Subsistence farming societies today: poor
Subsistence farming societies before: not poor!
Anybody who looks can see that poverty has increased!
Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong
21–30 of 94 posts
Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong
#22The article claims that a large number of people formerly lived cashless lives, but now live a lower-quality life that depends on cash. This claim doesn't have a lot of data for it, but is maybe believable. A data-driven discussion of quality of life, regardless of cash income, would clear this up. Looks like other commenters are dispelling the notion pretty quickly. Regarding cash income though, I feel that this art…
I think it's well beyond "disrespects the actual data", more into science denial territory.
We have had decent data about this for a long time. It's a lot easier to gather than climate data, on which the same people will profess great certainty. But it doesn't fit everyone's preferred view of things.
Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong
#23100 years ago the richest man in the world could die from a simple infection because there were no such thing as antibiotics. People take for granted so many things we have in the modern world, they want some form of utopia right now. Perfect is the enemy of good
And now the poorest man in the world will die from the same infection because he can't afford the antibiotics, or has no access to a doctor who can prescribe them to him. What's the difference between something existing but being impossibly expensive vs not existing at all, except for the ultra rich?
Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong
#24I wonder why it is so hard for so many people to accept that the world is better than it ever has been, and is still getting better. You see this from every side of the political spectrum. Is being super cynical just a bug in our nature?
Wild expectations driven by a culture of greed. People just want more and more and when they can't get it, everything is terrible. A life of comfort has basically incubated generations of immature childish people that have lost sight of what is really needed in life. I have personally talked to people that are well off but are stressed out because they can't afford to keep paying for an additional property they have. They get so caught up in maintaining what they have and getting more. This is particularly dramatic to me because all I want is a secure place to work and study. I feel very out of touch for not wanting all these things that people around me seem to fight tooth and nail for.
Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong
#25Classic "noble savage" / "everything was better in the past" article. Why is this on HN?
It makes a good discussion piece, and while far from perfect, it does bring some interesting data to the table (such as the stagnation in poverty decline if you exclude China).
Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong
#26Classic "noble savage" / "everything was better in the past" article. Why is this on HN?
I think the article posited that the graphic was based on incomplete data and failed to show the effect of China's policies. He wasn't trying to make a case for it being all roses before 1981, he was trying to demonstrate that the Davos neo-liberals couldn't claim to be right.
Perhaps it's suitable for HN because it raises the question of good data analysis versus making up numbers that amount to false news.
Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong
#27Unfortunately, the author of this piece seems to suffer from the delusion that subsistence life is ideal. He makes a valid point that our data about poverty prior to 1981 is lacking; however, he completely ignores more telling data, such as infant mortality rates correlated with infrastructure development. Short version: life _is_ improving for the majority of people on the planet. Recommended reading on the subject:…
The author discusses poverty, not health. We can argue that health is more achievable in modern world, but the picture of poverty isn't changed by that.
It absolutely is. If you are sick and dying, you're probably not taking any income. We should expect poverty to be directly corellated with health, and the data agrees. Poke around on gapminder and see for yourself.
Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong
#28This sounds like fantasy to me: "Prior to colonisation, most people lived in subsistence economies where they enjoyed access to abundant commons – land, water, forests, livestock and robust systems of sharing and reciprocity. They had little if any money, but then they didn’t need it in order to live well – so it makes little sense to claim that they were poor." They still fought over resources and hunting grounds. T…
We still fight even now, even most developed countries have wars. And subsistence societies don't necessarily have slavery on a big scale.
Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong
#29Classic "noble savage" / "everything was better in the past" article. Why is this on HN?
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.[0]
Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong
#30Unfortunately, the author of this piece seems to suffer from the delusion that subsistence life is ideal. He makes a valid point that our data about poverty prior to 1981 is lacking; however, he completely ignores more telling data, such as infant mortality rates correlated with infrastructure development. Short version: life _is_ improving for the majority of people on the planet. Recommended reading on the subject:…
The author discusses poverty, not health. We can argue that health is more achievable in modern world, but the picture of poverty isn't changed by that.
Health is linked to poverty. So it makes sensr to use it as a metric.