So, why does anyone believe the United Nations?

We’re told, by one of the United Nations bods:

Economic growth will bring prosperity to all. This is the mantra that guides the decision-making of the vast majority of politicians, economists and even human rights bodies.

Yet the reality – as detailed in a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council this month – shows that while poverty eradication has historically been promised through the “trickling down” or “redistribution” of wealth, economic growth largely “gushes up” to a privileged few.

In the past four years alone the world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes, while nearly 5 billion people have been made poorer.

This seems somewhat at odds with a more evidence based approach:

Global economic growth seems to do just fine at reducing poverty. So, is this just some bureaucrat worried that folk might get rich without the tender ministrations of a bureaucrat?

Olivier De Schutter is UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights

Ah, no, this is the UN expert on that extreme poverty that economic growth is so good at killing off.

He’s taking short term numbers - including the effects of a global pandemic, lockdown and the associated inflation - and using them to argue that the one true cure for absolute poverty we’ve ever discovered, that economic growth, doesn’t work in curing absolute poverty.

He then ends up arguing that we should instead, plump for being poorer than we can be so that we can be more socialist.

So, remind us. Why does anyone listen to the United Nations?