{"id":1239,"date":"2019-12-24T05:46:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-24T05:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=1239"},"modified":"2025-09-29T14:42:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T14:42:59","slug":"two-articles-worldwide-its-been-a-great-decade-maybe-the-greatest-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=1239","title":{"rendered":"Two articles -Worldwide it’s been a great decade – maybe the greatest in history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howzat? An op ed from the Wall Street Journal and an article from The Spectator (UK).<\/p>\n

\"Globe<\/a><\/p>\n

From the Journal –<\/p>\n

The 2010s have been the best decade ever. The evidence is overwhelming. Start with the United Nations Development Report. Framed as a warning about inequality, it plays down the good news: \u201cThe gap in basic living standards is narrowing, with an unprecedented number of people in the world escaping poverty, hunger and disease.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The World Bank reports that the world-wide rate of extreme poverty fell more than half, from 18.2% to 8.6%, between 2008 and 2018. Last year the World Data Lab calculated that for the first time, more than half the world\u2019s population can be considered \u201cmiddle class.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Health progress has been remarkable. People have better access to water, sanitation, health care and vaccines than ever. The incidence of malaria in Africa declined almost 60% from 2007 to 2017, and antiretroviral therapy reduced HIV\/AIDS deaths more than half.<\/p>\n

Global life expectancy increased by more than three years in the past 10 years, mostly thanks to prevention of childhood deaths. According to the U.N., the global mortality rate for children under 5 declined from 5.6% in 2008 to 3.9% in 2018. A longer perspective shows how far we\u2019ve come. Since 1950, Chad has reduced the child mortality rate by 56%, and it\u2019s the worst-<\/em>performing country in the world. South Korea reduced it by 98%.<\/p>\n

Hasn\u2019t this all come at the cost of a despoiled environment? No. At a certain point developed countries start polluting less. Death rates from air pollution declined by almost a fifth world-wide and a quarter in China between 2007 and 2017, according to the online publication Our World in Data.<\/p>\n

***************<\/p>\n

Progress isn\u2019t guaranteed. Look how wealthy Venezuela collapsed under the burden of crazy policies. A war between major powers, or a financial crash after a decade of easy money, could throw the world off course. So could never-ending trade wars and an unraveling of globalization.<\/p>\n

Yet we\u2019ve lived through a period of populist revolts and geopolitical tensions, and wherever societies have been open and markets free, scientists, innovators and businesses persisted and made greater progress than ever.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the case for optimism. Tin-pot strongmen, looting politicians and punctilious bureaucrats make mischief with societies and economies. But mankind creates faster than they can squander, and repairs more than they can destroy.<\/p>\n

And from the Spectator – a British magazine –<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve just had the best decade in human history. Seriously Little of this made the news, because good news is no news<\/a><\/p>\n

Let nobody tell you that the second decade of the 21st century has been a bad time. We are living through the greatest improvement in human living standards in history. Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 percent of the world\u2019s population for the first time. It was 60 percent when I was born. Global inequality has been plunging as Africa and Asia experience faster economic growth than Europe and North America; child mortality has fallen to record low levels; famine virtually went extinct; malaria, polio and heart disease are all in decline.<\/p>\n

Little of this made the news, because good news is no news. But I\u2019ve been watching it all closely. Ever since I wrote The Rational Optimist<\/em> in 2010, I\u2019ve been faced with \u2018what about\u2026\u2019 questions: what about the great recession, the euro crisis, Syria, Ukraine, Donald Trump? How can I possibly say that things are getting better, given all that? The answer is: because bad things happen while the world still gets better. Yet get better it does, and it has done so over the course of this decade at a rate that has astonished even starry-eyed me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Howzat? An op ed from the Wall Street Journal and an article from The Spectator (UK). From the Journal – The 2010s have been the best decade ever. The evidence is overwhelming. Start with the United Nations Development Report. Framed as a warning about inequality, it plays down the good news: \u201cThe gap in basic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7581,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239\/revisions\/7581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}