E19: Poverty is declining, the benefits of freer trade, Ireland’s escape from poverty and more:
Tony Morley, September 10th, 2025
“While freer trade—in both exports and imports—makes us better off, the opposite is also true. Barriers to free trade, such as tariffs, have a negative impact on our economic well-being.” — The benefits of freer trade
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Trade headlines continue to abound this fortnight, as the defenders of free trade and markets try to expound the value of comparative advantage, specialization and global economic interconnectedness. In good news, we have seen recent updates on reductions in global extreme poverty, rising living standards and breakthrough medical progress. Dive into The Up Wing progress collection below.
How Ireland wrote the modern story of progress
Between 1950 and 2025, Ireland’s GDP grew from $6,580 per capita, to >$100,000 — while over the same period, life expectancy climbed by 22 years, from 66 to more than 82; and just for good measure, child mortality fell from 5.4% to <0.3%.
“While I knew that Ireland had up until quite recently been a poor place by European standards, I hadn’t realized just how poor.” — Brian Walsh
Bryan Walsh
We shouldn't have to explain 'comparative advantage' with crayon, but here we are:
Visualization from Sketchplanations: “The magic of trade is that both sides are better off when it works well—a genuine win-win.”
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” — Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Trump sees off the free-market capitalism that enriched America
Trump is both covertly and overtly subverting the economic principles and culture that made America, and its people, some of the most prosperous in the world. If left unchecked, a rejection of free market capitalism will result in a living standards backslide for Americans.
“The issuance of new shares to the government, of course, will dilute the value of existing shares, and is therefore a de facto seizure of private property. And, say critics, will surely slow the pace of risk-taking innovation.”
“In short, the extent of presidential control of the economy has not been seen since the end of the Second World War.” — Irwin M. Stelzer
Irwin Stelzer
Poverty in Mexico has fallen significantly
Some good news out of Mexico, covered by (H/T) the team at "Fix The News." Between 2018 and 2024, the proportion of Mexico’s population living in poverty declined by 13.4 million people, falling from 41.9% to 29.6%.
MND Staff
Credit where it’s due: This story was lifted from our friends at “Fix the News” ☝️
Global extreme poverty is down, no matter how you slice it
Global extreme poverty has declined significantly in the last 35 years, no matter how it's measured; however, in some of the poorest regions, progress has stalled. Free markets, free trade and globalization are the best tools we have to maintain momentum.
“In June 2025, the World Bank increased its extreme poverty estimates by 125 million people. This doesn’t mean the world has gotten poorer: it reflects a new, higher International Poverty Line of $3 a day, up from $2.15.”
By: Joe Hasell, Bertha Rohenkohl, and Pablo Arriagada
Trump’s cronyism is quietly unravelling American capitalism
“Over time, self-interested businesses will hire, invest and expand with an eye to pleasing presidents, marginally slowing growth and innovation. Indeed, other grant recipients will already be tweaking plans to flatter Trump, while diverting resources to socially wasteful lobbying.”
“Once, only the left fantasised about government ownership.” — Ryan Bourne
Ryan Bourne
The benefits of freer trade
“While freer trade—in both exports and imports—makes us better off, the opposite is also true. Barriers to free trade, such as tariffs, have a negative impact on our economic well-being.” — The benefits of freer trade
“Economists estimate that incomes in Canada are 15 to 40 per cent higher thanks to freer trade. At the same time, trade has provided consumers with a greater selection of goods and services, at lower prices.”
Stephen Murchison Alex Chernoff
America is due for a nuclear renaissance; one is on the way
The tide is beginning to turn on the cultural view of nuclear energy in the United States, sparking real hope for a clean energy nuclear renaissance.
“In fact, while nuclear power plants make up just 0.4 percent of all the power plants in the U.S. … they provide 18.6 percent of our electricity. And that’s because nuclear power gets you incredible bang for the buck.” — Kite & Key Meida
The team at Kite and Key have a brilliant YouTube channel. If you're not following their work, you're missing out on outstanding content like “How to feed a nation.”
Botswana’s HIV rate has declined by more than 98 precent since 1990
“The number of children living with HIV has declined sharply everywhere, but nowhere more so than in Botswana, which has managed to slash its childhood infection rate by more than 98 percent since the 1990s.
At its peak, in what was one of the world’s worst outbreaks of HIV, one in eight infants were infected at birth. Mortality in young kids nearly doubled over a decade, with 3,000 children dying of AIDS each year. And 25,000 children — one in every classroom of 25 — had long-term symptoms of the virus, which without treatment, destroys the body’s immune system, turning even common infections deadly.
Now, new infections in kids are so exceedingly rare — at under 100 per year”
Sara Herschander
Hope for diabetes: CRISPR-edited cells pump out insulin in a person – and evade immune detection
CRISPR edits create cells that don’t trigger an immune response while producing insulin, a breakthrough that will hopefully allow the implant recipient to forego undertaking ongoing immune-suppressing drugs.
“In a medical first, researchers report that they have implanted CRISPR-edited pancreas cells into a person with type 1 diabetes. The cells pumped out sugar-regulating insulin for months — without the need for the recipient to take immune-dampening drugs, thanks to gene edits that allowed the cells, collected from a deceased donor, to evade detection by the recipient’s immune system.”
Elie Dolgin
Ozempic Shows Anti-Aging Effects in First Clinical Trial, Reversing Biological Age by 3.1 Years
Ozempic, and other GLP-1 drugs continue to show strong promise beyond weight loss treatment; evidence continues show that such drugs have a significant and broader positive impact on human health.
“The diabetes drug Ozempic has demonstrated remarkable anti-aging effects in the first clinical trial to directly measure its impact on biological aging, with participants becoming an average of 3.1 years biologically younger after 32 weeks of treatment. The findings provide the strongest evidence yet that GLP-1View drug details drugs like semaglutideSearch drug may offer benefits far beyond their established roles in diabetes management and weight loss.”
U.S. households mad up of married parents continues to fall
In 1960, the share of American households made up of married parents was 44%; by 2023, that number had fallen to just 18%. Over that same period, the share of single parents, or single without kids, has roughly doubled.
By 2023, the U.S. fertility rate fell to a historic low of just 1.6 children per woman; however, by 2025, it’s still hovering somewhere around 1.7.
Visual Capitalist
New research bolsters confidence in home-based tests for high-risk HPV in urine
Recent research suggests that at-home urine tests can detect strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), highly linked to cervical cancer, with the same level of accuracy as vaginal swabs that people carry out themselves.
“Several countries now offer at-home vaginal swabs to detect HPV status in place of traditional cervical cancer screening, but urine tests seem to work just as well.”
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A vaccine has been approved to save Australia's koalas from Chlamydia
A vaccine that could help save Australia’s estimated 50,000 endangered koalas from Chlamydia has just been approved, raising hope of saving the species from almost certain viral decimation. The disease accounts for roughly half of all koala deaths, and has already claimed thousands. The single-dose chlamydia vaccine has been tested on hundreds of wild koalas and is now ready to roll out.
"This study found [the vaccine] reduced the likelihood of koalas developing symptoms of chlamydia during breeding age and decreased mortality from the disease in wild populations by at least 65%,"
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