These are excerpts from a CNN special report and are probably realistic numbers-Nate Silver numbers not Karl Rove numbers, for example.
Begin quote: Over the past two decades, what have the U.S. trends been for the following important measures of social health: high school dropout rates, college enrollment, juvenile crime, drunken driving, traffic deaths, infant mortality, life expectancy, per capita gasoline consumption, workplace injuries, air pollution, divorce, male-female wage equality, charitable giving, voter turnout, per capita GDP and teen pregnancy?
The answer for all of them is the same: The trend is positive. Almost all those varied metrics of social wellness have improved by more than 20% over the past two decades.
Even though the world's population has doubled over the past 50 years, the percentage living in poverty has declined by 50% over that period. Infant mortality and life expectancy have improved by more than 40% in Latin America since the early 1990s. No country in history has improved its average standard of living faster than China has over the past two decades.
Of course, not all the arrows point in a positive direction, particularly after the past few years. The number of Americans living in poverty has increased over the past decade, after a long period of decline. Wealth inequality has returned to levels last seen in the roaring '20s.
I suspect, in the long run, the media bias against incremental progress may be more damaging than any bias the media display toward the political left or right. The media are heavily biased toward extreme events, and they are slightly biased toward negative events -- though in their defense, that bias may just be a reflection of the human brain's propensity to focus more on negative information than positive, a trait extensively documented by neuroscience and psychology studies. End quote.
A link to the full article:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/24/opinion/johnson-progress-overlooked/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
The point? Media proclivity to employ an 'if it bleeds it leads' fear inducing production style creates a false perception of the state of the union and the world. This is the media bias that is harming us by reenforcing the human tendancy to focus on bad news. This makes money for the networks because more people watch their news reports. Again-the love of money is the root of all evil.
Michael Moore made this point about the way news is presented very well in his documentary "Bowling for Columbine."
The Kingdom of God is increasing. A guy named Daniel had a prophetic experience in which he saw a rock smash the worlds kingdoms and increase in size until it filled the earth. That rock would be Jesus expressed through his disciples. The rock represented the Kingdom of God.
It will get better & better until Jesus drops in (?reincarnates?) for a visit and then it will continue to get better, how could it not, and then it will continue to get better until Jesus presents Father God with the Kingdom.
The ones who seperate themselves from the influence of the spirit of the age and are sanctified to God get to help manage things and teach people God stuff as stuff gets better-something I read about folks coming to the Lord's Mountain and all that.
Be blessed, ya'll-and keep your eye on the ball that is Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Ya be what ya see :)
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