It’s equally true that the number of miserable people in the world is greater, too (lower percentage of a bigger number, but it’s not evenly distributed. If you’re a Bangladeshi farmer getting wiped out multiple years running due to climate change-amplified flooding, you probably aren’t comforted by the fact that even poor Americans can watch Tik Tok.

For the past couple of decades, at least, more people have been lifted out of poverty than have been added to it through population growth. So no, even by that metric things were worse off in the 70's or 80's than they are today.