Future: Why progress can hardly be stopped

Enlarge image

Robots in the BMW main plant (archive image)

Photo: Daniel Josling / picture alliance / dpa

A dark year is drawing to a close, there is no other way to put it. The corona pandemic still has a firm grip on us, despite vaccinations and recurring contact restrictions. Climate change has long been felt, and even in the best scenarios, the braking distance to a halt in global warming will take decades. A conflict is brewing on the eastern border of the EU and NATO, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has just re-fueled, while the western world power USA is still terribly torn after Joe Biden's first year in presidency. Still, Germany has a new government that talks a lot about "progress". But it still remains to be seen whether it is up to all the challenges.

Sometimes it helps to take a long look back to relativize the adversities of the present.

History books are not necessarily the best advice, because they too emphasize wars and disasters, much like the current news.

Statistics paint a different picture, however: the bare numbers show that progress is a long, fairly continuous flow.

It goes on slowly, so gradually that contemporaries do not immediately notice it.

But the steady stream of innovations, improvements and gradual changes in behavior has astonishing consequences over time.

More wealth

In the past five decades, the German level of prosperity, measured in terms of inflation-adjusted economic output per inhabitant, has risen by around two and a half times. That sounds spectacular, but it is by no means exceptional; other countries can report similar, in some cases better, developments.

As calculations by the World Bank show, there are only two events in the entire data series for the Federal Republic since 1970 that have caused per capita income to fall: the Great Recession of 2008/09 as a result of the financial crisis, a gap that took place two years later as well as the corona crisis of 2020, the longer-term consequences of which we do not yet know.

(The short-term decline in the early 1990s is a result of reunification, when the population with lower per capita incomes rose by 16 million.) Otherwise, things went up, sometimes a little faster, sometimes a little slower.

More well-being

Many small advances together form a society's development path. The results of this inconspicuous process can be seen not only in economic data, but also in the well-being of the population. Between 2000 and 2020, the life expectancy of newborns in Germany rose by three years. The currently perceived well-being is also at a high level: In a Eurobarometer survey from this autumn, more than 90 percent of German citizens said that they consider the quality of life in Germany to be good or very good - and that after several corona waves including lockdowns.

It is remarkable that while the citizens become wealthier, healthier and more satisfied over the longer term, the zeitgeist is clouded by gloom. In the coming decades, the growth in prosperity per capita is even likely to accelerate slightly, the industrialized countries association OECD forecast some time ago. But that is, of course, by no means certain, it depends on innumerable political developments and individual decisions.

By the way, recognizing the blessings of the sum of small advances does not mean ignoring problems. On the contrary: to openly address negative developments is a prerequisite for long-term prosperity growth. This is the only way to correct undesirable developments. This applies to questions of the concentration of wealth and power as well as to the consumption of the environment. In this respect, our daily grappling with the world's problems is a prerequisite for measurable increases in prosperity. This dialectic of progress may be confusing, but it is highly productive.

On the other hand, where the free exchange of knowledge, information and opinions is hindered, well-being also suffers.

The level of prosperity in authoritarian Russia, for example, has stagnated for a decade, as World Bank calculations show.

Citizens pay a high price for the apparent stability of petro-authoritarianism.

Climate change as a possible accelerator of progress

Against this background, by the way, the popular argument that we have to say goodbye to some "growth ideology" in order to curb climate change is difficult to understand. Resource consumption and growth in prosperity have long since decoupled, at least in the highly developed economies. In Germany, there was a close connection between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions until the end of the 1950s. In the decades that followed, emissions initially stagnated, and have been falling gradually since 1990, while economic output per capita - see above - has continued to rise. (

)

Of course, none of this is enough.

We still emit far too many climate-damaging emissions and are wasteful with raw materials.

Great efforts are required to become completely climate neutral by the 2040s.

All right.

But the switch to a climate-neutral economy by no means requires a farewell to economic progress, on the contrary, it requires acceleration.

Not a sure-fire success, however

In a very long-term perspective, sustained increases in prosperity are a relatively recent phenomenon.

Historical statistics by the British economist Angus Maddison, who died in 2010 and are updated by a team of researchers from the University of Groningen, show that there have repeatedly been extended phases of stagnating or even falling prosperity.

According to an early estimate for today's Germany, around 1500 the national product per inhabitant was 1827 US dollars (calculated in 2011 prices). In 1800 it was 1572 dollars - within 300 years the level of prosperity had by no means increased, it actually decreased. The production possibilities had not kept pace with the population growth; meanwhile the number of inhabitants had doubled.

It was not until the second half of the 19th century that the level of prosperity began to rise gradually in the course of industrialization.

The two world wars represented severe cuts;

especially after the Second World War, the national product per inhabitant shrank by two-thirds.

From the late 1940s onwards, things grew rapidly until today.

Other western countries saw an earlier start and a more steady development.

display

Henrik Muller

Short-circuit policy: How permanent outrage destroys our democracy

Publisher: Piper

Number of pages: 256

Publisher: Piper

Number of pages: 256

Buy for € 22.00

Time of price inquiry

12/26/2021 5:13 p.m.

No guarantee

Order from Amazon

Order from Thalia

Order from Weltbild

Product reviews are purely editorial and independent.

Via the so-called affiliate links above, we usually receive a commission from the dealer when making a purchase.

More information here

Historical experience shows that progress is not a sure-fire success.

Some framework conditions are required, including reliable institutions, social cohesion and a stable international order.

Brazil, for example, a country with a young, growing population but fragile institutions, has repeatedly seen phases of stagnating or even falling levels of prosperity over the past few decades.

The 2010s were particularly disappointing and things are not getting any better under the wandering populist Jair Bolsonaro.

In this respect, the symptoms of crisis mentioned above - political polarization, social rifts in the wake of the pandemic, geopolitical confrontation - are warning signals that have the potential to noticeably slow down the long-term trend of progress.

The demographic development, on the other hand, does not necessarily lead to an end to the dynamic.

Japan, the country where the population is aging and shrinking the most, continues to see impressive gains in per capita income.

A hopeful finding for all those western societies that follow Japan's demographic development, including the Federal Republic.

With this in mind, I wish you an optimistic 2022.

Because of the holidays, Müller's memo appears this week without an appointment preview.