Say, Chris: what do your "happiness metrics" say?
Oh, and what about suicide rates? And incidence of mental illness? How about human trafficking? Ooh, ooh, what about single-parent families? Oh, and here's another: are people reading more or less than in the past? No, silly, I'm not asking for literacy rates, I'm asking if they're actually reading more?
Isn't this fun? I can come up with a whole slew of statistics to cherry-pick and validate my thesis that world is not "improving!"