This was the best 20 minutes I've spent in a long time...

You can't be me, I'm taken

Thanks !

However, some questionable comments :

While commenting on poverty: "of course it's a logarithmic scale" Heh!

 

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

Thanks, wchurchill!

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

But although the tools are 'free' they seem to be keeping a tight grip on them, and limiting the applications to one very specific kind of data visualisation.

I can imagine a lot of people wanting to use them, but - not so far, it seems.

And he is quite an entertaining lecturer, at least he was last time I heard him (I have not seen the youtube video). Though he got quite defensive when challenged by students on the sustainability of the trends described in his data.

But is the Third World necessarily improving specifically thanks to globalization? Is aggressive free market globalization necessarry for healthy progress? Aren't priorities of each contry more important?

Comparison of child mortality rates Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea against, respectively, Turkey, Russia, Pakistan, South Africa, Poland rather shows that the world can be better off without misguided "advancement". Obsession with GDP growth is actually impending essential improvements.

I will continue in this thread.

(His first post is titled Fact based worldview.)

Thanks very much for finding and sharing this, wchurchill.  Is providing much food for thought -- and re-thinking.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

That is one take-away I get from Rosling.

Another take-away:  Even when there is less and less wealth, if you allocate what wealth you do have effectively, you can nevertheless improve the overall state of your society.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

First, I think it's a bit short to set the poverty line at US$ 1 a day and, once people earn US$ 1,1O, to say they are out of poverty! Hence my remark about the logarithmic scale above. That doesn't mean I don't acknowledge some progress has been made, but we have to be very careful about assertions in this field.

And to say that the income gap  between countries is closing, again using the same logarithmic scale, is questionable. It is particularly questionable if you look at data country by country and not by whole regions.

One important phenomenon is that, even if inequality between countries is still very high, it is gradually replaced by inequality within countries. In the current trend, we are heading towards a worldwide social stratification, with a global super-rich class getting richer and richer, a numerous middle-class stagnating in the developed countries and catching up in the developing ones, and a huge proletariat losing ground in developed countries and barely improving in the developing ones.

The only countries resisting this trend (so far) are Canada, European countries, (except for UK, maybe Ireland, and some Central European countries) and maybe Australia.    

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char