Will the rest of the world kill us and take our jobs?

Back in the 1970s--and in some quarters still today--the great concern was the "population bomb" that would destroy the human race and the population to boot.

A more current source of anxiety is the rapid economic growth of China and to a lesser extent, India, and trade with those countries. Such concerns have even gone down to the state level. (The Mackinac Center for Public Policy addressed such concerns a few years ago. Michigan is especially prone to anti-trade populism.)

The economic benefits of trade and economic growth elsewhere are well known. But Alexander Tabarrok of the Oakland-based Independent Institute, sees health benefits as well.

In short, rising prosperity in China and India offers a larger market to support increased pharmaceutical development. It also offers the world more intellectual capital with which to find medical breakthroughs.

He says "Amazingly, there are only about 6 million scientists and engineers in the entire world, nearly a quarter of whom are in the U.S. Poverty means that millions of potentially world-class scientists today spend their lives trying to eke out a subsistence living, rather than leading mankind’s charge into the future. But if the world as a whole were as wealthy as the U.S. and were devoting the same share of population to research and development, there would be more than five times as many scientists and engineers worldwide."