The Next Fifty Years: Optimistic or Pessimistic?

• Author: Yandle, Bruce
• Position: Reflections

With worries about the coronavirus, almost daily dire reports emerging on the potentially devastating effects of climate change, never-ending turmoil in the Middle East, and Tweet-induced economic-policy uncertainty riding high in the United States, it's getting harder for me to be a perennial optimist. Indeed, things got so bleak recently that I had to dust off my copy of Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist (2010) and reread it. I also reread Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999) in an effort to reassure myself that globalization is not all bad.

At times, it becomes challenging to remember that Adam Smith's "obvious and simple system of natural liberty" is replete with optimistic prospects and that optimistic people are known to live healthier, happier, and more entrepreneurially successful lives (see Haseena 2013). It may be equally difficult to recall that the Enlightenment and the rise of the age of reason were about generating a brighter future for mankind and in that profound sense about optimism (Pinker 2018, 7). (1)

In search for oil to pour on troubled waters or at least to determine if any such oil is available, late last year I sent an email inquiry to thirty-nine people asking about their feelings-whether they are optimistic or pessimistic-when they consider the next fifty years. Those receiving my query were people with whom I correspond frequently, mainly other economists, former students, and family members. No attempt was made to structure the sample or to somehow make it "scientific." At the time of my survey, I was preparing to assist in leading a Sunday discussion at the church I go to. The topic of the discussion was worded like the title of this reflection. We were preparing to discuss optimism and pessimism: Which will it be?

Here's the email message that I sent: Dear E-mail partner, In preparing for an upcoming Sunday discussion of "Optimism/pessimism: which will it be?" I ask that you offer in a few words an opinion. Do you think things as you see them--your world and that of your children and, depending on age, of course, your grandchildren--will [in 50 years] be about the same, better, or worse than the one you have experienced? Please don't think too hard and probe too long on the meaning of "better" or "worse." Just think about the next 50 years, and offer an opinion and any thoughts you wish to pass along. My message's theme--asking for an assessment of the economic future fifty years out--was the same core question that motivated a collection of papers in an Independent Review symposium issue published in 2016 (see Whaples 2016). There, too, the journal participants offered opinions as they explored future prospects.

After I sent my query and heard back from the respondents, one of those queried became so interested in the project that she offered to send out some additional notes to other people. I urged her to do so. Her sample, which included no one with graduate studies in economics, was much smaller but more diverse than mine. Some of the responses she received were among the more interesting ones.

In the next part of this report, I first give some of the comments that came with the responses to my original survey. I then give an overview of the second round of responses and provide some of the...