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The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

nytimes.com

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Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#181

Post by JesperRavn »

dannypgh wrote: post #176
JesperRavn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also whenever you earn more money, some the tax you pay goes towards programs like this whether you donate anything extra or not. So getting a high paying job alone helps.

Your taxes also fund the IMF, the legal system used to defend drug parents, and the promotion of "abstinence-only" sex-ed. The reality is federal programs aren't started or canceled based on total, let alone an individual's, tax revenue, so I call bullshit here.

OK, how about this for starters: do you agree that the following two statements are inconsistent:

1. Increasing tax dollars does not benefit the world by increasing the services provided by the government.

2. Rich people should pay more taxes.

The fact that total tax revenue must ultimately equal total government expenditure in the long run, is not bullshit, it's basic accounting. And the things you listed don't come close to canceling out the benefits of aid (and what is wrong with the IMF in the first place?)

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#182

Post by JesperRavn »

dannypgh wrote: post #177
JesperRavn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology is the main driver of growth in GDP per capita. Technology is what makes wealthy countries wealthy in the first place, and gives them enough surplus that they can afford to help poorer countries (whose problems may not be lack of access to technology per se, but other issues specific to their societies, such as unstable government, lack of education, etc.) By making the developed world richer, technology h…

GDP per capita can easily be increased without raising the median standard of living, or ending poverty. Increasing total wealth doesn't guarantee anything when the maldistribution of wealth is the underlying problem.

No guarantees, but in general it does. Look at, for example, graphs of GDP vs life expectancy.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#183

Post by Litost »

nfoz wrote: post #103
clarkmoody wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context is dangerous to news & politics. Numbers are even more dangerous. So the likelihood of your wish coming true is almost nothing, at least in the mainstream news outlets. You'll get tons of context in long-format blogs and podcasts, where the purpose of the content is to educate. The primary purpose of media news is to make money, hence the bent toward entertainment more than anything. Data from the FBI[1] list…

> The primary purpose of media news is to make money My main news sources are: - CBC (Canadian crown corporation), - BBC (UK Royal Charter), - TVOntario (Ontario crown corporation), - Democracy Now! (independent non-profit), - PBS (independent non-profit), - crowd-sourced for-profit sites (HN, reddit) I live in NYC, and it's always really strange to see how prevalent for-profit media is here when there are so many be…

I'd have to agree with the other commentator on this, the BBC is hardly unbiased, it's under huge pressure to tow the conservative party line via threats to its funding and it's coverage is often populist (a lot of stuff about the royal family) and shallow, I gave up watching it years ago.

Channel 4 news is better, but still i despair at some of the trolling for soundbites that goes on, it's still about the best of the mainstream UK news channels.

Recently The UK Guardian, which i used to have a very high opinion of, got into quite a bit of trouble (with the readers) about it's biased coverage against Jeremy Corbyn's labour leadership campaign.

I imagine the US media is way worse, but in todays horribly co-opted world, sometimes the best you can hope for it to take a cross-sample of biased sources and somehow average it out in your head :(.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#184

Post by api »

13thLetter wrote: post #84
api wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bubbles always go higher than anyone expects, and those who attempt to call the top always look like fools for a time. Fossil fuel extraction is a bubble. That's just grade school math: finite supply, constant and increasing demand. But when will it pop and what happens then? That's a lot tougher to know, and so far all attempts to call a top have been wrong. But a crash will come. How bad will depend on just how far…

It won't "pop" because that's not how economics works. If the alarmists are correct and peak fossil fuels is just around the corner, then after the peak the cost of fossil fuels will gradually go up until alternatives -- alternatives that we know about and can make use of relatively quickly -- make more economic sense. At some point, certain sources of oil will become economically viable which aren't now. At a higher…

You're assuming that the alternatives are actually physically able to meet demand. If that's the case, then great -- what you describe would occur. If not then the only alternative is demand destruction. We can handle some amount of demand destruction in the form of cutting wasteful consumption, but too much would very rapidly disintegrate into... well... actual destruction.

I think a lot of people oversell nuclear power. It's true that there's a lot of irrational FUD about it, but the real reason it hasn't taken over isn't that. Greenpeace protests coal but that doesn't stop anyone from using it. Radical greens are not really that powerful. The reason nuclear hasn't taken over is that it's an expensive, finicky, difficult to manage and scale technology -- at least in its present form -- and has several "unacceptable" failure modes in worst case scenarios. I also suspect that the fossil fuel lobby has worked behind the scenes to shut down research into better ways of doing nuclear, since better forms of nuclear power that did not have these massive downsides would be genuinely disruptive. Multi-trillion-dollar industries are far more powerful than hippies.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#185

Post by api »

drumdance wrote: post #105
13thLetter wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't "pop" because that's not how economics works. If the alarmists are correct and peak fossil fuels is just around the corner, then after the peak the cost of fossil fuels will gradually go up until alternatives -- alternatives that we know about and can make use of relatively quickly -- make more economic sense. At some point, certain sources of oil will become economically viable which aren't now. At a higher…

I keep pointing this out to a friend of mine. It's not like one day someone's going to say "oh, shit! we ran out! sorry, no more oil." It will just get more and more expensive.

I think you're straw manning the peak oil argument here. Only the most naive "doomers" who don't understand economics argue that.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#186

Post by TheCoelacanth »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #174
WalterBright wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the classic tragedy of the commons. Nobody owns the waterways and the air, and hence individuals have neither the power nor incentive to protect them.

>"It's the classic tragedy of the commons. Nobody owns the waterways and the air, and hence individuals have neither the power nor incentive to protect them." Why does lack of direct ownership imply lack of protection? It's possible to have a common resource that is owned by nobody/everybody, and have an organisation set up to protect misuse of this resource. Just because it's free to use, doesn't mean it's free for…

> It's possible to have a common resource that is owned by nobody/everybody, and have an organisation set up to protect misuse of this resource.

And this organization would be different from a government how?

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#187

Post by pnut »

coffeemug wrote: post #151

> We cover planes that crash, not planes that take off. This is why everyone should read The Economist instead of The New York Times. The Economist does a phenomenal job avoiding the selection bias and finding a way to cover mundane trends. It makes the mundane interesting, and gives a view of the world that's much closer to reality than any other publication I've ever seen. I'd strongly encourage everyone to give it…

Why not read both?

There is some correlation between the quality of a publication and the quality of the comments section. NYT is head and shoulders above the Economist in this regard.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#188

Post by Chathamization »

Retric wrote: post #126
letitgo12345 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While money buys political access, a large part of the responsibility does rest with the voters (who are mostly ordinary people, not big money) who keep voting for reps (or don't vote) who support regressive policies. Also big money doesn't control the govt -- there are lots of times where they don't get their way -- immigration reform being a prime example where nativist sentiment has stalled it for more than a deca…

You only get to vote for a tiny number of people, the groups with early access to pick who runs have far more power than the 'popular' vote. "I voted for Kodos." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_and_Kodos PS: Obama might have been a better option, but I disagree with over half of what he has done.

You get to vote for a lot of people, but most people simply ignore this. Take Obama - started as a state senator, ran for Congress, then ran for the Senate, then for the presidency. In each of these elections he had to get through both a primary and general election. In each of these elections he also had to rely on a network of supporters and surrogates, the most important of which are other elected officials (many at the local level). He also had to work with the state party (also elected).

The vast majority of people ignore 99% of the elections out there, and then wonder why they don't have an influence on things. I mean, seriously - we often have elections here with turnout in the teens. And I've worked the polls for those elections - even the minority of people who bother showing up have no clue to who's even on the ballot. Many times when I ask people who they voted for, they can't even remember (again, the few who bothered to vote).

It's like staying at home while other people work on a year long project, then showing up 3 days before release and complaining that you have no control over it. Well, yeah.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#189

Post by ZenoArrow »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #186
ZenoArrow wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"It's the classic tragedy of the commons. Nobody owns the waterways and the air, and hence individuals have neither the power nor incentive to protect them." Why does lack of direct ownership imply lack of protection? It's possible to have a common resource that is owned by nobody/everybody, and have an organisation set up to protect misuse of this resource. Just because it's free to use, doesn't mean it's free for…

> It's possible to have a common resource that is owned by nobody/everybody, and have an organisation set up to protect misuse of this resource. And this organization would be different from a government how?

A government is one valid way to organise this. Is that bad in your opinion?

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#190

Post by dannypgh »

JesperRavn wrote: post #181
dannypgh wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your taxes also fund the IMF, the legal system used to defend drug parents, and the promotion of "abstinence-only" sex-ed. The reality is federal programs aren't started or canceled based on total, let alone an individual's, tax revenue, so I call bullshit here.

OK, how about this for starters: do you agree that the following two statements are inconsistent: 1. Increasing tax dollars does not benefit the world by increasing the services provided by the government. 2. Rich people should pay more taxes. The fact that total tax revenue must ultimately equal total government expenditure in the long run, is not bullshit, it's basic accounting. And the things you listed don't come…

Nope, I don't agree.

Total tax revenue does not need to equal total expenditures in the long run. Fiat currencies are created when the government spends money, and it's a choice (based on monetary schools of economics) to have them correlated with revenue. It is not a requirement. The government prints money.

The IMF is tasked with countering global inflation; anti-inflation policies disproportionately benefit those with cash and harm those with debts. In practice, structural adjustment has led to reductions in all sorts of public goods around the world, including education. Hence my inclusion of the IMF on a list with other government programs that increase, rather than reduce, wealth inequality.

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