Better results depending on who you're looking at, of course. A poorer person needing major surgery is in better hands in Cuba than in a lot of the USA.
Sure but in the USA a teacher doesn't need to prostitute herself to take care of her family.
This said, there is a reason why I didn't mention the USA. I believe it's a Capitalist system that still needs a whole lot of work before becoming a "relative success"- story. It has a bit too much "Liberalism" and too little "Social".
"Held", and derived a great deal of wealth from them whilst they were held, giving these countries a financially comfortable starting position moving into modern capitalism. A solid foundation and a head start.
That would be an oversimplification of what helped Capitalism to become a "relative success". Northern European countries like Sweden, Norway and Switzerland weren't particularily known as colonial powers. Yet they are now examples of the less bad capitalist systems. Spain and Portugal once were great colonial powers and are now part of the "poorer south". We could also discuss how regions which were once rich industrial power houses are now poor areas with high unemployment. It's not just as simple as saying "Yes but colonies!".
We could also bring in factors which held these countries back: all the costly European wars, world wars, etc.
I am confused, I thought you were against the scale and not the principle ?
For the majority of the history of our species, we've lived in hunter-gatherer societies, or under local warlords, petty kings, and corrupt militaristic empires. That's not a high bar, and a system doesn't get accolades for accomplishing a better standard of living than the abject misery of feudalism.
And plenty of people cannot afford food, shelter, medicine etc. I walk past numerous homeless people on the way to work. If a society allows some to hold more money than they could ever spend, even if they spent £100,000 an hour, while other people cannot afford the absolute basic of sustenance and shelter, then I don't think you can call that a functioning system in any moral sense of the word.
I never said the bar human history has set is "high". But doing better than it has ever been is an accomplishment nonetheless. If someone has always lived in abject misery and suddenly becomes "poor" as Europeans have defined it I would say that person can consider that as a great victory.
I didn't mention the UK for a very good reason. As it is kind of that Euro-America hybrid in Economic/welfare policies and I do not have great esteem for the American system which provides little help for the less fortunate and where people can go bankrupt on healthcare costs.
This said the homeless problem is a very tricky one in nations where it shouldn't exist. It is unfortunately often caused by very poor personal choices the state cannot (easily) interfere with. When you have universal healthcare, social housing, minimum living wages/ad vitam unemployment benefits and all sorts of other aid out there like in Belgium you need to be doing something very wrong to end up on the streets. And in many cases they do.
It has opened my eyes when an investigative reporter once decided to make an experiment during which he would pick homeless people based on the chances they could have to make it back into the system (based on their life story, their motivation, etc.) and see if they could make it if they were given a great boost. What was this boost? 10 000€ and free access to a social worker, psychologist and financial adviser.
The 10 000€ is enough so they could find a place to live and become resident (this would instantly allow them to apply for welfare support as you indeed need to have an address) and they have 3 persons with relevant skills they can contact at any time they want for human support. That's the kind of support even a great welfare state is unlikely to ever give. None of them made it back into the system. Even with a positive selection bias the experiment was a total failure to the great surprise of the reporter. Sometimes you need to accept that some people end up in misery due to their own and the system cannot help them.
Now I am not saying there is
nothing the system can do to prevent people to fall that deep. But it is a very complex issue which often involves a whole lot of personal and psychological issues that a system alone cannot address.
This last paragraph is only to be considered for countries with generous welfare system. Obviously people living in their car in LA despite having a job because housing is just too expensive is a totally different issue which can be solved by the system.