It is a common myth that growth and free market bring poor people out of poverty, or increase living standards. Even experts in all kind of different fields, will fall into these talking-point, when asked how to combat poverty. So, why am I willing to argue against all kinds of experts? Because the myth is so easily debunkable.
If economic growth, and access to resources was as important, as stated, you can image a early history world where every single individual, had access to the same resources as the elite. Basically only looking at health, living conditions and quality of life, of the elite. Would that give a higher standard of living, compared to what average individuals in western countries have to day? NO! Abundance of food and other resources, will protect you from starvation, but not from food going bad, or sanitary removal of waste, and it will not save you from diseases, infections or bodily damage.
It is not lack of resources that is biggest the difference between early history and now, but knowledge and technology. It's not enough to have an abundance of food, you also need to know whats healthy to eat. You need modern medicine to cure illness. You need machines to do harmful tasks for you. You need modern infrastructure to access goods and information, and to get rid of waste. We can go on and on about technology that make life easier and more entertaining to live: Cars, airplanes, computers, TV, smartphones... We also expect more and unimaginable inventions to come in the future. But none of them will appear just because of trade. They all need people to have a new idea and access to the knowledge and technology to bring it to life.
To those that say capitalism and free market, have given us the life we have today, I reply: Humans have traded freely for 5000 years, and for most of this time didn't use this freedom for more than selling basic food and pottery, just to survive another day. Economical revolutions have never correlated with changes in the economic system, but with the invention of new technology. Some might say: Ye, but you still need free trade to make those technological progress happen. My reply reply would be: Regulations have increased at the same speed as technology, because regulations are made to prevent the abuse of those new technologies. Laws and regulations will always correlate with the complexity of the civilization, and have no positive correlation with the freedom of the market.