16 reasons to be cheerful about 2016
By Daniel Hannan
@DanHannanMEP
1 January 2016
Iain Martin closed
the old year with 15 reasons to be cheerful about 2015. Let me open the new one
with 16 reasons to be cheerful about 2016.
1. The world will
be richer. According to the IMF, global GDP will increase by 3.8 per cent in
2016, up from 3.3 per cent in 2015. It’s easy, when you’re sitting at a
computer screen in a developed country, to say “GDP isn’t everything”. But, in
most of the world, 3.8 per cent growth means vaccines and schoolbooks and clean
water and bicycles and electricity.
2. The world will
be cleverer. IQ is rising by around three points a decade. There are various
explanations as to why: better nutrition, smaller families, a greater
propensity to abstract reasoning in post-agrarian societies. Whatever its
cause, the trend shows no sign of slowing. As well as getting better at using
our brains, we know more. We now have a better understanding of evolution than
Darwin, a better understanding of economics than Hayek – not because we are
brighter than those titans, but because we are a click away from information
beyond their imagining.
3. Humanity will
become interconnected. In developed countries, we will benefit from the spread
of social media and Uber and Airbnb. But the real breakthrough is in poorer
countries, where the challenge has been getting Internet access at all. Various
schemes are now underway to bring the world online, including a plan by Google
to use balloons. It’s worth noting that these networks are developing because
of the profit motive, not because of state aid.
4. Energy will be
cheap. Some analysts expect the price of oil to continue to slide, perhaps to
as little as $20 a barrel. Others forecast a slight recovery. But no one thinks
it will return to the three-figure sums that we recently took for granted.
Cheap energy isn’t just good news for consumers. It also means cheaper
production costs, and a competitive lift to the entire economy.
5. Despots will be
weaker. Which countries stand to lose most from the plummeting oil price?
Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela. And populist socialism will peak.
6. Poverty will
fall. According to the World Bank, fewer than ten per cent of the world now
live in extreme poverty, defined as $1.90 a day or less. That figure has fallen
by more than two thirds since 1990, as previously closed economies joined the
global market system. The total eradication of extreme poverty now looks not
just feasible but likely.
7. India will
become a global power. The world’s largest democracy is, for the first time,
becoming an active international sponsor of democracy.
8. The world will
be greener. The Paris Conference marked a shift toward achievable carbon
targets embraced voluntarily by nation-states – a far more realistic policy
than the previous idea of rules enforced by a global bureaucracy. But there is
more to environmentalism than global warming. Indoor cooking fires, which are
arguably the most noxious pollutant of all, are being dispaced. More agrarian
land will be “rewilded” in 2016, as modern farming leads to greater yields from
the same acreage. More species will be taken off the endangered list.
9. The world will
be healthier. It looks as though we have seen the last case of polio in Africa,
and the disease may be eradicated from its last hideouts in Afghanistan and
Pakistan this year. Yaws and malaria may not be far behind; even measles and
rubella are on their way to extinction.
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10. Food world prices will continue to stabilize, if not
decline. Here are 3 charts to support this optimism.
After peaking in early 2011, Vietnam rice price has declined. One more reason why rice protectionism in the Philippines should end and allow the poor to have more access to cheaper rice from our neighbors in East Asia.
Overall world food prices have increased in the past decade. The massive conversion of food output to biofuel is partly responsible for this. Corn and other crops were used to feed cars and trucks, not people. By 2013, prices have stabilized and mildly declined.
We have entered a world of rising prosperity, rising food security, rising human freedom. Not abruptly but slowly and surely. Happy new year, once again.
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See also:
Fireworks and Liberty: New Year 2012, January 01, 2012
Happy New Year, January 01, 2013
Top 10 News in 2014, Happy New Year 2015, December 31, 2014
Thank you, 2015, December 31, 2015
Top 10 good news about the world, Happy new year, December 31, 2015
