On this blog, I discuss important national issues of many different types. types.  Lately, the discussion has mostly been about the successes and failures of Presidents Biden and Trump. See here and here.

But let’s step back from day-to-day politics and take a look more generally at how well America is doing.  Several years ago, I summarized a study by the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Strain on how well the American middle class is doing.  The main findings were: 1) wages for typical workers have increased by at least 20% in recent decades, 2) the median household has seen net income, after taxes and income transfers, grow by 44% in recent years, and 3) the share of adult children with higher incomes than their parents is very high.

Now consider a recent update by the AEI’s James Pethokoukis:

• As of today, real wages for the median worker have increased by 40% since the business cycle peak of 1990. And this doesn’t take into account the modern consumer innovations such as smartphones, ride-sharing, and targeted cancer immunotherapy.
• The age-adjusted cancer mortality rate has fallen dramatically in the past thirty years. It is now one-third less than in 1990.  In the U.S. alone, more than six million deaths were averted between 1975 and 2020 from just five forms of cancer: lung, breast, bowel, prostate, and cervical.
• And there is more ahead. Research into pre-cancer biology, immunotherapies, and risk-targeted vaccines is moving fast. Thirty years from now, cancer will be much less deadly than it is today.

Conclusion.  The big story here is progress: economic, technological, and medical.  This stands in sharp contrast with the prevailing declinist narrative that dominates so much of our present-day politics.

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