Comment by nico

The issue is that well-being is relative and subjective

You can’t “objectively” look back and say people “have it better” now

Sure, you can look at all sorts of data and metrics, but that doesn’t mean people feel like they are better off now, which is what matters in the end

So the real question we should be trying to answer is: are people feeling better now than how they felt 200 years ago?

We could talk about it forever, but ultimately, it’s impossible to know