They always had to, in order to imply growth under capitalism is always expected to happen.
Their shoddy made-up data for anything before 1970 is so they can go "look how America was in 1900 vs now. All those 3rd world countries are now actually doing better than America was then, so this means clearly we don't need to change any ways or think of our relationship to exploiting the 3rd world since they'll get where we are now eventually".
They also like to conveniently ignore that the poverty line of $2 a day is too low (this $2 is actually already adjusted to buying power, and sets the global poverty level to how well someone in the USA lives on $2 a day). And that China drove most of that growth out of poverty.
Jason Hickle (degrowth economist, not sure if he's socialist but he seems cool) wrote a bunch about these neoliberal poverty statistics lies on his blog
They always had to, in order to imply growth under capitalism is always expected to happen.
Their shoddy made-up data for anything before 1970 is so they can go "look how America was in 1900 vs now. All those 3rd world countries are now actually doing better than America was then, so this means clearly we don't need to change any ways or think of our relationship to exploiting the 3rd world since they'll get where we are now eventually".
They also like to conveniently ignore that the poverty line of $2 a day is too low (this $2 is actually already adjusted to buying power, and sets the global poverty level to how well someone in the USA lives on $2 a day). And that China drove most of that growth out of poverty.
Jason Hickle (degrowth economist, not sure if he's socialist but he seems cool) wrote a bunch about these neoliberal poverty statistics lies on his blog