Lately I’ve been writing some fairly , dreary stuff, mostly related to battle and foreign affairs. However, despite my efforts to avoid frightening events abroad, I remain optimistic about the domestic situation around in the United States. So I figured I’d compile a list of changes to look forward to.
Second, the big picture. 2020 and 2021 were very dark times for the US in many ways — no in , all , techniques, but in many. Covid killed a million Americans, there was enormous social upheaval, violent crime skyrocketed across the country, and in 2021 prices soared and actual money fell.
There were some great things going on to — Covid relief spending allowed a lot of people to pay down their debts, and the market rebounded strongly in 2021 — but nevertheless, if you said that 2020- 21 were terrible times, sensible persons perhaps would n’t contradict you. I still expressed optimism during those years, but more of the” We can fix it” variety rather than the” Things are going great” variety.
The American citizens will have a hard time settling their minds after those times, and the times of turmoil that followed in the late 2010s. However, treatment is already taking place because there are currently a number of positive trends in the country. Here are a few.
Violence is decreasing right now.
Violent crime is a major issue in America nowadays because it is typically a pretty violent nation. In fact, it is pretty much always a major issue in America. But in the 1990s, 2000s, and early 2010s things were getting progressively less terrible.
( Only as a side note, I like to use murder charges as a proxy for total violent crime — rape, robbery, and assault are subject to businesses. If there’s a lot of attack happening, people may just cease calling the cops when they get punched, but all calls the officers for a lifeless body. Therefore, I use death to assess the volume of violent crime total. Also, I often just say” crime” when I mean “violent crime”, because many other people use this shorthand. )
Violence reached a halt in 2014 with a lower level of violence. But in 2015, it started drifting up suddenly, and in 2020 it completely rose. Some, including myself, feared that America was entering a lengthy- term period of increased industrial violence, like we did in the 1970s.
But starting in 2022, something great started to happen — violence , started to fall. In 2023, it fell yet more:
And the pattern looks like it’s continuing, or perhaps accelerating, in 2024. A fantastic table has been provided by The Wall Street Journal that provides an overview of changes in crime rates in several cities over the past year. In most locations, killings are falling, and in some locations they’re completely plunging:
America is becoming safer. Why? However, as with the great crime reduction that started in the early 1990s, we’ll probably never understand. Changes in policing and incarceration, the good economy, and falling social unrest are all possibilities.
The good news is that the nation appears to be becoming safer. We might return to the comparatively good years of the early 2010s if the trend continues.
Progress against climate change
One thing that many Americans find depressed, particularly many young progressive Americans, is climate change. And that’s understandable! Our way of life and the natural world are both threatened by climate change enormously. The last year was  , especially brutal.
There’s an inherent difficulty in solving climate change, since it’s an , externality , — climate policy is made at the level of individual countries, so each country has an incentive to sit back and do nothing and insist that the other countries handle the global problem.
But there’s another powerful force working against climate change:  , technology. Solar power, batteries, and other green technologies have gotten cheaper at astounding rates, to the point where decarbonization is the smart , economic , option as well as the good environmental choice.
At the same time, economic growth is generally shifting from manufacturing to services, especially online services, which are less carbon- intensive. In response, emissions have been decreasing in the developed world and accelerating across much of the developing world:
And as a result, projections for how bad climate change will get have been declining for the past six or seven years:
There is undoubtedly much more that must be done. Many people and places will be seriously affected by 2. 7 degrees of warming, and even 2. 1 degrees will be challenging to live with. Decarbonization and electrification must proceed more quickly.
But still, this is big progress, on a huge, important, and potentially even existential issue.
The US economy is expanding fairly quickly.
Although a lot of people these days like to minimize the importance of GDP, it is actually a very significant economic number. GDP is a measure of national , income , — the amount that people , spend , on goods and services is, theoretically speaking, the same as the amount that people , earn , ( even if in practice there are small differences between these numbers when we measure them ).
We want people’s incomes to go up! That means GDP growth. Also, faster GDP growth means , more people have jobs. Since the pandemic, US growth has been largely consistent with previous decades ‘ average.
But when you look at international comparisons, America is actually doing really well. Most nations struggled to grow at pre-pandemic rates in the post-pandemic era. This is especially true of European nations that experienced the Russian gas cutoff, but it’s also true of places like Japan and Canada ( and even China ).
The US has  , powered ahead, even when you take higher immigration rates into account:
( Note: This is not a per capita measure, but since most population growth in rich countries is now due to immigration, it’s basically the same. )
And forecasters expect the US to , continue to outpace other rich countries this year , as well.
Why is the US growing so quickly? Two commonly cited reasons are 1 ) the US ‘ expansionary fiscal policy, including more generous Covid relief payments, and 2 ) Biden’s industrial policy, which is , causing a boom , in factory construction.
But I would also like to point out , allocative efficiency. The US economy got very shaken up by Covid, a lot of businesses were destroyed, and there was  , a huge boom in new businesses. Americans also , moved around the country  , a lot more than they had been doing in previous years.
That churn results in a better allocation of productive resources; instead of dying and replacing them, workers relocate to jobs and places where their skills are put to better use.
In any case, American income is growing strongly. The higher income is also being released into the pockets of young Americans and the working class.
Younger generations perform better than their older counterparts.
I ‘ve , written , several , posts , about this over the past year, but the positive data keeps coming in, and it’s good to go over it again.
There was a great worry in the 2010s that the financial crisis and other negative economic trends would have had a significant impact on the Millennial generation and possibly also Generation Z.
But in the years since the pandemic, it’s become apparent that younger generations are — on average — doing very well economically. The Economist has  , a good story , showing generational income gains by age:
Please take note that this figure has been modified to reflect changes in the cost of living over time.
And Jeremy Horpedahl has been , tracking younger generations ‘ wealth gains  , over at his blog:
There are two basic reasons for the jump in the wealth of younger generations: 1 ) rising house prices, and 2 ) falling debt levels.
Now, these are averages, not medians. It’s reasonable to be concerned about inequality in the younger generation, particularly regarding who gets to give their parents a priceless house. But from 2019 to 2022, there were big increases in Millennials ‘ , median , wealth, not just average:
The changes were especially good for traditionally disadvantaged groups — Black and Hispanic Americans, Americans without a college degree, rural Americans, renters, etc. So that suggests that the wealth surge of the younger generation is n’t disproportionately flowing to wealthy young people ( as it , perhaps ), as it  suggests.
Young Americans are doing just as well because they earn more than their parents did when they were younger, and their wealth is higher as well, despite completing more academic studies and beginning their careers sooner.
Wage Inequality is falling
In America, inequality significantly increased in the 1980s and again in the 2000s and early 2010. The biggest factor in this was by far greater wage inequality: some people made significantly more money while others saw their wages decline. There were heated debates over whether this was due to the decline of unions, China’s competition, automation, tax changes, or the rise of new technologies, which were more advantageous to educated workers than others.
But in the mid 2010s, wage inequality plateaued:
And since the pandemic, this trend has accelerated. Autor, Dube, and McGrew have  , a recent paper , titled” The Unexpected Compression: Competition at Work in the Low Wage Labor Market”, in which they document how low- wage and medium- wage workers have seen big gains since 2019, while high- wage workers have lost a bit of ground.
They point out that the biggest factor is the reallocation of labor; now that Americans are switching jobs significantly, low-wage workers are able to negotiate more difficult terms with their employers.
In fact, Jeremy Horpedahl has my favorite chart showing the real wage gains ( i. e., adjusted for the cost of living ) across the distribution:
Although it would have been nice if the top five had also gained, the people in the bottom should be proud of their significant gains. So those are five recent trends in America today to be optimistic about.
Our economy is finally fulfilling its promise to low-wage workers and young people, both in terms of greater income and greater wealth. The threat of global warming is less severe, and crime is decreasing.
This , article , was first published on Noah Smith’s Noahpinion , Substack and is republished with kind permission. Read the , original , and become a Noahopinion , subscriber , here.