Happy Talk

Jeff Thredgold, my favorite economic futurist, can't go six months
without posting about all the really neat things we could rightly
be thankful for.  Full newsletter here.  A sampling here:

During the early 1960s, the five-year survival rate from cancer for Americans was one in three. Today it is two in three…continuing to climb…and the highest in the world

The U.S. accounted for 34% of the funds spent globally on research & development (R&D) during 2010

The country’s net petroleum imports peaked at 60.3% in 2005 and dropped to 49.3% in 2010. Within a year,North Dakota is expected to supply more oil for domestic use than the 1.1 million barrels a day that Saudi Arabia now exports to the U.S.

The number of violent crimes fell by a surprisingly large 12% last year versus the prior year

Conventional thirty-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 4.06% in recent weeks, the lowest level in 60 year

America produces more steel today than 30 years ago, despite the shuttered plants and slimmed-down work force

Average U.S. life expectancy has reached 78.2 years (men 75, women 80), the highest ever. This compares to 76 years in 1995, 68 years in 1950, and 47 years in 1900

Roughly 30% of trash was recycled or composted in the latest year, versus 16% in 1990

When comparing economic size and population, the average U.S. worker is 10-12 times more productive than the average worker in China. Americans won 30 Nobel prizes in science and economics during the past five years. China?…just one


The upward “mobility” of the typical American remains the greatest in the world. Why? The U.S.economy “rewards” the combination of hard work and educational achievement more than ever before…and more than any other country in the world 

U.S. exports to China have risen roughly 24% per year since 2001, making China the fastest growing market for U.S.goods

For every dollar of U.S. economic output generated today, we burn less than half as much oil as 30 years ago