China eliminated extreme poverty while America’s tripled—but before we declare a winner, consider this: the World Bank recently raised its poverty threshold from $2.15 to $3 per day, instantly adding 125 million people to global poverty counts with the stroke of a pen.
This technical adjustment exposes a fundamental problem with how we measure human welfare. We’re tracking survival thresholds, not meaningful lives. When China claims zero people live below $3 daily while over 4 million Americans do, we’re not comparing two societies’ moral choices—we’re comparing consumption patterns in a command economy against income volatility in a market economy.
More, here.
