Happy Thanksgiving. We Have Much to be Grateful For

On Thursday people across the United States will gather with their families and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays.

The first celebration that was to become Thanksgiving was reportedly marked in 1621 when the pilgrims in New England harvested their first crop and enjoyed a feast with the Wampanoag people who had provided them with considerable help. It wasn’t until 1863 that Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday as he searched for a way to unite the country during the brutal civil war.

Though not at war today, the United States feels increasingly politically polarized, so Americans might feel less inclined than usual to give thanks. They would be wrong, however. There are many reasons to be grateful for being alive now and to feel optimistic about the future.

For starters, life expectancy for Americans is rising once more, having dipped during Covid, and is now at 78 years. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, we’re living longer thanks to improvements in managing heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Fewer people smoke and our world is also safer with unintentional injuries on the decline.

And Americans are not alone in living longer. If you were born in 1960 in sub-Saharan Africa, your life expectancy would be just 42 years. Today it is more than 64 years. While life expectancy in South Africa dipped in the early 2000s thanks to the AIDS pandemic, it is now at all-time highs, at 66 years.

Clean water

Advances in medicine, increased vaccination rates, and greater access to clean and safe water account for much of the increase in life expectancy. Americans don’t think twice about drinking tap water anywhere they go, but even in poorer countries, water has become remarkably safe to drink.

For all sub-Saharan Africa deaths from unsafe water sources have been declining steadily. In 1990 the number of deaths from unsafe water was 114 per 100 000. Today it is around 25.

Global incomes are rising. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, per capita GDP for Americans reached an all-time high of $69 499 in the second quarter of this year.

However, according to the World Bank, South Africa’s per capita GDP hit a high of $8 600 in 2011 but had declined to $6 254 last year. The decline in incomes for South Africans has been due to bad policy choices by the African National Congress-led government. There is no reason the country cannot start embracing economic freedoms once more and get back on a growth trajectory.

But even with the stagnant growth of recent years, most South Africans are better off than they were in the 1990s when per capita GDP was about half what it is today.

We also have more to eat. Improvements in agriculture, with better crops, irrigation, pest control, and increased global trade in food means that the average American has access to nearly than 4 000 calories per day, representing more food than at any time in history.

Sub-Saharan Africans similarly have more food than ever, with an average consumption approaching 2 500 calories per day. In the United States, as any visitor will attest, the abundance of food is leading to an obesity problem. The Centers for Disease Control warns more than two-in-five Americans are obese. But this is a problem of success.

Notwithstanding the health problems associated with obesity, having an abundance of food is preferable to starvation, which for most people for all of human history was just one bad harvest away.

Climate change

For those who worry about climate change and the impact of our populations and economy on the environment, relax. For one thing, Bill Gates recently confirmed a basic truth and agreed with Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg, who has been arguing for years that climate change is real, but not an emergency. And anyway, for most countries our carbon dioxide emissions per dollar of GDP have been declining for years.

In the United States in 1917 the country produced around 1.65 kilograms of CO2 per dollar of GDP. Today that figure is less than 0.26. South Africa has been on a similar trajectory. Available data shows a decline from 1.51 kilograms of CO2 in 1985 to less than 0.56 today.

At the same time pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and particulates have also been declining. Thanks to a combination of sensible regulations and market pressures, we are able to produce more and pollute less. Deaths from air pollution has also been on a steady downward slide in almost every country worldwide.

Progress

If one chooses to look, almost every day one can find some or other reason to feel optimistic about the future. Have a look at HumanProgress.org for vast amounts of data that show how technological advances are making us healthier and able to enjoy longer and happier lives.

Continued progress is not guaranteed of course. Governments could well interrupt this steady improvement by restricting access to capital for entrepreneurs, tying up innovators in red tape, and stopping the free flow of ideas and capital.

Already governments the world over do too much of this sort of thing, but just look at the advances we have made in spite of heavy-handed regulators. Imagine how prosperous we could be if the regulators set innovators and investors free.

As a child in the ‘80s I loved the TV show Knight Rider, with the incredible self-driving car and David Hasselhoff’s character, Michael Knight, who could use his wristwatch as a phone. On a recent visit to Los Angeles, I took a self-driving Waymo car for a smooth and uneventful drive that left me completely at ease.

The voice that came from the central console of the Jaguar as it navigated the busy streets of the city didn’t have the faux British accent of the KITT car, and we didn’t have to drive on two wheels to escape from baddies, but the drive was a marvel and a glimpse into the future of travel if we want it.

And with the Apple watch that I’m wearing as I type this, I can use the phone function to speak to anyone anywhere in the world. Things that could only have been dreamed up in a TV screenwriters’ room are now becoming common features of everyday life.

We are living in an age of wonders and I for one am profoundly grateful to be alive in 2025. Happy Thanksgiving.

Tren is a director of the Washington, DC-based Yorktown Foundation for Freedom.