Your paragraph by Pinker is kind of silly, basically "better is better than worse". But then you follow up with "When we put progress in these terms, we find that by almost every measure, things are getting better; and continue to get better over time."

I beg to differ. Maybe the rest of the world is doing better, but in our world - the USA - that statement is incorrect. If you look at statistical measures of almost everything in that paragraph, we as a nation are declining, particularly since 1980, and at an accelerating rate.