The OECD was founded by the Marshall Plan countries in the wake of World War II, and its purpose is what its name says. The OECD wants to make everyone rich as hell, although it never quite confesses to this in its literature. In 1995 the OECD published a book by economist Angus Maddison title Monitoring the World Economy 1820–1992. Maddison has been studying economic growth since the 1950s, and has examined and weighed the subject’s statistics and statistical estimates. On the strength of these, Maddison calculates that until the Industrial Revolution, economic growth was paltry. Measured in 1990 U.S. dollars, the world gross domestic product—the value of everything produced on earth—went from $565 per person in 1500 to $651 per person in 1820. That was an increase in wealth of about 27 cents a year. But after the Industrial Revolution, something wonderful happened. The total world GDP grew from $695 billion in 1820 to almost $28 trillion in 1992. This planet had the same amount of arable land in 1992 as it had in 1820, and, arguably, fewer natural resources. Plus, population had grown from a little more than 1 billion to nearly 5.5 billion. But even so, world GDP per capita swelled from $651 to $5,145. Prosperity increased by $26 a year. Wealth has been growing a hundred times faster than it did before the Industrial Age.‡‡‡‡‡ The modern economy works, and we know how to make it work better. Free markets are extremely successful. The evidence is there for anyone who wants to look. Hong Kong, with 6.5 million people in 402 square miles, has an annual GDP of $163.6 billion. Tanzania, with 29.5 million people in 342,100 square miles, has a GDP of $18.9 billion. Even a free market with lots of tax baggage and regulatory impediments is much better than a market that isn’t free. Sweden has about the same amount of arable land as Cuba, a similar range of natural resources, a worse climate, and a couple million fewer people. But Sweden’s GDP is more than eleven times the size of Cuba’s. And the free market trumps education and culture. North Korea has a 99 percent literacy rate, a disciplined, hardworking society, and a $900 per-capita GDP. Morocco has a 43.7 percent literacy rate, a society that spends all day drinking coffee and pestering tourists to buy rugs, and a $3,260 per-capita GDP.
We know what to do, and we know how to do it. So what’s wrong with the world? To a certain extent, it’s the same thing that’s wrong with me. Because the
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