Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1501384 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 294 pages

Synopsis
This work by economist Julian L. Simon (d. 1998) was left unfinished at his death but was completed and prepared for publication by his colleague, Stephen Moore. The title states the bias, which is further explicated in the introduction: "...there has been more improvement in the human condition in the past 100 years than in all of the previous cen

Customer Reviews

Longing for the 'good old days'? Buy this and think again!
If you're looking for more doom and gloom about the world's prospects then don't buy this book! Moore and Simon have done an excellent job in bringing together an astonishing range of facts proving that the material welfare of ordinary people has improved dramatically during the last century.

Using full-colour graphs and concise commentary, the authors present convincing data on 100 topics including health, housing, leisure and the environment. They show that even the poorer in our society enjoy living standards and benefits unavailable even to the relatively wealthy 50 or 100 years ago. We have become so accustomed to such advances as refrigeration and air-conditioning that we forget just how much they have improved our lives. For example, the authors cite figures for heat-related mortality in Chicago. In 1901 as many as 10 000 people succumbed to the heat. In 1995, that figure (though still high) had fallen to 300. Again, in 1900 almost no homes had refrigeration. Today almost all do including 95% of poorer families. It is a sign of real affluence that we focus on the possible harm of eg. CFCs and forget the very real improvements in people's welfare inventions such as these have brought us.

On the down side: the figures very much reflect the situation in the United States, though I imagine that much of the evidence would apply to many other countries including Britain. Also, because the book's scope is so broad, individual chapters are necessarily very brief thus depriving the reader of a sustained, involved read. (However, other books including ones by Julian Simon are available to flesh out the argument.

This hard-hitting book is not a call to complacency. The authors acknowledge that not everyone has made such amazing progress, but they argue that free societies still provide the best opportunites for progress to take place.

It's not all doom and gloom, and this book gives you the facts to prove it. An excellent and thought-provoking read.