Two sets of numbers have landed recently, and neither makes for comfortable reading.

The World Bank’s new MENAAP Economic Update says Pakistan accounts for about 48 percent of the region’s extreme poor, those living below the $3-a-day poverty line. Poverty at that line rose by 6.4 percentage points between 2018-19 and 2024-25. The Bank attributes the deterioration to a succession of shocks, including Covid, the 2022 floods, high inflation, and currency depreciation, as well as a prolonged adjustment period that eroded real incomes and jobs.

Some of Pakistan’s share is simply arithmetic. It has more than 250 million people, and Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen together account for most of the rest, another 47 percent. But the direction is the problem, and Pakistan’s own statisticians confirm it. The Bureau of Statistics’ Household Integrated Economic Survey (HIES) 2024-25 shows that moderate-to-severe food insecurity among households rose from about 16 percent to 24 percent. Severe food insecurity more than doubled, to roughly 5 percent. Wheat and rice consumption also fell. Households have less purchasing power and are hungrier than they were six years ago.

Into this anxiety comes a familiar remedy. A recent post on X, built around a clip of Milton Friedman, argued that people build prosperity by investing, innovating, competing, and creating value, not by a state trying to do everything itself. I have made versions of that argument myself, and much of it is right. The post........

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