It takes 95% fewer work hours to buy tires than it did in 1920, notes Human Progress. “In 1920, you could buy a new Goodyear tire for your Ford, Chevrolet, Dort, or Maxwell for $21.50. A tube for the tire would add another $4.50. Unskilled workers at the time were earning about 29 cents an hour, putting the time price of the $26 combination at almost 90 hours. Today, Walmart sells the Goodyear Reliant 195/60R15 88V All-Season Tire for $77. Unskilled workers today earn about $17.17 an hour, indicating a time price of 4.46 hours. For the time it took to earn the money to buy a single tire in 1920, you could get 20 of them today.”
As Human Progress explains, “Car tires today are also vastly superior to those manufactured in 1920 because of advancements in materials, design, and manufacturing.” For example,
- Materials: In 1920, tires were made from natural rubber with cotton or fabric cords, prone to punctures and rapid wear. Modern tires use synthetic rubber, steel belts, and advanced compounds (e.g., silica) for better durability, grip, and fuel efficiency. Today’s tires last between 50,000 and 80,000 miles versus the 1,000 to 2,000 miles tires lasted in 1920….
- Performance: Modern tires are engineered for specific conditions (e.g., all-season, winter, high-performance), with optimized tread patterns for grip, water dispersion, and noise reduction. Tires made in 1920 had basic treads, poor wet performance, and frequent blowouts at speeds above 30 to 40 miles per hour…
- Safety: Tubeless tires, common since the 1950s, reduce blowout risks compared with 1920s tube-type tires. Many modern tires also feature puncture-resistant layers and run-flat technology, absent in 1920…
“Quantitatively, modern tires are 40 to 60 times more durable, support 3 to 4 times higher speeds, and provide 5 to 10 times better.”
The world’s poor have gotten much better off in this century. On the other hand, political and economic freedom have fallen worldwide over the last several years.
Bigger, better drones are being built to fight wildfires.
Drones are also providing vaccines to immunize hundreds of thousands of children in the African nations of Ghana and Kenya, protecting them against potentially lethal diseases.
Robots with artificial intelligence will reduce the need for weed-killer and pesticides by more precisely targeting weeds and pests. That will cut farmers’ costs, and radically reduce the size of the crop chemical industry, because robots will use up to 90% less spray to kill the same number of weeds and pests. Some robots using artificial intelligence can identify and kill 100,000 weeds per hour.
Most of the world’s forests are expanding. The amount of vegetation on the Earth has increased for each of the last 30 years.
