But this is not "eradicating poverty". It is merely moving it around geographically.

Capital constantly seeks new spaces into which to flow, to maintain its rate of profit and growth and accumulate more of itself. Historical class struggle in the Western world produced an organized working class that forced the capitalist class and bourgeois state to come to the table, to bargain with them collectively, to grant concessions of high wages, good benefits, and a welfare state. Certain geographic regions became strongholds of working class power, ie the Steel Belt in the US, Northern England industrial centers, the Paris Red Belt, the Ruhr, etc. But the rate of profit is continuously falling, and capital has to maintain its ability to circulate and be valorized in order to accumulate more of itself. World War II destroyed an immense amount of fixed capital investment. It reduced almost every advanced economy, save one, to complete ruins. Capitalism itself was forced to change itself, to include organized labor and heavily plan the economy, in order to respond to the strains of war. This reopened spaces for renewed capital investment by the untouched advanced economy, the United States - the Marshall Plan, the postwar boom that was the Golden Age of capitalism.

But this was never going to last. Capital was already responding to the threat to its profit margins. For thirty years the class war of position was maintained. The unions grew complacent, growing fat off the unprecedented boom in which they shared the proceeds for the first and only time. But deindustrialization was already happening. Starting in the 1950s, industrial jobs were gradually being shifted out of the strongholds of organized labor. First to suburban towns, then to the Sun Belt and the US-Mexican border. In the 1970s, the class war of maneuver began in earnest. Bourgeois political power mobilized heavily to destroy the Keynesian regulatory and New Deal welfare state. In the 1980s, offshoring began in earnest - first to Mexico, then to East Asia, then (and now) to South Asia. Finance capital became the hegemonic interest dominating the US and European economies.

This has resulted in the ruination of certain geographic regions. The Steel Belt became the Rust Belt. Scotland and Northern England became hollow shells. The Ruhr is a shadow of its former glory. The shift is highlighted by the famous "Elephant Graph". The industrial labor aristocracies in the Global North have been destroyed as productive development has shifted to the south. This is not "eradicating poverty" as the Vox article this very graph is attached to would have you believe, it is merely moving poverty around geographically and vastly polarizing income and wealth inequalities. This polarization can only get worse. The only way it can be controlled is through the conscious action of a proletarian dictatorship, such as China or Vietnam, who tightly, tightly control the political influence of their emergent bourgeoisie as well as the financial regulatory powers of the state. Already, however, the development of China's economy has reached such a point that it itself is circulating capital investment into other geographical regions, such as South Asia, Central Asia, and Africa.

They might have a knee-jerk reaction to try to say, “those are socialist” or “capitalism is just greeeeeed!” and again, don’t try to tell them they are wrong, just say, “Academic definitions are usually different, are we debating semantics? Or policy?” Try to stick to policy and show how good capitalism works really good, and just admit that bad capitalism (like bad socialism, mercantilism, or communism) sucks.

The question is not greed. Liberals prefer to avoid confronting a systemic critique of capitalism by deliberately focusing on individual moral failings. "It is not the problem of a broken system, but of bad actors within the system. We can resolve this through 'sensible, evidence-based policy' and regulation that eliminates the influence of bad actors." Needless to say, this is pure ideology. Greed, individual moral failing, is not the problem. The problem is that the entire system of capitalism is predicated upon profit as the sole overriding moral imperative. The bourgeoisie must be ever-greedier, because they must maintain their rate of capital accumulation vis-a-vis rivals. Greed is good because it allows one to maximize their capital accumulation, and the sole purpose of capital is to accumulate more of itself. It cannot be any other way, anything hindering this is merely temporary, either an accident of history or the conscious mobilization of the organized working class in class struggle.

Neoliberals gripped by false consciousness can never understand this, and they have preemptively inoculated themselves against self-critique or engaging with arguments outside their bubbles. Noticeably, the actually ideologically-conscious neoliberals always tend to be the most psychotic and amoral, because like ideologically-conscious and trained Marxists they understand that the class struggle and evolution of systems of political economy are not questions of morality but of power. And they have come to terms with selling out to the hegemonic system of the day, to advance their material interests within it, and to maintain it by any means necessary. This indeed does manifest itself in /r/neoliberal, where users of certain flairs (for example, NATO and Friedman) tend to be the most obviously psychotic.

EDIT: I also of course didn't even touch upon the Reserve Army of Labor and why keeping a large and significant portion of national and international populations in perpetual poverty or precarious employment is 100% necessary for the functioning of capitalism, as new armies of idle hands are required to be thrown into the gaps as the economy continues to expand. This directly relates to deindustrialization and the death of the New Deal consensus, because Keynesian full employment policies were indeed unsustainable in the long term and this was recognized by Marxist economists as early as the 1940s. The USSR itself maintained full employment policies because it maintained a proletarian dictatorship consciously interested it maintaining that, and it did indeed cause problems of its own near the end of the Union's life.

EDIT2: If someone who doesn't care about brigading is invested in hopping over there and reposting this saying it's from off-site, I would be amused to see how that sub might react. Most likely just a ban and removal but w/e. For my part I won't go near that cesspit.

EDIT3: Nor did I mention the very important aspect of history that ended the New Deal consensus postwar boom, how American capital investment in its Cold War bloc (Western Europe and the Pacific seaboard) became self-defeating because those rebuilt advanced economies became competitors again, which drove down the rate of profit and forced a reckoning with the 70s stagflation/full employment crisis. The Western bourgeoisies effectively faced two potential solutions to this dilemma - either flow capital investment into new sectors of the domestic industrial economy (such as green renewable energy technology, as conveniently it was at this time that the fossil fuel giants were discovering the existence and inevitability of climate change and the Oil Crisis was in progress), OR flow capital investment into new geographical regions that were underdeveloped by disciplining organized labor at home and offshoring industrial jobs. They chose the latter, for obvious reasons.