In some hand wavy statistical sense, those old people you see bagging groceries probably would have been dead 50 years ago. If that is true (I don&#x27;t know if it is, I&#x27;m speculating), they aren&#x27;t evidence of scarcity.<p>It&#x27;s hard to measure quality of life, but if you look at things like housing, people in the US have more households now, with the average dwelling having increased in size (I&#x27;m sure McMansions pull up the average, but again, oversized houses aren&#x27;t evidence of scarcity).