The old song of “everything used to be better!”

You probably know the old song about “everything used to be better”. It is always sung when someone feels they are being left behind by developments and social progress. Or when someone is too lazy to deal with new things. However, the general nostalgia usually overlooks the fact that everything is actually better than it used to be. And by that I mean everything.

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Medicine

Medicine is making progress much faster than we realize. This can be seen in various statistical figures. For example, infant mortality:

 

or the development of life expectancy:

or the declining cancer mortality rate in the USA:

Working hours

There have also been drastic reductions in working hours in recent decades. Around 1849, the annual working time in Germany was still a whopping 3,920 hours. Around 100 years later, in 1958, it was only 2,440 hours. Today, the annual working time is 1,645 hours.

Income

Disposable income is also growing steadily: while disposable income in Germany was still around one trillion in 1991, it was already 1.6 trillion in 2013. Average disposable income has risen worldwide. We don’t even want to venture a 100-year comparison.

Why is that?

These comparisons could now be extended to a wide range of areas. We have seen a drastic improvement in practically all areas over the last 150 years. Especially on a material level, but also in social issues such as the position of women in society, wars and war deaths, crime, discrimination, persecution, torture, etc..

Technology

I assume that technological progress is the main driver behind this development. Many things, especially in our daily lives, have become much simpler and cheaper. In addition, global communication has a major impact on society. We are becoming tangible as a global population. This has many advantages, creates understanding for others and contributes to a more careful coexistence. On the other hand, it also makes the fronts more transparent and transports conflicts to a global level.

We’ll be hearing it for a long time to come…

…the song about “everything used to be better”. That’s because the time in which you were socialized was the first big confrontation with change. I often hear that things used to be slower and therefore better. That’s certainly true for the individual. Precisely because of this effect.

However, children growing up in today’s world are not used to anything other than the current pace of development. As progress is accelerating rapidly, most of them will grow up in a system in which change is a natural constant. This in turn will mean less material security as we know it.

However, this security has always (i.e. over the last 70 years) been more illusion than reality. We will still have to cope with the major upheavals (keywords: working life, pensions, investments) in the coming years. From today’s perspective, these are all personal cuts. However, if you look at this development in a more historical overall context, it is nothing new.

The economy and society have always had to reorient themselves in line with technological progress.

Admittedly, this reorientation has to happen more quickly today than in the past. This is a danger for those who maintain a static ecosystem. But for those who want to create new things, this is exactly the kind of “playground” they are looking for.

Change always brings opportunities in the first instance. However, if you want to stick to the status quo in your mind, it only harbors risks. If you then actually stick to the status quo (e.g. in economic matters), you will inevitably be the loser of change. And then, yes, from a personal point of view, everything really was better in the past.