I guess you'd have to ignore what Deidre McCloskey describes as the Great Enrichment of liberal democracies:
"[...] a rise in real wages 1800 to the present by a factor of 10 or 30 or
(allowing for improved quality of goods) 100, which is to say 900 or 2,900 or 9,900
percent" [1]
Meanwhile there's a certain propensity for incredible inhumanity, eugenics (in the case of the 1920s Progressive movement) and the outright abuse and "reeducation" of minority races in China.
There's a lot of "quality of life" there that gets missed when people zoom all the way out and talk about state involvement, GDP and freedom.