If you’ve never understood economists, then this article in last week’s edition of, ahem, The Economist, will probably do little to change that.
Focusing on GDP per person also affects comparisons of economic health over time. During the past five years, world GDP has grown by an average of 4.5% a year, its fastest for more than three decades, though not as fast as during the golden age of the 1960s when annual growth exceeded 5%. But the world’s population is now growing at half of its pace in the 1960s, and so world income per head has increased by more over the past five years than during any other period on record. Mankind has never had it so good.
Rising interest rates and petrol prices for instance may not lead too many people, in this part of the world at least, to agree with the sentiment that “Mankind has never had it so good”…
