So let me get this straight..as long as we can pay someone in China just enough to where they are not considered as living in extreme poverty, we have done our due diligence in terms of lifting people up? True, the wages in China have been increasing over the past years, and there are record numbers being lifted out of extreme poverty, but anybody will tell you this process has been grossly uneven. Again, we have to look at various specific earnings classes to determine if the spread has been fair. Even the Chinese government has acknowledged their current system is generating a very uneven society.
As for African and other countries, I believe lifting them out of poverty includes empowering them not through low-paying labor-intensive jobs but through living wages, microlending, sustainable energy base, and other meaningful and creative ways. Solving AIDS, hunger, and other problems, albeit extremely necessary, will not help these countries in the long run, because we are not tackling their root-cause.

Mikhail from SF