Starving children in India
According to the London Times, it may be time to bring back the mealtime admonition to children that they should feel guilty about not finishing dinner "because there are starving children in India." It seems that despite the massive growth in India's wealth over the last 15 years, little of that has trickled down to the bottom half of the nation. India has childhood malnutrition rates worse than Ethiopia's.
I've never used that "starving" line with my kids except as a joke, because I believed that dire, desperate poverty had disappeared from India long ago. Same with China. Not that there weren't poor people in India, but I figured with all the tech dollars flowing in and engineering graduates flowing out to Silicon Valley that India must have gotten most of its billion people above the subsistence level. Turns out that's only half right.
What India's experience proves is that free market capitalism alone isn't enough to ensure a decent life for all. Unless a strong central government instititues progressive taxation, and uses some of the money to improve the lot of the lower classes, most of them won't climb to the middle class on their own. But there is another aspect to this. India in fact is known for its large government sector and bureaucracy. There also has to be a large bloc of citizens who aren't poor who demand government take action to help those who are. That is probably the missing piece of the puzzle. After all, India still has the caste system, an atrocity for a 21st century, modern economic giant.
If it is deemed acceptable that some, by accident of birth, are to be perpetually held down, you aren't likely to see the sort of progressive social democracy we enjoyed in America from 1933-89 and still do in many respects. America has always been full of reformers demanding, from either a Christian or leftist viewpoint or both, that government or society must help the poor. But private charity isn't enough. Only a strong central government has the ability to raise the resources to help mass numbers of people in distress.
You feed them, you educate them, and then you reap the benefits of all those healthy, well-schooled young people working to advance your nation instead of groveling in poverty.