ONE OF THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS IN HUMAN HISTORY — AND NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT

Catholic Vote ^ | January 7, 2014 | JOSHUA MERCER

[NYer]

As a child of the 80s, I remember We Are the World. Yeah, the song is terrible, but it was nice to see rock stars care about charity. Back then poverty in Africa was in the news all the time. But things have been changing in Africa and in other “third-world” countries. More countries are opening up their markets. China, Russia, India, and Botswana are all much freer economies than they were in 1970.

But even I was shocked when I saw this graph:

 

Mark Perry, an economics professor at UM-Flint said it best:

Well, the chart above could perhaps qualify as the “chart of the century” because it illustrates one of the most remarkable achievements in human history: the 80% reduction in world poverty in only 36 years, from 26.8% of the world’s population living on $1 or less (in 1987 dollars) in 1970 to only 5.4% in 2006. (Source: The 2009 NBER working paper “Parametric Estimations of the World Distribution of Income,” by economists Maxim Pinkovskiy (MIT) and Xavier Sala-i-Martin (Columbia University).

Wow. An 80% drop in world poverty since 1970. Just astounding.

And if you have a few minutes, you really must watch this video… It explains why great data like we see up above is NOT enough to persuade people to move away from socialism and central planning. We need a moral argument for the free enterprise system.

As Arthur Brooks says: Don’t Eat Your Dog.

Don't Eat Your Dog: The Surprising Moral Case for Free Enterprise

[zot]

Thanks for the ping. Yeah, leftists are immune to facts.

[GonzoII]

Thanks!

[narses]

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