According to recent data from the Pew Research Center, 45 percent of American adults say that if they could choose when to live, they would live sometime in the past. Another 40 percent have the good luck to be born exactly when they want to live. And only 14 percent would choose to live in the future.

These are remarkable and sobering numbers. This is the wealthiest society in the history of the world, and technological change has been plunging forward at remarkable speeds. But so few of us are optimistic about what’s coming that Americans are three times more likely to wish they lived in the past than the future.

There was a time when the future certainly seemed to hold more appeal. The animated sitcom the Jetsons, which came out in 1962 (and was set in 2062), featured a working class that had robot servants and a flying car. Breadwinner George Jetson worked at a factory, and he wasn’t any sort of manager. But his job seemed to entirely consist of pushing buttons, and his workload was light enough that he complained when his boss Mr Spacely made him work for three hours a day.