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Interesting read with some pretty cool facts (unusual for this place I know) but i like how it actually details some pretty cool stories that are positive - a few i have inserted below.
1. Two centuries ago, 94 per cent of people lived on $2 a day (in today's dollar value); today, only 10 per cent do. In the early 1980s, nine in 10 Chinese lived in extreme poverty; today, after more than three decades of market reforms, just one in 10 do. And since Soviet communism collapsed in 1989-91, extreme poverty across the globe has decreased from 37 per cent to less than 10 per cent.
2. Islamists are on the back foot. But even when they controlled the so-called caliphate in eastern Syria and north-west Iraq, you were more likely to drown in a bath than die in terrorist violence.
3. Or take the climate. President Trump was widely slammed for pulling America out of the Paris accords this year. And yet US emissions are coming down faster than much of Europe. Why? Not because of any carbon taxes or regulations, but primarily because of the shale gas revolution known as fracking.
4. Nowhere is the prosperity more evident than in Australia. In 2017, Australia entered its 27th year of uninterrupted economic growth. Why? The same explanation for the untold prosperity for much of the world: capitalism.
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/gloom-doom-and-optimism-20171221-h08ota.html
1. Two centuries ago, 94 per cent of people lived on $2 a day (in today's dollar value); today, only 10 per cent do. In the early 1980s, nine in 10 Chinese lived in extreme poverty; today, after more than three decades of market reforms, just one in 10 do. And since Soviet communism collapsed in 1989-91, extreme poverty across the globe has decreased from 37 per cent to less than 10 per cent.
2. Islamists are on the back foot. But even when they controlled the so-called caliphate in eastern Syria and north-west Iraq, you were more likely to drown in a bath than die in terrorist violence.
3. Or take the climate. President Trump was widely slammed for pulling America out of the Paris accords this year. And yet US emissions are coming down faster than much of Europe. Why? Not because of any carbon taxes or regulations, but primarily because of the shale gas revolution known as fracking.
4. Nowhere is the prosperity more evident than in Australia. In 2017, Australia entered its 27th year of uninterrupted economic growth. Why? The same explanation for the untold prosperity for much of the world: capitalism.
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/gloom-doom-and-optimism-20171221-h08ota.html