During that time, average income per capita adjusted for inflation increased by 177 percent, rising from $3,680 to $10,194. Moreover, after 56 years of human use and exploration, the vast majority of the commodities tracked by the World Bank are cheaper than they used to be – either absolutely or relative to income. That was not supposed to have happened.Out of the 42 distinct commodity prices measured by the World Bank, only 3 have increased relative to income levels.

According to conventional wisdom, population growth was to be a harbinger of poverty and famine. Yet, human beings, unlike other animals, innovate their way out of scarcity by increasing the supply of natural resources or developing substitutes for overused resources. Human ingenuity, in other words, is "the ultimate resource" that makes all other resources more plentiful.

Earlier this year, the World Bank updated its Pink Sheet, which tracks the prices of 72 commodities going back (in most cases) to 1960. I have eliminated some repetitive datasets and some datasets that contained data for only very short periods of time. I was left with 42 commodity prices, which are included in the chart below.