The right one will help
Population Migrations, the Panama Canal, the Good News
From the always excellent Athan Clark at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation:
“The numbers don’t lie.
In recent years, there has been significant migration from high-tax and high-regulation states to economically free states with lighter tax and regulatory burdens.
This migration pattern paints a compelling picture. States like California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois are losing residents to Florida, Texas — and of course, Georgia, which is renowned for its relatively low taxes and business-friendly environment.
Just three states welcomed more people last year. Specifically, data show that while just 8,889 individuals moved from Georgia to New York, a staggering 16,535 people — nearly double — made the reverse move from New York to Georgia. This resulted in a net migration of 7,646 individuals favoring Georgia over New York. A similar trend is evident in migration flows from New Jersey, Illinois and California, with Georgia consistently attracting more residents from these states than it loses.”
“The more you do, the more you are positioned to do.”
—King Prime
Panama Canal officials decided this week to reduce the daily number of vessels allowed to transit the shipping passage by 50%, amid severe drought conditions. Estimated losses from the cutbacks are expected to cost Panama nearly $700M this year and have domino effects on global shipping. The reduction further strains global trade as the world's other major canal, the Suez in Egypt, sees drops in traffic amid escalating conflict in the Middle East. Supply Chain woes, here we come again!
The 50-mile canal across the isthmus of Panama is one of the world's busiest trade routes, hosting 5% of all maritime volume and 40% of all US container traffic, a total of roughly $270B in cargo annually. First opened in 1914 to facilitate faster trade between the east coast of the US and Asia, the canal requires 50 million gallons of fresh water for each of the 15,000 annual ships using its lock system.
Al Gore once claimed that global warming would raise sea levels and flood the Panama Canal making it unusable. It was a cornerstone for his economic arguments that global shipping problems make climate change a global problem, in need of concerted global action.
“Excellence is the next five minutes,
improvement is the next five minutes,
happiness is the next five minutes.”
—Tim Ferriss
We are all addicted to the 24 hour news cycle, even those amongst my friends who no longer tune into the news of the day. “Society is in an inevitable decline,” goes the message and we look for confirmation bias all the time. It’s simply isn’t true. Despite the politics of this day or that one, there are some stats that will blow your mind about how life is getting better on this planet every day:
Between 2001 and 2021, the death rate for children with Cancer in the United States declined by 24%. Fully one in four children who would have died, lived. If that cancer was childhood leukemia, that number jumps to 47%, almost half of those who would have died, lived. Now, imagine that your child was one of those that lived. Is life getting better or not?
Big cities are becoming less violent. Homicides in the US saw a 12.8% decline in 2023. Detroit historically battles New Orleans for highest number of homicides each year. Last year, both cities saw declines in the number of citizens lost to homicide, with Detroit’s tally dropping 18%. Each of those percentage points represents dozens of people with lives ahead of them. Every data point has a face, here.
About 40% of the world’s power generation is now renewable. In 2022, 83% of new power generation that came online was renewable. Whether you care about green issues or not, the provision of more power in a sustainable way should benefit everyone.
Even factoring in the deaths associated with the pandemic and the COVID vaccines, life expectancy in the US rose to 77.5 years continuing a decades-long run where people are living longer and higher quality lives. Doesn’t sound like much? Each increase represents a few more weeks or months that you get to spend with a loved one before saying goodbye forever. It matters to those it matters to.
Sickle-cell anemia, a pernicious disease disproportionally affecting African-Americans was cured for the first time. The patient? A 5 year New Jersey boy. A disease that has killed hundreds of thousands now has a path to a cure and eradication.
Dementia rates around the world are falling. The rate of new cases in Europe and North America has declined by 13% per decade over the past 25 years. You will literally hear stories about the rise of dementia in the news all the time, and the science belies that. Don’t think it matters? Each of those numbers are an older person with memories that deserve to be shared with loved ones.
The proportion of children living in extreme poverty fell 6% between 2013 and 2022. The world GDP ballooned during those years even despite the pandemic and that wealth found its way down to the poorest among us. Imagine the hunger, disease, education deficit and human potential being alleviated or eliminated. Imagine if that was your child.