throughout much of the world... these improvements have been especially striking in developing countries. Unfortunately, there is often a wide gap between the reality of human experience... and public perception, which tends to be quite negative about the current state of the world and skeptical about humanity’s future prospects. To rectify the widely held misperceptions about the state of humanity, we have gathered empirical data from reliable sources that look at worldwide long-term trends. In a paper released at the end of last year, Cato scholar and Human Progress Founder Marian Tupy and Brigham Young University economist Gale Pooley describe what they call “The Simon Abundance Index.” Tupy and Pooley created the index by expanding the original wager made by Simon and Ehrlich to include a basket of 50 “foundational commodities” – energy, food, materials, and metals – and by using price data from 1980 to 2017. Even though the population of the world increased by 69.3% during those 37 years, the price of the 50 commodities declined by 36.3%. Tupy and Pooley’s conclusion: “Every additional human being born on our planet appears to make resources proportionately more plentiful for the rest of us.” Make your bets in the commodity market any way you want, but never bet against people .
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American Consequences 41 i
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