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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
36 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eye-Opening Details of the American Century,
By A Customer
This review is from: It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 years (Paperback)
Stephen Moore and Julian Simon have compiled the most significant data of how life in America has improved since 1900.We all know about major technological advances, but the details of the obliteration of diseases, the accumulation of material wealth and increased opportunities for ownership are astounding. This book will trounce the nay-sayers, negativists and should silence the loudest "Chicken Little". This book is as useful as a research tool, as it is for pleasure reading.
29 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truth is Stranger than Fiction,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 years (Paperback)
It is fashionable to bemoan the state of the world. The conventional wisdom is that global warming, Terrorism, drug abuse, crime, AIDS and all the rest of the crises threatening humanity lead us to the conclusion that the "good old days" were somehow better, safer and saner than today. But, if things are so bad why is infant mortality going down around the world? If things are on the edge of anarchy why are proportionately fewer of us hungry, or sick today than one hundred years ago. If things are going to hell in a handbasket why is our life expectancy steadily improving? These are inconvenient questions. The answers are tough on the prophets of doom. Luckily, the conventional wisdom is wrong. Stephen Moore and Julian Simon prove this convincingly. Facts are often inconvenient. But, if you want to know the facts, this is the book for you.
32 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A looming identity crisis for socialist utopians,
By Eugene A Jewett "Eugene A Jewett" (Alexandria, Va. United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 years (Paperback)
Stephen Moore, leader of the Club For Growth, and the recently deceased Julian Simon, made famous by his bet with Robert Ehrlich and also from his solution for airline overbooking, have contributed once again to the dragon-slaying of the social justice mythology. Their rigorous compilation of data on the continued ability of free market economies to create an ever rising surplus for all people is unsurpassed. I read Simon's "State of Humanity" a couple of years ago and it was equally as informative. Alm & Cox's "Myths of the Rich and Poor" also correlates with the data presented in this book.An interesting phenomena occurs when you present this book to die-hard socialists. They continue to disclaim its validity by eg. citing the disparity between CEO compensation and the bottom 25% of the population. In fact they present you with statistics of their own which seemingly refute the data in this book. When you probe and ask them how their statistics were compiled they become evasive and fuzzy, but they continue to rely on them to underpin their position. They engage in the fallacy of inductive logic which consists of reasoning from the particular to the general i.e. if they used the Canadian health care system for a cough and they were satisfied with the results of their medical care then ipso facto such a system is good. In addition it's better than the U.S. system because it's cheaper, etc. They ignore all the other inputs and outputs that any cursory economic study would investigate. It's almost like they would suffer an emotional crisis if they had to accept relity i.e. like the conclusions in this book. Why this is so would be worthy of continued discussion, but the need to denigrate solid evidence seems neccessary in order to retain their sense of self. Emotional trauma, provided by irrefutable evidence contrary to a belief system, seems to erode one's certainty in adhering to a false construct; but results are uneven and take long periods of time to penetrate society. Statistics, such as we have here, are younger than our century, and have only been subject to accurate number crunching coincident with the rise of the main frame computer (in the 60's). The authors should continue to educate the people. A constitutional republic such as ours works best with the input of an educated citizenry. Kudos to Moore and Simon, may he rest in peace.
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