The story changes quite a bit - and you know it. If we use $7.40 per day, we see a decline in the proportion of people living in poverty, but it’s not nearly as dramatic as your rosy narrative would have it. In 1981 a staggering 71% lived in poverty. Today it hovers at 58% (for 2013, the most recent data). Suddenly your grand story of progress seems tepid, mediocre, and – in a world that’s as fabulously rich as ours – completely obscene.
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/opinion/the-politics-of-a...
> By comparison, Africa is already relatively flooded with aid. The continent as a whole receives development assistance worth almost 8 percent of its gross domestic product. Exclude South Africa and Nigeria, and aid jumps to more than 13 percent of GDP — or more than four times the Marshall Plan at its height — for the other 46 African countries.
???
Wealth is mostly a function of intelligent social organization.
Why are we so much more vastly wealthy than we were 100 years go? Just because we pump more gas? No - we're smarter.
Wealth is what a country generates, not what it has.
It's not like a 'pile of gold' that we have that magically turns into iPhones.
Most places that have extreme poverty are rife with systematic problems. Total lack of social organization on most levels, corruption, missing or 'never existed' institutions (education, justice, civic etc.). Lack of literacy, education. An absent, stupid or corrupt elite. Etc. etc.
Swedes don't have any real natural resources, not particularly fertile land. They are 'rich' because they are organized.
It's a very hard thing to 'pass on' to other places.
Natural Resources comprise of less than 1% of Sweden's GDP.
Here is a map [1] where you can see the % GDP comprising of Natural Resources by nation.
Notice that the wealthiest nations tend to derive almost no value from the export of natural resources. They are creating value added products and services, which is what intelligently organized people do.
[1] https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/NY.GDP.TOTL.RT.Z...
Doing otherwise would just result in the internal industry being bought out for pennies or being obliterated by advanced competitors.
Protectionism doesn't guarantee that a country will be successful at building cars, but they should at least bloody try to before giving up.
And yes, capitalism can improve a country's fortunes if applied judiciously. Merely opening the markets to a free for all wil just result in the vultures swooping in, getting rich and leaving some rests for the locals.
Name a measure of human suffering that has not improved. Healthy lifespan, deaths in childbirth, infant mortality, they’ve all gotten better.
> - Using $1.90 as the baseline to beat is too low for what we would consider as being out of poverty.
The trend is the same regardless of which poverty line you pick. Poverty is decreasing, education, literacy and health are rising.
> - Most economic successes have not been due to neoliberal markets but rather state-led industrial policy, protectionism and regulation.
Indeed, in every state where they’ve followed an industrial policy of “Let’s do capitalism.” poverty has decreased, whether with heavy handed government economic intervention like Japan or Korea or just leaving business alone like Hong Kong. If protectionism worked Argentina would have a car industry. They tried for 30 years. It doesn’t.
> - Most quality of life improvements have not been due to neoliberal globalization but simple public interventions including free healthcare and education.
The UN’s human development index is 70% explained by GDP per capita. Poor countries can’t afford good policy and capitalism is the proven way to escape poverty.
> - Progress is slowing relative to the resources available to tackle the problem.
As far as absolute poverty goes, maybe, kind of. The countries that have shown no real improvement are the ones with no real government or state capacity. Everywhere else is in the process of escaping absolute poverty or has done so. These are the countries that do not work, mostly in Africa. We just have to work towards integrating them into the global economy so they can grow. One hopes the nearby example of Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa or Nigeria will help, as they grow their way out of poverty.