Glad to see my nomination was successful! It seems even Gary above missed that years lived is a product of life expectancy and population and his conclusion about the extension of life expectancy is not supported by the chart. This is another reason the chart is so horrible; people think "there must be some content here, what is it" and they stumble on an erroneous conclusion as Gary did (the likely true but not displayed idea that the rate of growth of life expectancy over time is outpaced by the rate of growth in output) or perhaps that the 21st century will experience massive declines in something. If one notices the footnote and projects the last bars up to adjust at some personally determined growth function, they have to simultaneously adjust the other bars down so it all sums to 100%; I like your choice of word for this: unconscionable.

worst economist chart ever came out today: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/quantifying-history