Progress and poverty

“Have not the great merchants, great manufacturers, great inventors, done more for the world
than preachers and philanthropists? Can there be any doubt that cheapening the cost of
necessaries and conveniences of life is the most powerful agent of civilisation and progress?”
~ Charles Elliot Perkins, (railroad magnate, 1840-1907)

What’s the relationship between economic progress and poverty? Simple: the first demolishes the second.

All of human history is a history of abject poverty. And then began an industrial revolution that has taken two-hundred years to almost sweep the world:

As David Farrar says at Kiwiblog: “200 years of amazing progress.”