Ok, well, maybe not. The world still has a lot of poverty. We see it every day. However, while we were busy being distracted by the world burning down , something significant in the cannon of human history happened.

A recent Brookings Institute meta-study concluded on September 27th of this year that half of the world’s population is now middle class or better. The institute defines this as being able to afford extracurricular activities, and durables – such as new televisions and computers. Another metric is confidence in surviving an economic downturn

The conclusion made by Homi Kharas and Kristofer Hamel, the researchers, was poignant, “For the first time since agriculture-based civilization began 10,000 years ago, the majority of humankind is no longer poor or vulnerable to falling into poverty.”

We have the capabilities to be better than this. However, if you put it in the context of history, and realize that at no point in history was their ever a fair utopia, the context is impressive.

You can read more about this here.