Happy Thanksgiving from the Cato Institute!
We have so much to be grateful for…
This Thanksgiving, it is worth remembering that, beyond the headlines, things are actually pretty darn good. There is more than enough to be thankful for.
Contemporary Americans live longer, healthier, richer and safer lives than at any other period in history. In fact, an ordinary person today lives better than most kings of yesteryear.
Of the original 102 Pilgrims who arrived in North America aboard the Mayflower in the fall of 1620, only about half survived to celebrate the first Thanksgiving, in November 1621. The rest perished through starvation and lack of shelter. The survivors gave thanks for a plentiful harvest. And good local harvests were vital, for in a world without global commodity markets or effective transport and communications, food shortages often meant starvation.
Today, most Americans are concerned with eating too much rather than too little. In fact, the inflation-adjusted cost of a Thanksgiving dinner has declined for three years in a row and Thanksgiving dinner is now the most affordable that it has been in more than a decade — 26% cheaper to prepare than it was in 1986.
More often than not, we tend to overlook our truly spectacular rise from grinding poverty to previously unimaginable abundance. And so, during this Thanksgiving holiday, let us give thanks for accountable government, market economy and scientific progress that make a king out of each of us.
