200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes

[sydude]

Here's a very worthwhile video to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

[dalyduo]

Pretty neat... yes. Smart guy and great graphic representation.

[rslonaker]

Good post Sy,
Hans has several talks with his very cool graphing system on the TEDtalks site. Worth looking up.
http://www.ted.com/

[Rossfeld]

Uhm, hate to be a killjoy but I have some issues with the graph. It goes 400, 4000, 40000 which skews the linearity of the data. Ie the left side represents only a 3,600 change but the right side is 36,000.

[rslonaker]

I would guess with the time frame in mind, he adjusted for inflation.

[sjames2222]

Interesting graphics...but are we as a society extending our lifespan at the cost of decreasing our quality of life. Visit a local nursing home, hospital or emergency room; it might change the way you look at healthcare today.

[oldredracer]

Skitch Henderson's dancing bubbles aside, if he extends the graph to 2050 it will graphically demonstrate both the rise and fall of civilizations based primarily on the type of government although it's doing a pretty good job as is.
The least restrictive ones are the first to rise. Then, as the nasty ones see the benefits and free things up, they float up while the freer ones get greedy and start to emulate the nasty ones and crash to the ground.
We spent six weeks in the hospital this year and the healthcare was pretty darn good. But in another 10 years? Maybe not so much.
Merry Christmas.

[Slowhands]

Very interesting and quite hopeful as well. Helps to see beyond the short-term focus we have developed more recently.

The horizontal axis is logarithmic-- it helps data appear more linear when it is really a more gradual, exponential curve up.

The big driver for both axes is cheap energy (in the form of coal and petroleum) which provided the wealth that made possible the improvements in public health, sanitation, and vaccination that are the reason for increased lifespan. Also provided fertilizers and energy for large scale agriculture to feed our world relatively cheaply. These were usually central government programs in all countries, whether nominally capitalist or not.

As long as we have a cheap source of energy (we may have to find replacements), we should keep heading in the right direction, if we can grow enough food and our waste doesn't poison our planet.

Scott's point is well made-- we spend a large percentage of our health care dollars in the last year of a person's life, and these expenses make doctors and hospitals rich but do little to increase either lifespan or quality of life. Much of it is for ICU care, which is not where I personally want to die.

Glad you had a good experience with your health care, oldred. All the noise in Washington obscures the real challenge facing healthcare, though -- it's not political ideology as most would have you believe, it's just simple demographics. We've been spoiled by being on the lucky side of the demographic bubble for all these years, now it is approaching (past?) the tipping point of more older people consuming more expensive healthcare and fewer younger people to generate the income to pay for it. And with dramatic increases in productivity, corporations seem to be able to generate pretty decent profits without having to hire people. No jobs, no money put in for health insurance premiums by either employer or employee. So you're right about ten years time-- doesn't matter who's in charge in D.C. between now and then, it's still gonna be a pickle, because the problem itself has nothing to do with whether the solution is "public" or "private.".