Laurence B. Siegel

About the Book

Do you think the world is coming to an end? If you do, you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise – it isn’t. The population explosion is almost over, and the world is going to get richer and greener. It’s already happening. Half of the world’s population is now middle class, and the poor are becoming less numerous and less poor. We will have more food, better food, and less hunger; longer, healthier, and happier lives. Work is getting easier. We are inventing technologies that satisfy and make life more pleasant and interesting. Cultural amenities once available only to the rich are now accessible by everyone.

The amount of betterment that has taken place over the last 250 years – the Great Enrichment – in what we call the developed world, and which is rapidly spreading to the rest of the world, is almost unbelievable. Humans have lived on Earth for many tens of thousands of years, but only in the last quarter-millennium has any large number of them enjoyed the fruits of economic growth and technology on a sustained basis. There were exceptions – Leonardo’s Florence and Mozart’s Vienna come to mind – but most human lives until the Great Enrichment were lived under conditions of deprivation that are almost unimaginable today.

How we got out of that morass and how the whole world can and will enjoy the fruits of the Great Enrichment is the topic of this book.