Your Thanksgiving dinner is going to be less expensive.
This year the average person will need to work 2 hours, 21 minutes and 57 seconds to pay for all the items in a standard Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people -- a work reduction of one minute and 8 seconds from last year. Back in 1986, the average person needed to work 3 hours, 12 minutes and 27 seconds to pay for the same dinner, or 50 minutes and 30 seconds longer than a worker today.
This is the great beauty of the capitalistic system -- in real terms, as measured by the time necessary to work to buy most anything, the price falls year after year.
Life expectancies have continued to grow both in the United States and worldwide (an amazing average increase of about three months per year for the last 150 years) -- despite all of the scare stories about what is going to do you in. Life expectancy is a good proxy for overall levels of health.
Real gross domestic product per capita (inflation adjusted) is now about three times higher than it was in 1950, and can continue to increase forever because of endless innovation and productivity growth (which, of course, is dependent on sensible economic policies).