its hard to believe that as a collective we have regressed - we are not alleviating poverty, we are creating more poor people. Sure resources are finite but the heart of the problem is access and distribution aka capitalism rather than availability.
Regressed? Poor people today live better than rich people of 100 years ago. We don't alleviate poverty, but poor people alleviate their own poverty (or don't) through their own choices. You can't make someone rich and you can't make someone poor. Make the decision to drop out of high school and have five kids and hey you're poor--nobody else did that to you. The Brookings Institute, a think-tank which leans left, identified three things which most help people escape poverty. First was don't have kids until you're married. Next was graduate high school. Last was get a job--any job. They say do those three things and you're extremely likely to not just escape poverty, but at least get into middle class. The best thing to help poor people isn't some big change of a nation's economy; it isn't expanded social services benefits; it isn't anything apart from the poor people themselves learning how to make better decisions.