Observations. I think many people would benefit from meditating over the tremendous significance of map #26: <i>Asia is ridiculously important</i>.<p>About the money stuff: this is all extremely misleading chiefly because a lot of people grow and/or catch their own food and build their own houses on community owned land with <i>no debt</i>, thus have minimal expenses and no interest in having or raising this number. The global capitalist system seeks to change this, often by stealing their land at gunpoint or children with the lure of materialism, but while increasing material 'wealth' (ie. shiny trinkets and nominally convenient tech) ultimately results in bad things happening to health (sometimes; this can go both ways), community, security, and the environment.<p>In map #35, <i>Open defecation in India</i>, look at the difference between the hard-line Hindu state of Tamil Nadu (southeast) versus the long-time communist state of Kerala (southwest coast). Incidentally, you see open defecation in southeast Asia and China as well.<p>In map #37, in 13 years I've never seen anyone appearing to be obviously malnourished and/or starving in China (and my time tends towards mountainous/poor areas), so I'm not sure where they get their statistics from. The throwaway remark about them 'getting better at feeding their people' is frankly bullshit: China is a leader in agricultural science, they are very good at extracting vast productivity from small areas of land and producing protein-rich foods such as tofu in harsh climates.<p>Similarly, map #38 is complete bullshit. China is <i>absolutely covered</i> in extremely high quality infrastructure such as highways.