Quit Your Griping, the World is Fine

I just ran across an article that hasn't made any headlines, nor been played on the evening news. No, of course not--it's hard to point fingers at a villain there's no villainy to report.

From the WSJ opinion article:

But here they are: World-wide illiteracy rates have fallen by half since 1970 and now stand at an all-time low of 18%. More people live in free countries than ever before. The average human being today will live 50% longer in 2025 than one born in 1955.

To what do we owe this improvement? Capitalism, according to the U.N. Free trade is rightly recognized as the engine of global prosperity in recent years. In 1981, 40% of the world's population lived on less than $1 a day. Now that percentage is only 25%, adjusted for inflation. And at current rates of growth, "world poverty will be cut in half between 2000 and 2015"--which is arguably one of the greatest triumphs in human history. Trade and technology are closing the global "digital divide," and the report notes hopefully that soon laptop computers will cost $100 and almost every schoolchild will be a mouse click away from the Internet (and, regrettably, those interminable computer games).

So the next time you hear someone's anti-capitalist, anti-corporate rant, recall that it is the corporations, supported by free trade and capitalism, that are the ones making the world a better place for everyone. And you can tell them to shut their yaps.