I grew up in a city with one of the nation's highest crime rates: where subways were graffiti covered, urine-aromaed and only to be used between the hours of 8am and 8pm (for those who valued their lives); where apartment owners didn't just have an extra bolt or two, but were fools to not have a metal bar jammed between the floor boards and front door at night; and where getting mugged at knife-point was a rite of passage for every pre-teen.
In that same city today, violent crime has dropped by two thirds; subways are clean, air-conditioned and packed until the early hours of the night; the door bolts are not only gone, but New Yorkers are even known to leave their apartment doors unlocked; and the closest the average New Yorker gets to violence is an irate chihuahua at the nail salon.
So it can be disorienting when you come across an older New Yorker who shakes their head in dismay and complains about how the city is falling apart, times are tough and it's only going to get worse from here on out. In a city where every statistic and (almost) every neighborhood irrefutably demonstrates night and day improvement over the past 30 years, how could anybody imagine that the city is going downhill?
The answer, of course, is human nature. For whatever reason, we are programmed to romanticize the "good ol' days" and bemoan the sad trajectory of our communal future.
That's why it's good to get an occasional reminder that, globally speaking, things have been looking up over the past 50 years. Here's one comforting reminder from Alex Mack at Cato:
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