The Up Wing

E18: Trump is a degrowther, tariffs are taxing Americans hard, trade lifts all boats and “Breakfast for Eight Billion” @theupwing. If we're going to turn our backs on something, let's make it degrowth. theupwing.com/edition18/

“It's one of the best headlines of the year you might have missed. The average global life expectancy is forecast to increase by nearly five years by 2050, from 73.6 years to 78.1 years, as the average global burden of disease continues to fall.”

Bhutan prioritised “happiness,” South Korea, economic growth. South Korea pulled ahead in living standards, from life expectancy to child mortality, and from poverty to subjective happiness. Can money and economic growth buy happiness? Yes it can. vox.com/policy/471950/…

“Life expectancy rose from 54 in 1960 to 66 by 1980 to 83 today, a decade higher than in Bhutan. Infant mortality fell by roughly 97 percent.”

Paul Ehrlich’s dire predictions never came to pass, but they did plenty of damage. Fortunately, even his intellectual allies have abandoned his core premise of humans as planetary parasites. cc: @VincentGeloso thedailyeconomy.org/article/dancin…

Ranking at the very bottom of the list: Botswana, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan — where life expectancy is 15 years lower than the United States, and child mortality is more than eight times higher.

Mapped: The Happiest Countries in the World, @VisualCap visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-wor…

“Our goal as individuals and as a civilization must be to understand those conditions which led to human flourishing – and to utilize the knowledge and tools at our disposal to encourage its further propagation.”

“While progress forward is by no means progress completed nor a guarantee of progress to come, the remarkable improvements in global living standards serve, not as a high water or finish line, but rather as a source of inspiration and hope.” theupwing.com/9-astonishing-…

“In 2022, the top 50 percent of earners … paid 97 percent of federal income taxes. And the top one percent alone paid over 40 percent.” — Why No One Understands Taxes, @kiteandkeymedia youtu.be/MhmfTsLFuAM?si…

@tonymmorley “The maternal mortality rate remained high for millennia because little was done to address the causes effectively, the most common of which — both then and now — were severe bleeding and infection after childbirth, complications in delivery, obstructed labor,”

“Prior to the 20th century, women with the means to have a doctor attend their birth found their reserves of strength sapped by what was little more than guesswork.”

@simonmaechling I want wealth. I want material abundance. I want liberty and freedom. 🗽 I want high living standards. Good. That’s exactly what capitalism is for.

“Voluntary exchange of work for wages” “benefits all participants, or else they would not choose to participate. By contrast, everything the government does, it does by force of mandatory taxation. That is why no one writes ‘thank you’”

E24: Trade, Trust, The Wealth of Nations, “First-of-its-kind vaccine” for E. coli in children, and more: theupwing.com/edition24/

E24: Trade, Trust, The Wealth of Nations, “First-of-its-kind vaccine” for E. coli in children, and more: @tonymmorley for The Up Wing @theupwing newsletter; progress delivered. 📦

“As Bill Bryson put it in his book At Home, A Short History of Private Life, “There is no doubt that children once died in great numbers and that parents had to adjust their expectations accordingly. The world before the modern era was overwhelmingly a place of tiny coffins.”