{"id":18041,"date":"2025-03-10T10:37:22","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T09:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/10\/the-left-needs-to-abandon-its-miserable-irrational-pessimism-aaron-bastani\/"},"modified":"2025-03-10T10:37:22","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T09:37:22","slug":"the-left-needs-to-abandon-its-miserable-irrational-pessimism-aaron-bastani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/10\/the-left-needs-to-abandon-its-miserable-irrational-pessimism-aaron-bastani\/","title":{"rendered":"The left needs to abandon its miserable, irrational pessimism | Aaron Bastani"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A hundred years ago the average person, in one of the the world\u2019s wealthiest societies, could expect to live until 40. Now global life expectacy is 73<\/p>\n<p>At the start of the millennium it was widely presumed each successive generation would achieve a higher level of prosperity than the last. Today that is no longer the case. Just 19% of Americans expect their children\u2019s lives <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/meet-the-press\/meetthepressblog\/mourning-america-poll-finds-pessimistic-voters-rcna126180\">to be better than their own<\/a>, while two-thirds <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/short-reads\/2023\/04\/24\/americans-take-a-dim-view-of-the-nations-future-look-more-positively-at-the-past\/\">believe their country will be economically weaker by 2050<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So our zeitgeist is increasingly one of pessimism, from anxiety about the climate crisis to concern over rising inequality. According to the historian Adam Tooze, we are living through a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/498398e7-11b1-494b-9cd3-6d669dc3de33\">polycrisis<\/a>\u201d \u2013 where such challenges are not only simultaneous but mutually reinforcing.<\/p>\n<p>Aaron Bastani is the co-founder of Novara Media. He is also the author of Fully Automated Luxury Communism<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/ng-interactive\/2025\/mar\/10\/the-left-needs-to-abandon-its-miserable-irrational-pessimism\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><br \/>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/7c45940403bf0fff3916a7c99f9d0affec79b6d5\/0_593_2400_1439\/master\/2400.jpg?width=140&amp;quality=85&amp;auto=format&amp;fit=max&amp;s=61d512dc705d3957070af4fc6014923e\" title=\"The left needs to abandon its miserable, irrational pessimism | Aaron Bastani\" \/>A hundred years ago the average person, in one of the the world\u2019s wealthiest societies, could expect to live until 40. Now global life expectacy is 73<br \/>\nAt the start of the millennium it was widely presumed each successive generation would achieve a higher level of prosperity than the last. Today that is no longer the case. Just 19% of Americans expect their children\u2019s lives to be better than their own, while two-thirds believe their country will be economically weaker by 2050.<br \/>\nSo our zeitgeist is increasingly one of pessimism, from anxiety about the climate crisis to concern over rising inequality. According to the historian Adam Tooze, we are living through a \u201cpolycrisis\u201d \u2013 where such challenges are not only simultaneous but mutually reinforcing.<br \/>\nAaron Bastani is the co-founder of Novara Media. He is also the author of Fully Automated Luxury Communism Continue reading&#8230;Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A hundred years ago the average person, in one of the the world\u2019s wealthiest societies, could expect to live until 40. Now global life expectacy is 73 At the start of the millennium it was widely presumed each successive generation would achieve a higher level of prosperity than the last. Today that is no longer &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/10\/the-left-needs-to-abandon-its-miserable-irrational-pessimism-aaron-bastani\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The left needs to abandon its miserable, irrational pessimism | Aaron Bastani<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":18042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18041"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}