
Estimating World GDP, One Million B.C.-Present (1998) - benbreen
http://holtz.org/Library/Social%20Science/Economics/Estimating%20World%20GDP%20by%20DeLong/Estimating%20World%20GDP.htm
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mjevans
While this seems interesting, it's the average GDP. I don't believe that any
breakdown by class or classification of economic stratification at any given
time was conducted.

Thus it is difficult to see how much of the population of a given era is
within a given quality of life (as would be afforded by having enough
'wealth') at any time, let alone compare that from time to time.

What I do see is that life today should be markedly better than it was about
500 years ago, but that it has largely flattened out within the last 100
years.

~~~
AKrumbach
> What I do see is that life today should be markedly better than it was about
> 500 years ago, but that it has largely flattened out within the last 100
> years.

The article shows a chart of total world GDP (in constant 1990 dollars), and
this states that since 1900 total world GDP has gone up by a factor of
approximately 40. The previous 100 years (1900 to 1800) grew by at most a
factor of 10, and in the 300 years prior to that (going back to 1500) GDP
merely tripled.

I could definitely understand if you were trying to formulate an argument that
this sort of exponential growth cannot be sustained, but your time frame for
any "flattened out" phase is completely wrong.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
mjevans' view is also not supported by an objective look at the last 100
years.

Antibiotics? Not dying is kind of a big deal. It makes life "markedly better"
when you are actually _alive_.

Cars? Yeah, they had cars 100 years ago. How fast could you drive? How safe
were the cars (and the roads)? How often did the cars need maintenance? How
was the air conditioning in the cars 100 years ago? How good was the radio?

Computers? The internet? The web? Hacker News? 100 years ago, you could buy a
newspaper, and do your math by hand (maybe with a slide rule and a book of
tables).

Overall human knowledge? Not remotely comparable.

Overall human life expectancy? Much worse 100 years ago.

I don't see any rational way to say that how good life is "has largely
flattened out within the last 100 years." That's not a defensible statement,
not merely in terms of GDP, but also in terms of average peoples' experience
of life.

