Americans make up around 4% of the world's population, and yet
they control over 25% of the world's wealth.
If that wealth were shared evenly across the globe,
couldn't we solve the problem of global poverty overnight?
The answer, unfortunately, is no.
Sharing one's one's wealth with those who have less is admirable,
and it often helps to relieve immediate suffering.
But just sharing existing wealth will never be enough
to lift billions of people out of poverty in a sustainable way.
To understand why, we need to look at history.
This chart shows how world GDP per capita
has changed from the earliest recorded history until today.
In other words,
it's a shorthand way of seeing the wealth of the average human being over time.
There are two things we can learn from this chart.
The first is that the extreme poverty we see today is not just a modern affliction.
For the vast majority of people throughout most of human history, extreme
poverty has been all they've ever known and all their children would ever know.
The second thing is that, starting around 1800, that suddenly began to change.
We're living longer, healthier lives and seeing fewer of our children die.
On average, we're better educated, more literate, and better fed.
Transportation is faster, safer, and cheaper.
And, in many ways,
it's been the poorest among us who have benefited the most from these changes.
What's made life so remarkably better for the poor wasn't welfare or charity.
No matter how you redistributed it,
all the wealth in the world in 1800 wouldn't be anywhere near enough
to give us the standard of living we enjoy in developed countries today.
What happened was the the creation of new wealth on an enormous scale.
In other words, economic growth.
That's why we're living better lives than our ancestors today.
And that's why the number of people living in absolute poverty has plummeted,
not just in the last 200 years, but in the last 20.
In a way,
economic growth has been history's most successful anti-poverty program.
But not all countries have experienced this amazing level of growth,
which is why many people are still trapped in poverty today.
So if we really wanna help the world's poor,
fostering economic growth ought to be our first priority.
What new policies might help to grow the wealth of developing countries more
quickly?
And which existing policies are actually hindering that growth?
Those are the questions we need to answer.
[MUSIC]