[makotech222]

Sure here's the comparison data: http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-sta...

And my favorite part:

"For economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the last 20 years [of the current form of globalization, from 1980 - 2000] have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with the previous two decades [1960 - 1980]. For each indicator, countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980). Among the findings:

    Growth: The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced and across the board for all groups or countries.
    Life Expectancy: Progress in life expectancy was also reduced for 4 out of the 5 groups of countries, with the exception of the highest group (life expectancy 69-76 years).
    Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant mortality was also considerably slower during the period of globalization (1980-1998) than over the previous two decades.
    Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed during the period of globalization.Source 29"

TL;DR: Capitalism is unsustainable. We need a new system.

[ryanwaggoner]

Doesn't seem like the highest-quality source and I'm pretty skeptical of their conclusions, but regardless:

Your TLDR doesn't make much sense. So we're making less progress for the last 20 years (but still making progress) therefore capitalism is unsustainable and we should replace it with the same tired system that's been tried over and over again for the last century without even a hint of success?

OK.

[badpun]

Large amounts of global inequality are because, to the very recent times, most of the people in the world lived under communism, which kept them in poverty (often extreme). The rest of the world was lucky to enjoy massive increase of standards of living thanks to capitalism, which created a chasm. Only now, as capitalism has spread to most countries, the global inequality is decreasing (see ex. increasing wages in China and stagnant wages in US).