> For millions of people living in poverty and homeless around the world and in the US itself, the capitalism system is a failure.
You're blaming an economic framework for what in the majority of cases is failure of government. Frankly half a million homeless Americans is far better than the current alternatives of Russia or China... It isn't a very good point.
in 1950 the average American home was 900 ish sq ft. Today the average American has 900sqf of space IN their home. We went from united fruit (misery where governments were weak) to fruit, coffee, tea, chocolate, cobalt, nickel... Americans got fat, and everyone else had the same level of suffering (maybe).
Candidly it's been "a large proportion of the planet living in misery" forever. We're still the same monkeys who raped and murdered the neanderthals out of existence, we haven't really evolved since we salted the earth at Carthage.
Look at the USSR, everyone was going to get a house, and a car and a.... Status wasn't about money it was about who got one first. At a point in Chinese communism status was indicated by pens (how many, if you keep them in a pocket)... The way you got ahead in these systems was graft, bribery and birthright. At least in the US and EU there is some sense of being able to elevate myself and a path to get there. The problem is that some people don't want to take it, they don't want to put the work in. The reality is that their quality of life is going to decline in the continuing global future because there isn't enough to go around.
The current trend of wealth leading to decline in population (birth rate below replacement) is fascinating. The US makes up for it with immigration, china and Japan not so much, and Europe is going to have a cultural shift because of it. The next few decades will be interesting.
The reality is that we're picking the option that sucks the least. I, am not happy about it, but no one has shown up with a better alternative that WORKS.