I'm convinced this is mostly because of capitalism and the slave morality of the 1960s. We were literally on the road towards a utopia like The Jetsons, but the elites decided that turning the world into a global version of Brazil was better for their interests. We're here because of neoliberal globalization and financialization on the one hand, and 1960s egalitarian bullshit on the other hand. Both the business "right" and the bourgeois "left" got their way. Just imagine how much wealth the US - and every other Western country - has wasted on tax cuts for the plutocrats, offshoring manufacturing, bank bailouts, useless wars, and the endless trillions of black and brown handouts. We could have had a colony on Mars by now if we stayed on course. Sure, the Third World would still be much poorer, but so what? It's not our fucking problem to feed them. The history of the world is dominated by racial struggle, not class struggle or individualism. The only thing that matters is the survival and prosperity of our race and civilization. The state of GDP growth or women's rights in the Third World should never be our concern. Never forget who protested against the Moon landing.