Todd Way's Public Library

I often remind my right-to-life friends that Christians took their
children with them to martyrdom rather than have them raised pagan. Christians believe
there is much worth dying for. We do not believe that human life is an absolute good in
and of itself. Of course our desire to protect human life is part of our seeing each human
being as God's creature. But that does not mean that we believe that life is an overriding
good.

To say that life is an overriding good is to underwrite the modern sentimentality that
there is absolutely nothing in this world worth dying for. Christians know that
Christianity is simply extended training in dying early. That is what we have always been
about. Listen to the Gospel! I know that today we use the church primarily as a means of
safety, but life in the church actually involves extended training in learning to die
early.

For economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the last 20 years [of the current form of globalization, from 1980 - 2000] have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with the previous two decades [1960 - 1980]. For each indicator, countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980). Among the findings:

• Growth: The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced and across the board for all groups or countries.
• Life Expectancy: Progress in life expectancy was also reduced for 4 out of the 5 groups of countries, with the exception of the highest group (life expectancy 69-76 years).
• Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant mortality was also considerably slower during the period of globalization (1980-1998) than over the previous two decades.
• Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed during the period of globalization.^Source

Consider the global priorities in spending in 1998

And compare that to what was estimated as additional costs to achieve universal access to basic social services in all developing countries:

However, it appears that much of the poverty reduction in the last couple of decades almost exclusively comes from China:

• China’s poverty rate fell from 85% to 15.9%, or by over 600 million people
• China accounts for nearly all the world’s reduction in poverty
• Excluding China, poverty fell only by around 10%