One of the themes I tend to harp upon when talking about the pros and cons of development is that, as the great Aaron Wildavsky pointed out long ago, wealthier is healthier.
My colleague Mark Perry showed the relationship pretty well back in January, with this chart:
But a new chart, from an article in the New England Journal of Medicine: The Burden of Disease and the Changing Task of Medicine, gives us an idea of how this happens. The radical reduction in communicable diseases is remarkable.
h/t Wonkblog
Yes, so what are we going to do to close the gap? Republican policies certainly don’t want to do anything about it. But wait, that’s because the current crop on the Right actually *doesn’t* have the best interests of the country at heart. How quickly I forget …