QotD: "The false impression that the modern economy has left most people behind encourages Luddite and beggar-thy-neighbor policies that would make everyone worse off" [updated]

"To acknowledge that the lives of the lower and middle classes of developed counties have improved in recent decades is not to deny the formidable problems facing 21st-century economies... Perhaps most damaging: the false impression that the modern economy has left most people behind encourages Luddite and beggar-thy-neighbour policies that would make everyone worse off."~ Stephen Pinker from his book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Quoted by Don Boudreaux, who comments,

Trump’s presidency – although fuelled also by several other noxious notions, fallacies, and superstitions – was made possible in part by the absurd refusal by many people, largely those on the political left, to acknowledge that the living standards of ordinary Americans have improved dramatically since the mid-1970s.

UPDATE:

"Improved?" you ask? Hell yes. For examples:

from Stephen Pinker's book, hat tip Utopia]

.