A dollar today, no matter how heroically adjusted for inflation, buys far more betterment of life than a dollar yesterday. It buys things that didn’t exist, like refrigeration, electricity, toilets, vaccinations, telephones, contraception, and air travel, and it transforms things that do exist, such as party like patched by a switchboard operator to a smartphone with unlimited talk time.

Steven Pinker, Enlightenment now: the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress, New York, 2018, p. 117