A Prosperity Dilemma
I often write about the scandal of global poverty and preventable disease.
But the crisis of the future will be a crisis of prosperity.
In 1975, about 2.5 billion people were at "medium human development" -- supplied with the basic necessities of life. Today, by the accounting of the United Nations, that figure exceeds 4 billion.
This, in many ways, is the world as we wished it. One of Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms was "freedom from want . . . everywhere in the world." And we have come closer to that goal than many would have predicted. Through most of history, poverty, squalor and early death were nearly universal outside the courts of kings -- expected and justified as part of the natural order.… Seguir leyendo »