Why 2012 Was The Best Year Ever

[Flashermac]

It may not feel like it, but 2012 has been the greatest year in the history of the world. That sounds like an extravagant claim, but it is borne out by evidence. Never has there been less hunger, less disease or more prosperity. The West remains in the economic doldrums, but most developing countries are charging ahead, and people are being lifted out of poverty at the fastest rate ever recorded. The death toll inflicted by war and natural disasters is also mercifully low. We are living in a golden age.

 

To listen to politicians is to be given the opposite impression — of a dangerous, cruel world where things are bad and getting worse. This, in a way, is the politicians’ job: to highlight problems and to try their best to offer solutions. But the great advances of mankind come about not from statesmen, but from ordinary people. Governments across the world appear stuck in what Michael Lind describes as an era of ‘turboparalysis’ — all motion, no progress. But outside government, progress has been nothing short of spectacular.

 

Take global poverty. In 1990, the UN announced Millennium Development Goals, the first of which was to halve the number of people in extreme poverty by 2015. It emerged this year that the target was met in 2008. Yet the achievement did not merit an official announcement, presumably because it was not achieved by any government scheme but by the pace of global capitalism. Buying cheap plastic toys made in China really is helping to make poverty history. And global inequality? This, too, is lower now than any point in modern times. Globalisation means the world’s not just getting richer, but fairer too.

 

The doom-mongers will tell you that we cannot sustain worldwide economic growth without ruining our environment. But while the rich world’s economies grew by 6 per cent over the last seven years, fossil fuel consumption in those countries fell by 4 per cent. This remarkable (and, again, unreported) achievement has nothing to do with green taxes or wind farms. It is down to consumer demand for more efficient cars and factories.

 

And what about the concerns that the oil would run out? Ministers have spent years thinking of improbable new power sources. As it turns out, engineers in America have found new ways of mining fossil fuel. The amazing breakthroughs in ‘fracking’ technology mean that, in spite of the world’s escalating population — from one billion to seven billion over the last two centuries — we live in an age of energy abundance.

 

Advances in medicine and technology mean that people across the world are living longer. The average life expectancy in Africa reached 55 this year. Ten years ago, it was 50. The number of people dying from Aids has been in decline for the last eight years. Deaths from malaria have fallen by a fifth in half a decade.

 

Nature can still wreak havoc. The storms which lashed America’s East Coast in October proved that. But the speed of New York City’s recovery shows a no-less-spectacular resilience. Man cannot control the weather, but as countries grow richer, they can better guard against devastation. The average windstorm kills about 2,000 in Bangladesh but fewer than 20 in America. It’s not that America’s storms are mild; but that it has the money to cope. As developing countries become richer, we can expect the death toll from natural disasters to diminish — and the same UN extrapolations that predict such threatening sea-level rises for Bangladesh also say that, in two or three generations’ time, it will be as rich as Britain.

 

War has historically been humanity’s biggest killer. But in most of the world today, a generation is growing up that knows little of it. The Peace Research Institute in Oslo says there have been fewer war deaths in the last decade than any time in the last century. Whether we are living through an anomalous period of peace, or whether the risk of nuclear apocalypse has proved an effective deterrent, mankind seems no longer to be its own worst enemy. We must bear in mind that things can fall apart, and quickly. Germany was perhaps the most civilised nation in the world in the 1920s. For now, though, it is worth remembering that, in relative terms, we have peace in our time.

 

Christmas in Britain will not be without its challenges: costs are rising (although many children will give quiet thanks for the 70 per cent increase in the price of Brussels sprouts). The country may be midway through a lost decade economically, but our cultural and social capital has seldom been higher — it is hard to think of a time when national morale was as strong as it was during the Jubilee and the Olympics. And even in recession, we too benefit from medical advances. Death rates for both lung and breast cancers have fallen by more than a third over the last 40 years. Our cold winters still kill people, but the number dying each year halved over the past half-century. The winter death toll now stands at 24,000 — still unacceptable in a first-world country, but an improvement nonetheless. Britain’s national life expectancy, 78 a decade ago, will hit 81 next year.

 

Fifty years ago, the world was breathing a sigh of relief after the Cuban missile crisis. Young couples would discuss whether it was responsible to have children when the future seemed so dark. But now, as we celebrate the arrival of Light into the world, it’s worth remembering that, in spite of all our problems, the forces of peace, progress and prosperity are prevailing.

 

 

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/leading-article/8789981/glad-tidings/

[Dexi]

Not sure about the world becoming a more equal place........I read somewhere that in the US the top 1% of the population have more wealth than the entire lower 50 % ....

[Flashermac]

The US isn't the world.

[Coss]

It may have been 1% and 70% a few decades ago

[baa99]

Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and Italy might disagree about the golden age.

[Redbaron]

Countries like Greece etc getting poorer, statistically helps even out the average, if richer countries experience recession etc, and poorer countries stay the same, or prosper a bit, the statisticians can say poverty has slowed.

[gobbledonk]

Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and Italy might disagree about the golden age.

 

You forgot Italy, one of the largest economies in the Euro zone.

 

They have no-one to blame other than their greedy countrymen, particularly in Ireland where the government of the day and the banks colluded with developers to screw the country royally. We have thousands of Irish guys and gals out here - economic 'refugees' forced to leave their families behind - and I havent heard of anyone being charged for the dubious practices that put them on the plane.

[cavanami]

The USA is the same-same. Banks and government screwing Joe, the US citizen! The banks are

out of control. They do what they want and then the US taxpayers bail them out. All the while

the US government fails to prosecute and regulate jack all.

 

Over the past 10 years, US dollar down 50%, compared to the Thai Baht!!!

 

The US middle class continues to shrink. It used to be, work, save some money and buy a house as this was

the place where the middle class could store their nest egg for the future.

That nest egg has been crushed.

 

The only ones to prosper over the past decade have been the politicians who have gotten HUGE increases

in their salary and their retirement/healthcare is intact.

[gobbledonk]

50% ? xe.com has the USD at over 30THB atm, so I pulled up the 10-year chart.

 

http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=THB&view=10Y

 

My reading of that chart is that the USD has bounced around in the 30-35 baht range since 2007 (start of the GFC, from memory), but I have nothing before 2003. If you mean 'half its value relative to inflation', that's a different ballgame - given that this is Asia's century, I dont see that improving anytime soon.

 

It all seems to be based on attractive interest rates:

 

http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=AUD&to=THB&view=10Y

 

2009 was NOT a good year to be an Aussie in Thailand, but things have picked up since it became apparent to investors that very few countries were offering our interest rates on 'safe' investments. The mining boom, if our media is to be believed, is in rapid retreat, but we still have something to offer the people who keep our dollar high. That could all change if Obama gets the US economy back on track.

[baa99]

The USA has been pursuing a cheap dollar policy since 2000 to boost exports and discourage imports (higher prices).