Were people always this awful?

The other day, while whichever political/celebrity/sports scandal was unfolding, I turned to the spouse and said, "Were people always this awful* or is this a new phenomenon?" To which the spouse replied, "People were always this awful. There are just more people."

This led us to debate:

a) If, percentage-wise, there were the same number of awful people as there were 50 or 100 or 1000 (or however many) years ago, or if the percentage of awful people had gone up (or down).

b) If awful people had more or less power now than they had 50 or 100 or 1000 years ago. For example, while what Bernard Madoff did, bilking thousands of people, was pretty awful, and ruined lives, it pales in comparison to what Adolf Hitler did, i.e., murdering millions of innocent people (among other awful things).

And c) While there have always been awful people, or people doing awful things, does it seem like there are more awful people or more people doing awful things because of our 24/7 media -- cable news, Internet news, blogs, talk radio, newspapers, etc?

What do you think?

*By awful I mean bad -- or screwed up or crazy or mean or psycho.