Greg Easterbrook wrote about this in The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse
But Easterbrook may be better known as an environmental gadfly. Amanda Griscom Little writes about him in Deep-Fried Baloney, Greg Easterbrook Style
According to Amanda
Easterbrook's argument comes from "Everything You Know About the Bush Environmental Record Is Wrong," a report he wrote for the Brookings Institution and the right-wing American Enterprise Institute's Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. The crux of both the op-ed and the report is that the environment, and in particular air quality, has been getting dramatically better over the years -- so what's the harm in weakening a few regulations?
Easterbrook's complete report, "Everything You Know About the Bush Environmental Record Is Wrong" is available online in pdf thanks to grist at
http://www.grist.org/pdf/easterbrook_report.pdf
Amanda characterizes Greg's approach to communication:
While Easterbrook scores a few points for entertaining analogies, he loses many more for a polemic "so preposterously distorted, so replete with factual errors, that it's appalling to me that it was published anywhere, much less someplace like the L.A. Times, which tends to be strong on these issues," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust.
Distortions, errors and entertaining analogies. Encountered any of those lately?
In March 2004, Harris Miller went online with the Washington Post to answer questions about 'Outsourcing's IT Impact.' This interview was online a month or two ago, but I'm unable to locate it now. So please try your library for the complete interview.
What does this have to do with environmental issues? Nothing at all. Several of us know that Harris Miller drives a hybrid car because he reports its mileage to the media regularly. What's important is that according to Miller, Easterbrook has useful advice for alleviating the woes of the unemployed worker.
Here is one question and one answer from that interview.
Cynthia L. Webb: Harris, outsourcing sparks a lot of heated, emotional reaction (as a number of the reader questions convey). Despite your study and its findings that show outsourcing will be a benefit to the economy overall, the practice of outsourcing still makes quite a strong psychological impact on tech workers (many of whom have stories of getting a pink slip due to a position lost to outsourcing). How does your organization and the tech sector overall work to overcome this disparity? There still appears to be an overwhelming sense that jobs are being lost and that the tech sector is in danger because of the trend.Harris Miller: Educating people with facts is the answer. I hear from unemployed tech workers every day expressing their understandable frustration. The typical IT worker has never experienced a recession, the last one occurring over a decade ago, and impacting IT workers almost none at all. In the late 1990's, IT workers just out of school were getting unbelievable signing bonuses, including free cars. So they ask, how can those halcyon days of 1997-2000 have turned so disastrous so quickly for the 5-6% of us who are unemployed? Again, the answer is a combination of factors, one of which is more global competition. But the study clearly demonstrates that global competition is already creating and will continue to create more jobs. I know it probably will not make people feel much better, but I urge them to read Gregg Easterbrook's recent book The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, in which he tries to explain the frustration people feel.
Greg's book is available used on amazon for $2.47 cents.
One review on amazon is entitled 'Lacks Creativity and Compassion, but not Scornfulness'. Here's another amazon review that I hope you enjoy
The introduction, chapter one, and chapter two are true to this theme. They outline in remarkable detail exactly how our lives are better than those of our forebearers and what kind of work our ancestors had to do to make oure lives better. In chapter 3, Easterbrook outlines reasons why Americans fail to believe the proof before their eyes.But in chapter 4, he starts a high handed moral lecture. After telling the reader things are better, we should be more grateful for what we have, and we should learn to appriciate life, more, he then attacks the reader for not doing anything about poverty in America, for not insuring all American citizens, and for allowing hunger to exist in the world. Now, if Easterbrook had any suggestions, even ridiculous ones, this would not be so bad, but he goes from telling the reader "everything is better than you think it is" to telling the reader, "no! I lied! Everything IS going to hell in a handbasket and it's ALL YOUR FAULT!"
He continues to lecture his middle class American readers (who can afford to spend $25 on a hardback book) about buying SUVs, talking on cell phones, and other technological advances he sees as nothing more than displays of immorality. After telling us that not only our lives are better, but the lives of the poor worldwide are better, he lecures us for not making massive governmental and sociatal sweeping changes - but never once suggests HOW we are supposed to do so.Somewhere towards the middle of the book, he starts referncing his belief in Christianity, then instructing "good Christians" on their moral duties. Towards the end of the book, he says people will be unhappy until "the Lord returns to Earth." A book which started as a scientific analysis of progress and perception ends as a very unscientific sermon.
Easterbrook insists the reader should personally cure AIDS in Africa, insure the American poor, eliminate world hunger, and all while working with international agencies. Other than sending a check to the charity of your choice, he never suggests HOW to enact these sweeping changes. Easterbrook insists to not do so is immoral, but average Americans who can not get more than a form letter in response from their senators are left with no suggestions as to how they can enact these changes.
The end result is, instead of empowering the reader to feel good about our place in world history and offering reasonable suggestions for how we can help alliviate the suffering of others, this book turns into a moralistic lecture on hedonism. In the last chapter, he tries to sweep all the lecturing under the rug with a short happy ending. This defeats the book's alleged purpose.