Yeah it’s a statement deliberately crafted to obfuscate and misrepresent in order to carry a false narrative. If no country was particularly rich compared to t

Yeah it’s a statement deliberately crafted to obfuscate and misrepresent in order to carry a false narrative. If no country was particularly rich compared to today’s standard, then it is not convincing to conclude that plundering did not help. Because then you could conclude any other activity (eg trading, innovating, discovering) also was not helping. A proper analysis needs to compare different countries within the same period, and ask whether countries that plundered are ranked higher than those that did not.