world bank

Donny Kendal and John Nothdurft, with the help of Charlie Katebi, present episode #158 of the In The Tank Podcast. This week’s episode features work from the Cato Institute, the World Bank, The Heartland Institute, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, the Yankee Institute for Public Policy, and Pew Charitable Trusts.

USA finances prolonged poverty, misery, disease, and death through international banks.

This is the time to give thanks, and I hope that your family has much to be thankful for this year.  Thanksgiving offers a time to reflect on the prosperity we enjoy. 

Last year (2014), China overtook the United States in gross domestic product adjusted for purchasing power (GDP-PPP, see point 4 for explanation), according to both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (Note 1). It may come as a surprise, but this is really a matter of China simply reasserting its position as the world’s largest economy, which it had lost around 1890 to the United States. This is based on estimates developed by the late legendary economist Angus Maddison of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Smoking, obesity, exposure to toxic chemicals: Which of these factors do you think plays the biggest role in determining how deadly prostate cancer will be in a given situation? The correct answer is none of them. The most life-threatening factor in prostate cancer is poverty, coupled with a lack of access to electricity. This condition, called “energy poverty” by the World Bank, is the reason all illnesses – including prostate cancer – are far more devastating to people in poor nations than in the developed world.

In our world of laptops, iPads, flat-screen TVs, microwaves, and jet-skis, it is easy to forget that 1.3 billion people on this planet, nearly one in five overall, do not have access to electricity. Even fewer people have access to clean cooking areas, as 2.6 billion people (38 percent of the world’s population) use traditional biomass—such as wood and animal dung—or coal indoors to cook their meals. As a result, indoor air pollution prematurely claims 3.5 million lives every year, more than double the lives claimed by either malaria or HIV/AIDS. These people are victims of energy poverty.

Today, more than 1.2 billion people do not have access to electricity.