Step Back - It's Not So Bad

At the top of my mind as global financial markets are in turmoil and people are panicking, is that people are generally in denial about the cyclical nature of Free Markets. Just as with any growth stock of a strong company, the long term trend is upward, but there are periodic corrections when overvaluation temporarily occurs.

Step back and look at how far we've come

Excerpted from http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0301b.asp
"In Pursuit of Sustainable Development: Political Planning versus the Free Market"
by Richard M. Ebeling, January 2003

World hunger and poverty have been dramatically reduced around the world during the last half-century. Since 1950, world population has increased by 90 percent. But because of increased production and productivity in global agriculture, average daily food supplies per person have increased 24 percent, worldwide, during this same period; and the increase has been even larger in developing countries, being about 38 percent on average per person.

Life expectancy also significantly improved during the last 50 years. In 1950 life expectancy in the developed countries was 66.5 years, while in the developing world it was 40.9 years. In 1998, life expectancy had risen to 74.5 years in the developed countries (a 12 percent increase) and to 63.6 years in the developing nations (a 55.5 percent increase).

In Africa life expectancy between 1950 and 1998 increased by 42.3 percent, from 37.8 years to 53.8 years; while in India, life expectancy rose by 62.5 percent, from 38.7 years to 62.9 years.

Infant mortality has also shown the same positive trend over the past 50 years. Worldwide, 156 children out of 1,000 births died under the age of one in 1950; that fell to 58 out of every 1,000 births by 1998, or a decline of 63 percent. Fifty years ago the infant mortality rate was 58 out of every 1,000 births in the developed countries, and 179 out of every 1,000 in the developing nations. These fell, respectively, to 9 and 64 out of every 1,000 births, percentage declines of 85 percent and 65 percent, respectively. The decline was 64 percent in India during this period, from 190 to 69, and a decrease of 50 percent in Africa during this half-century, from 185 to 91 per 1,000 births.

Literacy has also been on the rise in recent decades. Between 1970 and 1997, illiteracy worldwide dropped from 45.8 percent of the global population to 25.6 percent. And child labor during this period has also declined. Among children between the ages of 10 and 14 around the world, child labor has decreased from 24 percent to 12.6 percent.