The Next Fifty Years: Optimistic or Pessimistic?

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