My mother, as some of you may know, was an anthropologist. In the early 70s, there was an interesting debate going on in the anthropological community. 1/6

The infant mortality rate, generally considered one of the most important indicators of the health of a society, had been falling in the US for years, but had leveled off. 2/6

The question was: Was this a temporary plateau, or had infant mortality reached a permanent level, barring a medical breakthrough? 3/6

Then the infant mortality rate began to climb. Those of you familiar with academic apologists for capitalism can probably guess what happened next: 4/6

The leading journals began running articles arguing that, in fact, infant mortality was not a good indicator of a society's health.5/6

This memory comes to mind whenever some reactionary starts throwing numbers at me trying to prove how much better off we all are than we were twenty years ago. 6/6