. . . . [B]y every objectively indexed criterion of wealth, living standards and real world equality, things have never been better. Instead of restating facts, we ask why wealth is diverted to generating disinformation instead to redressing problems, and why intelligent, informed people have a seemingly insatiable appetite for believing alarmism. Global poverty and inequality disinformation has explicit and implicit racial overtones. “The rich” and “super-rich” have been portrayed as Europeans. The rise, thanks to promarket policies, of rich people of colour on every continent is unfortunate for poverty propagandists because it undermines racially charged neo-colonial sophistry, and proves that statistical categories are dynamic when considering who is in them. “The rich” refers to a statistic, not a group of people.
Leon Louw: By every objective measure of living standards, things have never been better first appeared on 26 January 2016 on BDlive published by Business Day.