the best year ever?

In so many ways, 2012 was another year of disappointments. Unemployment is still high. Average incomes are still low. Fear and distrust still dominate the discussion.

But the U.K's The Spectator takes a different view. It claimed in an article this week that 2012 "was the best year ever," explaining:

Never in the history of the world has there been less hunger, less disease and more prosperity. ... The West remains in the economic doldrums, but most developing countries are charging ahead, and people are being lifted out of poverty at the fastest rate ever recorded. ... The death toll inflicted by war and natural disasters is also mercifully low. We are living in a golden age.

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