The "world continually gets better over time" is historically a relatively new concept. There are many periods in human history where things have significantly worsened. As they say in finance - past performance is not indicative of future results.

>There are many periods in human history where things have significantly worsened

Sure, which is why I said over time. If you look at any isolated period you’re not going to see any trends that take place over longer periods of time. The standard of living world wide goes up over time, and has done so at a very accelerated rate since the industrial revolution. The world is generally becoming a better place, it’s much better than it was 100 years ago, and still even better than it was 10 years ago. New technology, and the progress of emerging economies makes life better for the whole world. There’s plenty of people who have an interest in selling fear, especially when it comes to technology, but that deception has been around for as long as technology itself. They said all the same things about mechanization back then as they say about automation now. The sad truth is that good news is critically dangerous to too many people with agendas, that it’ll end up getting ignored or denied with ignorant passion.

Over the long term it's entirely possible that the current historically anomalous growth rate might be maintained but it's of little comfort to me and, say my children and grandchildren, that my great grandchildren will be living in the land of milk and honey if immediate generations are consigned to some kind of economic purgatory. The negative slopes and valleys that appear, but don't necessarily dominate economic charts, represent people. It's cold comfort to someone, or even a generation, at the bottom of a chart to know that "on average" things will work out.

Even over the past ten years things have been improving. Even if you ignore the developing economies (where things get better faster) and the rest of the world, the US is still improving. Poverty in the US for example has been trending downwards for decades, including over the last 10 years. I can see how attached you are to this “everything is bad” narrative, but it’s not reflected in reality.