Trying to get to the healthy wealthy corner

I hunch we agree on that point, and it seems clear from the data presentation that started this discussion. What the next 200 years will bring is not just anybody's guess, because it depends very much on the previous 200. At this point, it seems China is on its way up, and the US is on its way down.

And, to turn your earlier question around, could the US have achieved its success without China? (For instance, who would have built the railways?) The world's economies are becoming increasingly inter-dependent - I hunch we all need each other in more ways than we know.

 

What the video doesn't express adequately is the polarization of wealth and income adjusted for inflation (as far as I can tell).

Our lifetimes are getting longer, but wealth is becoming concentrated such that average folk are actually making the same or even less as time progresses, while an elite few reap the largest benefit.

 

No, but it sure helps. A few poor folks may remain healthy due to good luck if they have a good diet and good sanitation. Good sanitation is possible without wealth in rural areas. But in third-world cities, poverty will condemn you to living in places without sanitation. And if you do get sick, wealth gives you access to medical care. Poor people die of things that are easily cured.

So wealth is not necessary for health, but poverty greatly increases your chances of bad health.

 

Not for the poorest of their people. The destitute poor in third world cities today have worse health than the rural peasants in those same countries 200 years ago, and worse than rural farmers 200 years ago in countries that are now industrial. The medical technology and knowledge exists, but even the cheapest medicines are beyond their reach, and they are living in unsanitary and squalid and overcrowded conditions where diseases proliferate and spread much more rapidly than they did among the disperse populations of 200 years ago.

There's almost 7 times more people now than there were 200 years ago, and the percentage of the population living in cities has skyrocketed. In industrialized countries, we have potable water, sewer systems, and clinics and hospitals. The the third world, cities are far more crowded, and the poorest parts of those cities have neither clean water, nor adequate sewers and sometimes none at all, nor doctors.