Global living conditions are getting better
This is neoliberal propaganda. It argues from average lives that no one actually lives. For example: The share of people living in extreme poverty has decreased immensely. However, your life can be absolutely miserable in a place like the United States while technically not living in extreme poverty. Reducing the dynamics of the entire world and the experiences of each human being to a single number is preposterous.<p>An example particularly in the United States: Poverty levels have decreased in the US. However, cost of living has exploded in certain areas, meaning that people who technically don&#x27;t meet the official definition of poverty in, say, San Francisco can have their lives completely upended by the fact that they can no longer afford housing.<p>A related example not in exactly the same vein is neoliberal identity politics: It is ok for people to be oppressed my structurally racist institutions so long as the oppressor class is sufficiently racially diverse. s&#x2F;race&#x2F;{gender, orientation}&#x2F;g Hide the fact that identities are tied to material relationships of economics and power behind a statistic about &quot;&quot;&quot;diversity&quot;&quot;&quot;.<p>Reducing people to statistics is a technocrat&#x27;s wet dream and a fundamental ideological goal of neoliberalism: Reduce everyone to rational market actors, measure everything with statistics which abstract away actual reality and allow governments and corporations to justify any action they want because they set the definitions, dissimulate coercive power relationships by refusing to measure them.<p>Vox is faux-progressive propaganda for the worst kind of capitalism.