The new global middle class can change the world for the better while expanding by more than 70 million people each year, media magnate Rupert Murdoch says.
The News Corp chief has singled out the emerging economies of Colombia, Rwanda and Vietnam which, along with many other countries, had been dismissed as "hopeless".
But, he said, through trade the global economy was now empowering these nations and millions of people around the world, particularly in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
"As these nations rise, the global economy is going to be responding to a very different set of incentives," Mr Murdoch said in his fifth of six Boyer lectures, entitled The Global Middle Class Roars.
"What separates poor nations from rich nations is not talent and ability. The poor have plenty of talent and ability. Usually what people in poor nations do not have is the opportunity to develop their talents.
"That is why trade is such a powerful engine for prosperity and upward mobility."
When the poor were given access to the global economy and were successful they could build a "better life for their families" and a "brighter future for their countries" while becoming part of the middle class, he said.
Goldman Sachs estimates that a new global middle class is expanding by 70 million people each year, a figure which "could well be an underestimate," Mr Murdoch said.
He added that an estimate the middle class would reach two billion more people by 2030 was "another underestimate".
"But whatever the total, that means wealth and power on a scale unprecedented in human history."
It was far easier to focus on the potential environmental, labour market and food supply problems rapid growth would bring, he said.
"I cannot predict how it will all turn out.
"But these vastly better educated, better fed groups of fellow human beings have minds as well as mouths, and everything I have experienced in my life persuades me that people living in freedom have the ability to rise to new challenges and change the world for the better."
He said the world was a much better place when its people were dealing with the challenges of expanding prosperity rather than the miseries of expanding poverty.
"We should all have more faith in ourselves and in each other."
