It's worth noting that the Our World in Data plot is misleading in the pre-1980 part. What it is actually showing is neither poverty, but some relationship of GDP to poverty, nor the population of the world, instead it is almost entirely the Western world.
The World Bank, UN and the IMF use extreme poverty as a measure and define it as having the purchasing power of $1.90 (in the US in 2011 for the OWiD plot) a day. But that's very low and pretty arbitrary. €6.70 a day is needed for decent nutrition, $7.40 for typical life expectancy, $8 a day to reduce infant mortality rate. The US poverty line in 2015 was $30 a day.
Pinkner has a lot to say about the reduction in violence that I agree we should be optimistic about. And there's much to be said about improvements in technology, access to education (especially for girls), increases in vaccination globally. But that OWiD plot is used to jump on the New Optimism bandwagon to say a lot more than anything you should conclude from a such an arbitrary set of data.
Because its the natural state of all life on earth. Its the condition every living thing has to struggle against. It can be fought individually, it can be fought collectively, but it still has to be fought and even then you are not guaranteed success.
Think of all the people in conflict areas who could live a decent life were they allowed to simply be in peace. Think of all the people who have lived good lives and then been displaced by horrific natural disasters. Its not an issue of economics. Its just a fact of reality.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073TJBYTB/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Bett...