The world is getting better: Let’s have a beer

A few days ago I had good news about how global income was up and global inequality was down.

Global GDP per capita may have dipped in 2009, but it has now surpassed its previous peak of 2008. $11,200 dollars a head, pretty good going a few years after the biggest global contraction since the 1930s. On top of that the world is now on its way to becoming a more equal place…

If you don’t like no stinking facts and think neoclassical economics is a load of bull, your prerogative of course, then witness the phenomenal growth of beer consumption.

Via Felix Salmon here is a new paper by Liesbeth Colen and Johan Swinnen which shows a quadrupling of beer consumption over the last 50 years.

That’s not just the west getting drunker, if anything we’ve become more refined in our tastes, that is Indians and Chinese lifting a few glasses to success.

Cheers all.

Filed under: Foreign Affairs