200 Years That Changed the World

200 Years That Changed the World

In this video Hans Rosling demonstrates two hundred years of dramatic world change. This isn’t something to sneeze at but if you want to ask “So What?” then the answers to the “so what” question are manifold. Here is but one:

The world in general trends towards the good – throwing conventional politics and philosophy aside for the moment (colonialism vs industrialization vs education vs capitalism vs. communism etc.) a key thing that occurred to spur the tremendous growth in economies everywhere was the tapping of abundant cheap energy through technology. Given plentiful energy then prodigious leaps were bound to occur, so it’s thoroughly wrong-headed to think of energy itself as being an evil.  Instead view it as a neutral: it’s something we can use well or abuse.

So while everyone is crying doom and gloom right now, I like to view the long term. Every setback in human history has been far outdone by amazing progress through our collective and individual wills toward the good.

I’m not non-plussed or threatened that China is booming, it doesn’t worry me that India is making wondrous progress – neighbors who have wealth are much less of a threat, and much more of a contributor to overall worldwide good than those who are poor.

Watch the video, and pay attention to the countries where Freedom came, and where energy is in abundant use. Conventional wisdom is that we use abundant energy because we are a rich country – I don’t believe conventional wisdom because history proves that wrong. Instead we are rich because we use high energy – we must continue that if we want the world to continue to progress.

The other thing to notice is the pace of change – as energy and eduction increase together, we accelerate that pace. We are on an ever faster trajectory towards a better life for all, but… we have to continue to increase rather than decrease energy use across the planet, and we have to increase the pace of education.

Down the Road is 2011: Dems Plan to Raise Taxes By Letting Bush Tax Cuts Expire

Barney Frank on MSNBC talking about how “down the road” [translation: after Barack is elected] we need to tax “the rich” more to pay for even more stimulus now [translation: money for cronies and democrat groups.] The Democrat definition of “rich” changes depending on audience, but in the end you will pay. You always do:

Rep. Frank: “Yes, I believe later on there should be tax increases. Speaking personally, I think there are a lot of very rich people out there whom we can tax at a point down the road and recover some of this money.”(CNBC’s “Closing Bell,” 10/20/08)

As stated before, when you “tax the rich” (2/3rds of small businesses) YOU end up paying.

Say What Barack?

This is hilarious.

[editor: Well it was hilarious, but now they’ve pulled the air gauge vid. Here’s the latest McCain ad as a poor substitute.]