Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“Materially, Americans are far better off than they were during the Cold War. But even thinkers who acknowledge this truism often fondly reminisce about the long-lost Golden Age of American optimism that supposedly spanned the second half of the 20th century. This reminiscing always puzzles me, because I vividly remember the second half of the second half of the 20th century. Except for a brief window of roughly 1988-1991, my first-hand experience is that America’s national mood has been relentlessly bad. While I’ve known plenty of American optimists, and count myself among them, ‘American optimism’ is a will-o’-the-wisp. It appears so fleetingly that you have to wonder if it was ever there at all.” (07/21/26)