The aesthetic spirit of modern capitalism

[Extract] From approximately 1770 to 1970, in a series of industrial revolutions, human standards of living were utterly transformed by the ingenious application of the arts and the sciences. The University of Illinois economist Deidre McCloskey put it this way: Two centuries ago the world's economy stood at the present level of Bangladesh.1 In 1800 (in our dollar terms) the average human being lived on $3 a day; a person in contemporary France or Japan lives on $100 a day. In Norway, the average person earns forty-five times more than their predecessor did in 1800, a remarkable $145 a day. China today has managed to reach an average of $13 a day. That is four times the 1800 level and that number is rising rapidly. Only 1.1 billion of the world's 6.7 billion people still live on $3 a day. If anything is progress, then that is progress