I see it this way as well, but most of the people I know who bring up this subject as a problem are either xenophobic or have some sort of cognitive dissonance.

I see it this way as well, but most of the people I know who bring up this subject as a problem are either xenophobic or have some sort of cognitive dissonance. These kinds of statistics fail to point out the billions of people who have come out of poverty, and the millions who are now in the middle class, particularly in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). The response to this point is either "We have to take care of our own first" as if the well-being of an American person is somehow more important than that of 10 Chinese people, or that the progress made in the developing world is insignificant.