I hadn't realized Gates, Pinker et al were so ignorant of the vast majority of human history. But then again, why wouldn't they be?

Another basic flaw in all of this is setting any amount of what we call 'money' as any kind of 'poverty' threshhold. This implies that our concept of 'money' is some kind of objective basis for measuring human well-being. Which is another big pile of bovine fecal matter.