Everyone thinks everything was better when they were children, and everyone is wrong.

Life is better now. Children today are more likely to survive childhood and live to old age than at any time in the past. This is true in the United States, and it is true globally.

If that fact is difficult to square with the argument that "there are way too many people," it's because that argument is wrong.

You would think that an argument that has been made for centuries, and has been wrong for centuries, would be discarded, or at least regarded more skeptically than it is. Instead, it continues to be updated, like the date of the apocalypse - it will be tomorrow, and when it isn't, surely next month.

The reality is that humanity has been able to do more with less, and that has allowed humanity to grow in number and not merely subsist, but thrive.