A Little Perspective on Health and Wealth Around the World

[CoderGuy]

This is really interesting, watch in full screen to really get the effect.

http://wimp.com/countriesyears/

[lxskllr]

Hard to believe the Africa of today is as good as the England of the 19th century. In fact, I don't believe it. I think the numbers are lying. You know what they say about statistics....

[CoderGuy]

Hard to believe the Africa of today is as good as the England of the 19th century. In fact, I don't believe it. I think the numbers are lying. You know what they say about statistics....

Well in fairness he did show how much disparity there was once you broke the countries up. I am sure there are parts of Africa that have progressed a lot in 200 years, and others that have actually gone backward.

[lxskllr]

Egypt and South Africa probably heavily benefit the weighting of Africa as a whole.

[Jwalker]

What do you mean lxskllr England in the 19th century had massive epidemics and people lived in slums, electricity was a luxury etc. with food shortages common, Africa today has some epidemics although a lot of the people there have access to vaccines and there's food available if you can afford to buy it, a lot of the countries with food shortages export food or other agricultural goods like coffee or tobacco in huge quantities. (eg. Ethiopia, Malawi) a lot of people there own cell phones more of them have access to the internet and take sub-saharan africa the GDP growth is 5-7 percent which means their economy doubles every 10-12 years.

[lxskllr]

What do you mean lxskllr England in the 19th century had massive epidemics and people lived in slums, electricity was a luxury etc. with food shortages common, Africa today has some epidemics although a lot of the people there have access to vaccines and there's food available if you can afford to buy it, a lot of the countries with food shortages export food or other agricultural goods like coffee or tobacco in huge quantities. (eg. Ethiopia, Malawi) a lot of people there own cell phones more of them have access to the internet and take sub-saharan africa the GDP growth is 5-7 percent which means their economy doubles every 10-12 years.

I'm not seeing it...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines

Electricity was more than a luxury, it was non-existent ;^) I'll take 19th century England over Africa any day of the week. There's really no comparison. The people have cell phones because there's no reliable hardwired infrastructure, even though the technology's over 100 years old, and their internet comes from centrally managed locations, and only to the very few.

[raptor]

Consider that Africa receives a lot of foreign aid to combat famine and depressed medical infrastructure. Not everyone benefits, but I'm sure it accounts for raising of the average.

Also London was disgusting and miserable in the late 1800s and the majority of the country lived there.

[Jwalker]

Most economists will tell you in a lot of cases foreign aid F**ks it up worse, example free food aid causes the market price of food in the area to fall since a lot of people are farmers, they and the people selling the food make less money have more debt that's one example. The governments and the U.N. are corrupt so you get stuff like saddams food for oil program and the U.N. food for sex scandal. That's a fair point London didn't have famines per se but the diet wasn't even comparable to what we have today like meat/milk being consumed less no fresh fruit, vegetables were consumed more which is the only plus, the people survived off of starches, that's why you got diseases related to vitamin deficiency like scurvy(bad example since that was sea related but there were others). London was bad because of the enclosure movement in england and there was a surplus of food because farming was more efficient so you had people crowding in to cities and they didn't know about germs so you had stuff like cholera and dysentery, until the enlightenment figuring of hey maybe we shouldn't s**t in our drinking water. That and they had the "london fog" from people using coal for heating.

[Frosted]

England was a pretty rough place to live then. The rich were very rich and the poor were very poor.
Ireland - that's another story. Ireland was sucked dry by the rich English. Even during the potato famine the English still demanded all food to be exported. All in all the British Isles was a tough place in which to live.

[tom502]

Africa is a continent and not a country. While Africa as a whole seems like a backward stupid mud hole, I suspect some countries in Africa are pretty developed, like South Africa, before Mandela took over, I think it was a well run safe place and modern.

[WickedKitchen]

It's all relative though. I mean, the benchmarks will be moved so the rich axis will expand indefinitely. How old do you think we will get though? I'm shootin' for 80, myself, but a couple of decades from now will it be 95? 100?

I marveled at one of the large dots that wildly swung up and down. I'd suspect that we'd see a good bit of that too. WWIII, perhaps will contract this little graphic. I wonder how they consider the data though. Life expectancy differs throughout the world due to what they consider a life. I can't state it exactly as I don't remember, but some countries consider a still-born baby to be a life thus skewing the data while others don't thus skewing the data the other way. It's interesting nonetheless.

[devilock76]

Africa is a continent and not a country. While Africa as a whole seems like a backward stupid mud hole, I suspect some countries in Africa are pretty developed, like South Africa, before Mandela took over, I think it was a well run safe place and modern.

Ok so why do you believe it is not now that Mandela has taken over? I mean other than racism?

Ken

[sgreger1]

I have a good friend who was born in and lives in South Africa. He spent a year here when I was in high-school. I personally was amazed, first of all he was pasty white and spoke with a heavy english/british accent. I was like "lolwut, there's white people in africa"? He was like *facepalm.

Anyways, SA isn't a terrible place, I mean it's better than most of Africa, but it's not as good as the US or anything.


I think people forget that hunger and lack of resources is part of nature. In one region the monkeys may have everything they need, but in another they may be clinging onto their very existance and barely surviving each winter. It's kind of just how the world works, and I don't really think technology or government is going to ever stop it. It's sad

[devilock76]

I have a good friend who was born in and lives in South Africa. He spent a year here when I was in high-school. I personally was amazed, first of all he was pasty white and spoke with a heavy english/british accent. I was like "lolwut, there's white people in africa"? He was like *facepalm.

Anyways, SA isn't a terrible place, I mean it's better than most of Africa, but it's not as good as the US or anything.


I think people forget that hunger and lack of resources is part of nature. In one region the monkeys may have everything they need, but in another they may be clinging onto their very existance and barely surviving each winter. It's kind of just how the world works, and I don't really think technology or government is going to ever stop it. It's sad

You just reminded me of this bit:

Ken

[raptor]

like South Africa, before Mandela took over, I think it was a well run safe place and modern.

are you for real? so South Africa was an idyllic modern and safe paradise before the darkies (in your mind) took over? Yes, hrm, apartheid, safe and modern.