Doubling income is not the same as improving quality of life.
Capitalism suffers from a plague number of social ailments, including epidemic levels of stress and mental illness, that aren't present in "poor" cultures.
Besides, terraforming our planet to make it less, not more, inhabitable, hardly counts as a big win.
> Doubling income is not the same as improving quality of life.
LOL. Easy for you to say rich man. Go tell that to someone in Mozambique or Haiti or Nepal who is using their newfound wealth to finally be able to feed their kids a healthy diet.
And many subsistence fishermen were able to feed their kids a healthy diet, until commercial fishing came along.
Capitalism is pulling people out of poverty, but it is also destroying natural ecosystems. Is the reduction in poverty sustainable, or will it come back when the resources are gone?
Overall, things are getting better for sure, but it's going in a trajectory that will settle into a shitty local minimum where poor people survive but are stuck with low quality of life. Getting people out of extreme poverty in the world is high priority, and we've been doing a pretty good job at that, as your graph shows. But there's a big rut after that that we need to work on removing too.
> it's going in a trajectory that will settle into a shitty local minimum
It's very hard to find evidence to support this point of view. You might hypothesize some future change in trajectory sure. But looking at the current trajectory? Pretty hard.
You're correct that doubling income is not the same as improving quality of life, but I don't think stress and mental illness are particularly good examples of this.
A better example might be African countries where increased income has not led to better access to healthcare, but has instead fed a growing market for fake HIV/AIDS medications.
Capitalism suffers from a plague number of social ailments, including epidemic levels of stress and mental illness, that aren't present in "poor" cultures.
Besides, terraforming our planet to make it less, not more, inhabitable, hardly counts as a big win.