Thursday, January 12, 2012

I hit the lottery!!

Yep, I hit the lottery!  And so did you!  What I mean is that we live in the greatest country in the world, in the greatest civilization the planet has ever seen.

I'm certainly no sophisticated world traveler, having lived in or visited only about fifteen or so countries.  But I've seen enough to feel confident in my assessment of our good fortune.  Let me share my reasoning with you.

These days, we hear so much about how China is rapidly overtaking the good ol' US of A - we're losing ground to that industrious people.  Well, how 'bout some statistics to get a handle on the real picture.  Even if you just look at GDP, we outproduce not just China, whose population is over four times ours, but China, Japan, and Germany (producers #2 through #4) put together.  Let's take a look at per capita GDP - ours is $46,000; China's is $3,920.  Are we sure they're more industrious than we are?

What about standard of living?  How many of us would prefer to live as the average Chinese citizen lives, versus how we live?  As recently as 1985, only ten percent of urban households had refrigerators (curiously, over 18 percent had color television sets at the time), and the figure was much lower in rural areas.  Of course, if you're "fortunate" enough to live in an urban area, your brand new apartment building might just topple over without warning.  Hey, but at least you have a fridge!  The Economist Intelligence Unit's Quality of Life Index ranks the US thirteenth in the world, China sixtieth.  The Chinese economy is growing rapidly, but the way they're achieving that growth is creating some serious problems, especially within the communist framework.

I'm not saying we don't have our share of problems - of course we do.  If you're alive, you're gonna have problems; it comes with the territory.  Let's just keep some perspective.  Then, let's get to tackling our problems with a spirit of gratitude!

Dave