The Greatest Story No One Knows About

“Modern humans first appeared about one hundred thousand years ago. For the next 99,800 years or so, pretty much everyone lived above the subsistence level-on the modern U.S. equivalent of $400 to $600 a year….. Then, in the late eighteenth century-just a couple of hundred years ago, maybe ten generations—something happened.  People started getting richer. And richer and richer still ….

If you’re a middle-class American earning $50,000 a year, and you expect your children, twenty-five years from now, to occupy that same modest rung on the economic ladder, then with a 2.3 percent growth rate, they’ll be earning the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $89,000 per year. Their children, another twenty-five years down the line, will earn $158,000 a year. And if that 2.3 percent growth rate continues, then in fewer than four hundred years, your descendants will earn about $1 million per day—a little less than Bill Gates’s current income, but at least in the ballpark.”

A Link to Steven’s original article – “The Greatest Story No One Knows About”, Steven Landsburg.