> I don't see how your criticism refutes Myth 1

I'm not refuting that the myth is a myth (though I think its more of a strawman that Gates attacks poorly than a myth), I'm pointing out that Gates particular attempt to argue from so-called "income per person" trends (that starts with mistreating GDP per capita as "income per person") line of argument against the "myth" is fundamentally flawed.

I don't think poor countries are "doomed to stay poor". But I don't think Gates attacks on that supposed myth (which I don't think is really a particularly dominant belief) are very good, and particularly I don't think they support the alternative thesis he is presenting to the "myth" (which seems to nbe not merely that they aren't "doomed to stay poor", but that the "poor" countries are in fact not poor now.)

> Take a metric, look at it over time. Watch it change. That's exactly what Bill Gates did in his piece.

Except that the metric he takes (which he attempts to conceal by presenting it as something it is not) includes wealth extracted from the nation to other nations, as well as income earned in the nation, so it isn't actually a good measure to show whether the poor nations are actually getting less poor over time.

Taking a metric that doesn't actually measure the thing you are using it to measure is, well, wrong.

Another issue with GDP is that it increases as an artifact of marketization, independently of changes to efficiency or standard of living produced by marketization. If two people each cut their own lawn, this contributes $0 to GDP. If they swap so that each mows the other person's lawn for $5, GDP goes up! If they each hire the other person as childcare to watch their own kids while cutting the other person's lawn, GDP goes up even more! This is because GDP does not include non-paid productive work, so simply making it paid increases GDP (even if actual production goes down).

Some of these shifts might improve welfare, but GDP increases regardless of whether they do or not, just by putting dollar figures on existing activity. A government really wanting to artificially boost GDP could give it a big boost by mandating that each parent take care of a different parent's kids for N days a week instead of their own, at a government-fixed rate of pay. The payments in each direction net out, childcare probably does not improve, and GDP goes up.

I see what you're saying. However, I wouldn't attribute to malice "attempts to conceal by presenting it as something it is not" what could otherwise be explained by the difficulty in getting a different globally available metric. GDP per capita is a metric that is globally available from reputable sources.

Is there a different globally available metric from reputable sources that you would suggest?

> However, I wouldn't attribute to malice "attempts to conceal by presenting it as something it is not" what could otherwise be explained by the difficulty in getting a different globally available metric.

Using GDP per capita can be explained by its ready availability compared to better measures.

Calling it "income per person", which it very much is not (and not, in explaining what metric you are actually using, noting the very significant way in which it is not "income per person"), cannot be explained that way.