@humanprogress (Twitter)

In 1956, hand-loading cargo onto a ship in a U.S. port cost $5.86 per ton ($55.58 in today's money). By 2006, shipping containers reduced that price to just 16 cents per ton ($0.21 in today's money). #HeroesOfProgress (link: https://buff.ly/2ZVt2Fl) buff.ly/2ZVt2Fl

In 2006, Al Gore warned that unless drastic measures were taken “within the next 10 years,” the world would “reach a point of no return.” That would place “the point of no return” in 2016.

In 1970, Harvard University biologist George Wald claimed that "civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." His prediction would place the end of civilization sometime between 1985 and 2000

In 1968, a 23” color TV cost $2,544 or 125 hours of labor in the manufacturing sector. In 2018, a 24” HD LED TV cost $99.99 or 4.7 hours of labor in the same sector. That’s a reduction of 96 per cent in terms of human effort.

In East Asia, 80.6 percent of people lived in extreme poverty in 1981. Today, 4.1 percent do--a 95 percent reduction.

In the 1930s, pessimists feared that radios were a threat to democracy. By 1936, pessimists had succeeded at banning radios in cars in a number of U.S. cities, arguing that they were distracting and might prevent drivers from hearing fire engine sirens.

42% of millennials would prefer to live in a socialist country. Before they reject American-style capitalism, millennials should consider how prosperous ordinary Americans really are.

The Food Price Index shows that the inflation-adjusted price of food in 2017 was lower than what it was in 1961. More people than ever have access to adequate nutrition.

Whether it’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s questioning the morality of childbearing or Bill Maher claiming, “I can’t think of a better gift to our planet than pumping out fewer humans,” a philosophy known as “anti-natalism” is going increasingly mainstream.

Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, believed that international trade was a tool of exploitation. To avoid being exploited, the Soviet Union aimed for self-sufficiency. Result? Economic disaster.