[jaguar]

There are two theories really.

One is that as more countries enter the 1st world more wealth is generated and everyone is better off, global standard of living rises and technology fills the gaps per se, it's fairly textbook economic theory.

The other is that you'll see a kind of balancing effect globally, a flow of wealth away from established 1st world countries towards 3rd world countries until you hit a kind of global equity. In some ways you're already seeing this with the cutting back of welfare of various sorts by most 1st world countries. We hit a peak, now it's downhill for a while until everything even out.