Far fewer human beings perish before their fifth birthday than ever before. More of us live longer. This is worth celebrating.
No, things aren’t going to hell in a handbasket. Despite all the fear mongering out there, all the declarations that the poor just get poorer while the rich get richer, the past several decades have been unprecedented in human history.
More of us than ever before now have a chance at rich lives – lives that don’t involve endless backbreaking toil, lives in which our children don’t die before reaching their fifth birthday.
Here’s a new, 3-minute video by Swedish professor Hans Rosling, telling the child mortality success story:
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And here’s that 4-minute classic about the magnificent rise in living standards around the world over the past 200 years:
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As the UK publication Spiked is in the habit of declaring: Humanity is underrated.
So, one might add, is capitalism. The current world economic system – the one that’s supposedly so broken it must be swept away and replaced – has accomplished the above miracles.
Yes, that system has its shortcomings. But its successes are real.
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