I can't wait...
 

Met dank aan Johan Norberg :-)



(Parental Advisory: This post contains good news. If you are not used to this after having followed the media the last few months, don´t read too much at once.)

The World Bank has just published its Global Economic Prospects 2007, and it tries to say something intelligent about what current knowledge and present trends say about the next 25 years. And it has some reallly bad news for pessimists:

- Growth per capita in developing countries will be 3.1 percent annually, compared to 2.1 percent since 1980. (And this is a moderate estimate compared to the last five years´ 4.6 percent!)

- The average income in developing countries will more than double, from $4 800 today to $11 000 in 2030 (similar to the Czech Republic´s income per capita today).

- Developing countries´ part of global output will increase from one-fifth to nearly one-third, purchasing power will surpass half.

- Coutries like China, Mexico and Turkey will have living standards close to Spain´s today.

- The "middle class" (earning $4 000-17 000 per capita) in developing countries will increase from 400 million to 1.2 billion.

- Extreme poverty (<$1/day) will be reduced from 1.1 billion to 550 million - from 20 percent to 8 percent of the developing country population (it was 40 percent in 1980).


Caveats: The World Bank points out that this improvement could be much faster if we see big technological breaktroughs in the years to come (which we will) and if we see faster reforms (which we can make happen).

Hold onto your hat.

En wat zijn de vooruitzichten voor de reeds ontwikkelde landen :-P ?

Uit de bijgevoegde link:

De WB is niet bepaald het meest geloofwaardige voorspellingsorgaan gebleken in de recentste decennia.

Misschien even zijn al te lang uitgestelde herstructuring of afschaffing en vervanging door een meer social responsible institution afwachten?
I can't wait...