus on problems. Our ancestors survived in a very dangerous world. If they weren’t hypervigilant, they wouldn’t have lived long enough to give birth to the people who gave birth to us.
I obsess about problems. But I try not to let that distract me from the big picture:
More people in more places enjoy prosperity, religious freedom, personal freedom, democratic governance, largely equal rights, civility, better health and longer lives.
Neither Trump nor Biden is likely to destroy that.
John Stossel is author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.”
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
‘More people in more places enjoy prosperity, religious freedom, personal freedom, democratic governance, largely equal rights, civility, better health and longer lives’
You are kidding me right ? What planet is this author talking about ?
Yeah, that love, friendship, family, raising children, worship, and charity can all blossom inside the FEMA camps just as easily as they did outside them before the New Normal. The Globalist takeover of the west and its forced de-industrialization is no big deal. Don’t worry, because like the World Economic Forum says, you’ll soon own nothing and you’ll be happy! (Smiley Face emoji inserted here)
Even the Nazis helped organize musical concerts in the camps. What great guys!
Is it more or less difficult to have a traditional White family than it was in the past? If not, why? Why with all of our “progress” it is very prohibitive to have families in the countries of our ancestors?
Any system that does not allow the average man to have a healthy family (Father working, mother staying at home raising the children(at least three)) is broken and nothing is getting better.
Your jew speak means nothing. You talk of very global issues that should mean nothing to a real American. I do not care about faggots, women’s right, slavery, muh GDP, democracy, or human rights. These all all progressive buzzwords that are used to destroy my people.
These days, the only Americans who can afford to raise children are the people who cannot afford to raise children.
Why post anonymously? I can tell by your comments that you definitely have some like minded supporters here. Sieg Heil!
Was this a joke article?
I don’t think the article was a joke.
Stossel makes very valid comparisons. Both my parents suffered many deprivations during and immediately after WWII. They would say life today is MUCH better. My grandparents were less than dirt poor. They would say life today is MUCH better. There was a Great Depression in the lifetimes of our parents/grandparents! They would say life today is MUCH better.
I suppose it all depends on which times are being compared.
It’s sad that whenever a positive opinion is expressed — as Stossel is doing here — that person gets shot down with a variety of invectives. Seeing the glass as half-full is now verboten on TBP.
Fuckity fuck, have we lost the ability to be happy ….. EVEN ONCE IN A WHILE?
He said nothing in this article other than globalist bullshit. I do not know a single old person who thinks things are better today than when they grew up. What the heck are you saying dude. Everything is objectively worse. Unless you consider access to cheap plastic shit good.
Man, it sure is great to watch my people be actively and aggressively replaced in the country my ancestors built for us. Or do you think our ancestors worked and toiled so that the government could give the country away to any sub human who manages to drag their carcass across the boarder?
He’s the local thought police. He can’t tolerate anyone having an opinion he didn’t approve first. Attention whores will whore.
Simply. Not. True.
=============
I do get my fair share of attention. I comment often, post original articles and copied ones. So, that’s the way it goes.
You sound jealous.
So you read my comment, will not address any of the points I brought up, and just continue to boom into the sunset?
Alright Stucky the Cucky.
I did not read your comment.
Here is my long-standing stance on Anon’s; I think Anons are cowards. Therefore, I rarely read Anon posts. It is even rarer that I respond to them. (You should consider yourself privileged that I’m giving you some of my precious attention.)
Now, go have a nice day.
Alrighty then.
I’m not talking about his message of positivity, which I agree with. We have things so much easier compared to the past.
I’m talking about his arguments, such as: “criminal injustice, inequality, climate change….,” which are bull. They he says regardless if Trump or Biden wins, things will only get better. If Biden wins and we have no oil or electricity, I wouldn’t call that making things better.
I’m all for positivity. But don’t offer bull to back up your narrative.
Ahhhhh, I see what you mean. I agree.
Thanks for the clarification.
By the way, the best inventions in my opinion are the washing machine and the vacuum cleaner. (Although someone here pointed out electricity is the greatest invention). You think I want to go back to beating my clothes on a rock in a river? Hell, no. Take away my electricity and I’ll be highly upset. I wouldn’t be able to use those two items.
These were gadgets that took away a lot of the drudgery of running a household in the Victorian period. We’re completely spoiled compared to that lifestyle. People don’t realize how lucky they are. We have cars to drive, grocery stores to shop in. We don’t have to sew our own clothes or spin wool daily. As a student of history, I do realize how lucky I am and I’m thankful for it every day.
I’m a happy person, Stucky. I don’t let things like politics get me down. I live life to the fullest.
How’s that for positivity for you?
You’re doing GRR-R-R-R-REAT!!
Not only are you a happy person, you are a genuinely wonderful and terrific human being … these qualities come through in the posts you make. I love that you’re here.
I think that’s the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me. Thank you.
VV,
Agreed about electricity and the modern appliances that run on it, but don’t rule out indoor plumbing and the creature comforts it provides.
Especially if one lives in the northern climates.
Scrambling to an outhouse behind the house at night in January or February just shivers me timbers.
A flush beats a full house any day, and twice on Sundays.
Nice, also, to catch a hot shower whenever one wants,
to soothe the aches and pains on tired old bags of bones.
My two cents.
I agree, Suds. Running water and sanitation are THE best things man has ever come up with. Even the Romans were doing it.
Both, along with nutritious food, are what brought down diseases, not the vaccines being touted as the reason diseases have been eradicated.
Bechamp or Pasteur? I go with Bechamp ever time. Pasteur was a hack.
Washing machines and vacuums pertain to the drudgery and time-consuming parts of life in the past. Victorian women, or their maids, got a huge break when both were invented. And I certainly don’t want to go back to that drudgery, especially the clothes washing.
Can I add clothes Dryers to the list? Dad was an equal opportunity child labor advocate. Boys did laundry and girls cut firewood. Hanging clothes out in winter was brutal and Mom washed everything not nailed down.
Didn’t matter if they were boys or girls during that time period. Whoever was there, did the work.
I washed my clothes in the tub for 18 months in Turkey; and the water only came on a couple hours every couple days. I think a refrigerator is much more important than a washer.
Amen, sister.
Thank you, Mary Christine.
I stopped reading when he mentioned child labor. Nope. No problem with human trafficking especially children. All is good in the world.
Well I agree with trying to have a positive attitude but I don’t agree that everything is great. There is a fuckton of child/human trafficking/exploitation going on. I don’t know if less that before but it’s a lot…. and you don’t hear a lot about it unless you look.
Spin
I’m with you and mary. I’m all in favor of an upbeat message but not at the expense of truth.
Let’s take on paragraph of this happy happy barf worthy trash.
“Gays and lesbians, persecuted for millennia, are free to marry. Slavery was universal; now it is illegal. The world has never been more peaceful, more educated and kinder.”
1. They are also free to molest and corrupt your kids without your permission. Baby hating frigid witches at CPS ready to take your kids for complaining. Mary already mention trafficking.
2. Slavery once universal; now it’s illegal. How can you even debate that kind of lying.
3. More peaceful?
4. More educated??????? If you mean more Mal-educated I would agree.
The world is more peaceful due to Jewish blackouts of anything they don’t want goy seeing. Meanwhile weapons and ammo sales are soaring in the states and international weapons sales are increasing and we can’t really measure the Cyber Warfare sales worldwide. We are on the verge of (for the sake of the willfully ignorant) a civil war here that could erupt any time between now and January.
We just got out of a nationwide lockdown and Newsom just issued holliday killing regs that are the template for things to come. Our currency is devaluing daily and half the middle class was just vaporized. Suicides are breaking records. Cities are burning with the promise of more to come.
5 or 6 people point this out and they get thought policed by the fucking house thought cop Pollyanna.
“It’s sad that whenever a positive opinion is expressed — as Stossel is doing here — that person gets shot down with a variety of invectives. Seeing the glass as half-full is now verboten on TBP.
Fuckity fuck, have we lost the ability to be happy ….. EVEN ONCE IN A WHILE?”
Fuck you and fuck Llpoh. You can both kiss my bony Irish ass.
No thanks. I’ve had better offers, and turned those down.
If I focused 100% on the bad shit in my life … I might be as miserable as you. But, I don’t. So, I’m not. In fact, I’m OK with where I’m at. Why? The good Lord has given me the wisdom of perspective.
I’m glad I’m not you.
Now slavery is simply “free range.” You get to go home to “enjoy” the house you don’t really own, that sits on the property you don’t really own, and you get to drive there in the car you have to pay to license, on the road you have to beg for permission to drive on – but get to pay for. When you arrive, you get to eat food that in most places is taxed, sit in furniture that has been taxed, use a phone that is highly taxed, watch TV that is taxed. Every second of your existence from birth to death is regulated, monitored, and controlled to one extent or another by the criminals in government. Even your supposedly private conversations between you and your family may be recorded and shared with the government, and most certainly your electronic communications with others are all being recorded (something YOU help pay for). Even the term “free range slavery” is open for debate. Getting closer and closer to old school slavery every day.
I kinda think we’ve reached a zenith in this human experience sometime in the not too distant past. Yes, many GeeWhiz inventions are before us but with each one we lose a sense of humanity. We lose touch with nature. I ‘d prefer a walk in the woods to a Jetson’s flight to the techo exposition.
You can’t say the washing machine wasn’t a good thing.
Well, at least Hunter found out who’s been in his crack stash. What a clueless fucking moron.
Women did not have a vote (until New Zealand granted it at the end of the 19th century). Today, women vote everywhere except for the Vatican,” Tupy reminds us.
“Gays and lesbians, persecuted for millennia, are free to marry. Slavery was universal; now it is illegal. The world has never been more peaceful, more educated and kinder.”
He points to these atrocious developments as signs that things are getting better? Oh, wait, I found out why he’s totally fucked in the head:
John F. Stossel was born on March 6, 1947, in Chicago Heights, Illinois, the younger of two sons, to Jewish parents who left Germany before Hitler rose to power. – His parents were flaming oven dodgers, too bad they didn’t hang around a few more years.
It has been said in 1901, 95 percent of the world population was illiterate. Overtime, literacy increased. Yet, an erosion of rights has occurred in my lifetime.
The U.S. middle class has AI Nationalism to contend with. How is contending with either AI Nationalism or AI Nationalization positive?
https://russiancouncil.ru/en/analytics-and-comments/analytics/ai-nationalism-and-ai-nationalization-are-ahead/
And nobody could ever have imagined that a massive fear-mongering campaign and illegal shutdowns could have destroyed the global economy in a matter of weeks. Let us not forget the words of Lenin “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Embolden by the victory of Clueless Joe, who the hell knows what every totalitarian asshole on the planet, in every legislature, in every city hall, just might pull? And while one can single out great strides in places, the overall freedom and liberty in the world is greatly diminishing – especially here in the US. John is no real libertarian, so he is easily deluded by the shiny trinkets of clean water and private solutions to government failures. But in the end, things are getting worse. Maybe John has been wearing his mask so long that the O2 levels have dropped to the point he can no longer see the truth around him.