On an absolute basis, it's increased since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and the level of poverty, in constant terms, is worse than it had been in 1800 -- the survivable level of poverty has fallen.

Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms. See:

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691141282/a-...

Chapter 1:

http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8461.pdf

The metric for extreme poverty usually refers to earning below $1.90 a day, accounting for inflation. It's great that more people are making more than that, but I think a planned economy (at least initially) could serve them better.

The real advantage of a planned economy can be seen in the case of the USSR or China where they rapidly grew from a backwards agrarian feudal base into industrial powerhouses in the highest growth rates of the 20th century. As economist Richard Wolff says, they are the envy of the third world.

China's "Great Leap Forward" starved 30 million people to death. So yeah a planned economy "can serve people better", if it doesn't kill them first...

And England's capitalism of the 1840s reduced Ireland's population by nearly half.

There's a monotonous consistency in the ability of numerous political-economic organisation systems to produce extreme poverty and misery. Almost as if those were exogenous to those systems.

Sure, people say that a lot, but is this because of China turning away from socialism, or is it because China has proved a planned economy works better than a free(er) one?

Half full or half empty...

China has proved that (i) it has access to vast rich western consumer markets, and (ii) that a dirty dubious economy with no transparency produces cheaper goods than a well-regulated one.

Those who grabbed the power over the world collapse socialism everywhere you see - China, Russia, merging of Korea, relationship with Cuba... because capitalism has proven to provide them better slaves. Watch for more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=583B33gySIM&list=PLrsYCDA5sk.... We can't think of capitalism as 'market' economy anymore - with few (no more than four) corporations dictating there conditions and prices, there's no more 'market' relationship. But socialism is no better. "Don’t believe that your life can be better or worse depending on this or that arrangement. For our life to be good, there’s only one remedy: for people themselves to be better, and stop supporting the oppressing governing powers. Regardless of the type of government, the calamities it causes: - ever-increasing budgets & taxes; - animosity towards neighbors, military preps & armies; - enslaving of subject races; - undermining morality." (Leo Tolstoy, On the Importance of the Upcoming Moral Revolution http://www.earthlyfireflies.org/works-by-leo-tolstoy/)

It certainly is both. China's rationale is that their current capitalistic phase is a glorified long-term NEP (Lenin's capitalistic phase for the USSR). They claim to be doing this to build up their economy to first world levels before progressing to the next phase of socialism in accordance with Marxian progression of economic structures. The problem communist countries have faced is not being able to live up to first world levels and both superpowers, the USSR and China, decided that reverting to capitalism is the answer.

Of course, this isn't left 100% to the free market so the state has overall planned control of the economy and will intervene to preserve their interpretation of socialism ("socialism with Chinese characteristics").