Recently, Time magazine had a cover story that claimed the past 10 years have been “the worst decade ever.” Seriously. I guess the headline writers at Time must have missed the Black Death, the 1930s, etc. Granted, there’s some hedging involved. “Bookended by 9/11 at the start and a financial wipeout at the end,” writes Andy Serwer, “the first 10 years of this century will very likely go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post-World War II era.” Worse than the seventies, in other words. Don’t fret, though. “The next decade should be a helluva lot better than the last one,” mainly because a Democrat lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The whole exercise is exhausting. I chose to read the essay as if it were an article in The Onion, which made the experience more enjoyable. Luckily, Tyler Cowen is here to offer an excellent rebuttal:
I’d add to Cowen’s list the facts that America no longer has to worry about Saddam Hussein, and al Qaeda has been denied safe haven in Iraq and Afghanistan. The last decade hasn’t been pretty. But it’s by no means the worst.
