• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    no one was poor back when there were no billionaires

    Whipping out my inflation adjustment calculator and…

    It appears this is a lie on two fronts.

    There’s way more poverty in the world today compared to 100 years ago.

    The extremely hard to swallow pill that westerners struggle with is the impact anti-colonial movements of the 50s and 60s had in drastically reducing poverty globally.

    People love to talk about changes in poverty in the Imperial Core. Nobody really wants to think about Bolivia or Vietnam or the enormous plunge in the poverty rates in Russia and China following WW2.

    Worse still, any discussion of poverty in Europe following the collapse of the USSR relative to the rising tide of prosperity in Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim is just completely off the table.