END-of-year articles are so often founded on the assumption, as Nicholas Pell writes, that humanity is tending toward moral progress. The evidence is to the contrary. Pell states in The Washington Post (of all places):

The broad assumption in the “current year” argument is that time inevitably ticks toward moral betterment. It’s a view that’s been espoused in different forms by the likes of Immanuel Kant (who wrote about “man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity”), Karl Marx (who talked about emerging consciousness) and Martin Luther King Jr. (“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” ). If you’re a progressive, you probably take moral progress as an article of faith.

If you’re a conservative, a member of the political right or maybe just a working-class person who pines for a sunnier past, however, there’s a decent chance you’re skeptical of this concept. Mockery of the “current year” argument — especially as regularly employed by comedian John Oliver — has become a meme in some far-right circles. But you don’t need to be on the political extreme to perceive a world in decline. And in this context, 2016 was not one of those “meandering points of bewilderment” that King described but the continuation of a troubling trend.

Roughly half of Americans believe that the 1950s were better than today, according to a PRRI survey published in October. Predictably, whites were more likely to agree with this idea than other racial groups. But the class divide is more interesting: Sixty-five percent of white working-class respondents said the ’50s were better. Fifty-six percent of white college-educated respondents said the ’50s were worse.

This is understandable. For white people without advanced degrees and good jobs, the world is getting demonstrably worse. Real wages have been stagnant for 40 years, while low-skilled jobs have been disappearing.

White life expectancy, although higher than it was in 1950, has declinedslightly in recent years. A Washington Post analysis explained: “The things that reduce the risk of death are now being overwhelmed by things that elevate it, including opioid abuse, heavy drinking, smoking and other self-destructive behaviors.”

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Citing the current year might be an effective scold for people who think there’s something wrong with the past — but it’s utterly perplexing to people who think that on balance the past was fine or perhaps better than today.

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