[randomcarbloke]

as I said if you remove china from the data the trend is identical.

But regarding China specifically it has been the gradual transition to a more market led economy.

[grafmax]

To say it’s identical is an overstatement, but markets have been part of China’s policy, and part of the policies many other formerly impoverished counties. Without government policy intelligently choosing how to utilize markets (which is what happened in most of these formerly impoverished countries like the “Asian tigers”), markets alone could not have have brought the gains that they did. Markets have many downsides to them as well. Additionally non-government, non-market factors like unionization contributed to the rise out of poverty as well. And in the global north, “markets” have been fairly ineffective at raising the standard of living for the median worker. They have been effective at enriching the already rich however, contributing to wealth power-concentration and de-democratization.

[randomcarbloke]

no it is an identical plot on the graph, not an overstatement at all.

The standard of living for the median worker has improved significantly in forty years let alone two hundred, lifestyle inflation is definitely rapid as you would expect with progress, wage growth has outpaced inflation for everyone but public sector workers.

Bad as things may seem now, we are all richer than ever before.