Kerby Anderson

One axiom in the news business is the reality that good news isn’t really news. Thousands of airplanes land safely. That is not news. An airplane crashes. That’s news.

Because of this we rarely hear good news about our world. We certainly hear lots of bad news. This is especially true in an election year when challengers paint a dismal picture of our world so that you will elect them instead of the incumbents.

After Jim Geraghty wrote a column predicting trouble ahead for our nation, he was convicted that he should follow it up with some positive statistics. Here is a short list of good news that you probably don’t hear too often.

The crime rate is way down from the 1990s. Drunk driving rates hit an all-time low a few years ago. Air travel is getting safer and cheaper.

The teen pregnancy rate is steadily declining. The abortion rate is the lowest since Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973. And the infant mortality rate is low and getting lower.

High school graduation rates are the highest ever. Teen drug use (if you exclude marijuana) is down dramatically. In the past, I have talked about this nation’s opioid epidemic. So far, very few teenagers are involved. And it is worth mentioning that teenage binge drinking is lower than it was in the 1990s.

Some good news you have heard (at least in my Viewpoint commentaries) concerns unemployment. As you know, unemployment figures for certain minorities are the lowest ever. Perhaps the most amazing fact is that there are currently more job openings than unemployed workers. And recently I talked about how the median family income is the highest ever.

In the midst of some of this good news, you still have skeptics. They say that just because some of these social statistics are lower doesn’t mean they aren’t a problem. That is true. As I often remind my listeners, lower doesn’t mean zero. We certainly have more work to do, but let’s also celebrate some good news.