Debating Phil Cafaro | National Review Online

“Now this is so obviously good, who could oppose it? Cafaro does. He says, repeatedly, in his writings that ‘the last thing the world needs is more Americans.’ Well, I say that the first thing the world needs is more Americans. And here is why: Because we need to ask ourselves who did this [pointing to the line on the graph rising from $180 per year in 1800 to nearly $9,000 per year in 2010]? Who is responsible for this miracle? Well, for the first part [pointing to the region of the graph from 1800 to 1875], the answer is, the British. There are others who play a supporting role, including Americans and continental Europeans, but in the main, this is a British show, and it’s a great achievement, raising the world from $180 per year to $500 per year. But after that [pointing to the graph from 1875 to 2010], it’s the U.S.A. It’s America, inventing oil drilling, and light bulbs, and recorded sound, and centrally generated electric power, and telephones, and airplanes, and motion pictures, and mass-produced automobiles, and radio, and television, and nuclear power, and modern agriculture, and computers, and transistors, and micro-electronics, and all the rest. We are 4 percent of the world’s population, but for the past century we’ve been responsible for half the world’s inventions. That’s why the world needs more Americans.

via Debating Phil Cafaro | National Review Online.

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