Easterbrook, 70, grew up in the Town of Tonawanda, near the Kenmore line. And today his column, Tuesday Morning Quarterback, makes a triumphant return – in all its idiosyncratic glory
On the ambiguities of progress. My friend and one of my first professional colleagues, Maurice Isserman, the leading historian of the 20th century American left, played a game with his kids before they left for college: What’s getting better? What’s getting worse? I can’t think of a better way to reflect on the ambiguities of progress.
I wish to thank Dr. Katherine Trebeck and Dr. Dirk Philipsen for their response to our lead essay. It is a pleasure to discuss important ideas with scholars who are searching for the truth and human betterment. Trebeck and Philipsen question “the human ability to invent itself out of the basic laws of physics” and call for “A Wellbeing Economy [that] positions the economy in service of human flourishing and true freedom; less precariousness and more dignity; fewer dirty industries and more businesses who put their workers and communities front and center.”
I agree that humanity still faces many problems, but I ask, along with the British historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, “On what principle is it that with nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us.”[1] Below, I outline a number of ways in which the world has become a better place over the last few decades and propose that many people are already living in a Wellbeing Econ