Transition from misery to hope................

In other words, when we economic historians lecture to undergraduates we emphasize an anti-Malthusian message of hope - that average human welfare has shot up startlingly since 1980.  A graph of average income over time resembles an ice hockey stick, with tens of thousands of years spent tracing the long, horizontal handle.  Then finally, after 1800, history reached the business end of the hockey stick and shot up the blade.  A video by Rosling, "200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes," makes the optimistic point, illustrating the transition from misery to hope.

-Deirdre Nansen McCloskey,  Bourgeois Equality:  How Ideas, Not Capital Or Institutions, Enriched The World