WE ARE ALL OF US UNDEREMPLOYED COMPARED WITH OUR GREAT-GRANDPARENTS.

I've used that formulation a lot over the years, and whenever I see nostalgia for the era of horsepower and wood that warms you up at least three times: when you cut it, when you burn it, and when you carry out the ashes, I cringe.

The Ward O'Hara museum near Auburn, New York, has a collection of circus models and it was where the Circus Model Builders held their annual convention toward the end of June.  There might be some pictures from that exhibition coming.

The photo, though, serves to introduce an essay, "Have You Heard the Good News?" by Cliff Asness and Michael Strain.  They're offering a corrective to the apocalyptic national politics of the hour.

We are living in the best world ever for the most people ever. Lots of things are bad; lots of things can be made better. “Best world ever” does not mean “perfect world.” But if the progressive left tells you the 1950s were better, as labor unions were stronger and tax rates were over 90 percent, and the MAGA right tells you the 1950s were better, as labor unions were stronger and Harriet was still a tradwife to Ozzie, both are just wrong.

Our politics today would look a lot different and a lot better if we started from the undeniable reality of today’s extreme broad-based prosperity and human flourishing—and then tried to make it even broader and even better.

The essay does not contemplate the possibility that it's people putting too much hope on politics that is the drag on civilization, although in pointing out one way in which we are underemployed, it suggests as much.

[T]he rose-colored remembrance of the joy and fulfillment from doing the equivalent of assembling 1950s automobiles all day is mostly a collective delusion.

Material prosperity is good. In fact, it’s first order—not something to be dismissed by zealots drunk on the moral purity of deprivation and physical labor. It’s interesting that populist politicians and opinion leaders are so excited for others—not for themselves—to leave service-sector jobs in order to stand in front of 4,000-degree blast furnaces.

In reality, two dolls are actually way better than zero, and 30 are still better than two if that is your joy (why that’s your joy is your issue). And, non-rote, non–physically draining, non–body aging labor is still better for most of us. Populists claim it is the so-called globalist elites who condescend to ordinary people. But in fact, it is populist leaders who look down on American workers and households by behaving as if everyday people don’t benefit from material prosperity, low prices, or relatively safe and comfortable jobs.

Compare and contrast: in those "good old days" the driving of a horse-drawn sledge through the snow was the quintessence of rote, physically draining, and body-aging labor; and once that sledge was unloaded, the horses still had to be put up, fed and watered, and the stalls mucked out.