The world keeps getting better: beer edition

Max Roser's excellent twitter feed provides regular updates on how the world's getting better.

My new project: 100 charts that show how living standards changed. The 1st one is on health. http://t.co/5kKeYk3aoz pic.twitter.com/nURVkfZnFQ
— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) January 5, 2015

But it isn't just life expectancy. Consider beer.

In 1998 I moved from Canada to Fairfax, Virginia. Beer options in Canada had been pretty limited: Labatt, Molson, Big Rock, maybe Sleemans if you could get it. In Arlington, I found Sam Adams on tap at Carpool. It was miles better than anything else I'd had before.

Fast forward 17 years. Sam Adams hasn't changed, but the beer world has. They still make consistently good beer, but if it's the best on offer at a bar, well, there's likely a better bar around. Boston Magazine tracks the changes in a great piece that's hard to excerpt - read the whole thing, but in conjunction with this caveat. Some new craft brewers, and too many of their customers, celebrate anti-big more than they celebrate good beer, while ignoring the benefits that their larger competitors have secured for them.

Via Luke Nicholas and Bob King.