Respectfully disagreeing with Prof G on Capitalism's effect on poverty
Hi,
I was listening to the latest Q&A during which Prof G made a case that capitalism has reduced poverty, historically speaking.
I'm no expert; just a guy who has read about this. Here's my own interpretation:
- Between antiquity and the mid-1800s, a commoner's life has remained largely unchanged.
- The early industrial revolution has made poverty migrate from the countryside to the cities. But squalor and lack of opportunity remained the same.
- A sign of this: Until the late 1800s, about a third of all people in the richest countries on earth, preferred moving to the faraway colonies and/or the wilderness, over staying home. If capitalism was so great, why did so many people prefer a life of defecating in icy rivers, wrestling with bears, and possible attacks by natives?
- The quality of life began to improve in the mid-1800s, after revolutionary movements rocked western and central Europe, and North-America to a lesser extent.
- The middle class only started growing after WWI and really took off after WWII. The fear of popular uprisings after major cataclysms, stoked by communism, really made the powers that be believe in serving the common folks.
It's my opinion that capitalism has been wonderful at increasing the amount of wealth. However, the vast majority of people never saw any of this wealth until they started pushing back against capitalism itself. Anti-capitalist movements, for all of their faults, brought us the middle class. Now that it's no longer a threat, the middle class is disappearing.
I have one last argument to bring. We are often shown a hockey stick graph to illustrate how the economy has accelerated under capitalism. Thing is, any exponential curve looks like a hockey stick if shown at the right scale. We can approximate the same graph by simply plotting a 2% increase of GDP, from the renaissance until now. So, mathematically speaking, it looks like whatever system was in place at the point of inflection in the graph, it's appropriating a betterment that was then before, and largely unchanged after.