Cut a graph from a leading Washington neoconservative website, paste it onto your Telegraph blog, and tack on a few paragraphs presenting the result as irrefutable proof of the superiority of your preferred economic system. If only all of the enduring arguments of political philosophy could be sorted out as easily as that.

Such was the approach of rightwing journalist and noted free schools entrepreneur Toby Young last week, with the American Enterprise Institute’s claim that capitalism reduced world poverty by 80% between 1970 and 2006 triumphantly brandished aloft as Exhibit A. Continue reading →