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Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

theguardian.com

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Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

#41

Post by yogthos »

tryptophan wrote: post #5

I 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?

Our planet is literally dying. We lost over 60% of land animals [1], insects are dying out as well [2], and life in the oceans isn't doing much better [3].

The temperatures keep rising at an accelerating rate. We're about to get a big methane burp once permafrost melts. That's gonna put 25 gigatons of a greenhouse gas that's 4x more powerful than C02 into the atmosphere. Currently there are about 4 gigatons of methane.

Complex life on this planet could literally go extinct in the near future. All of this is a direct result of human activity. Thinknig that life around the world is getting better, and everything is fine is the height of idiocy. We're facing an unimaginable climate catastrophe that's going to affect every single person in the world.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/10/15/hyperalarm...

[3] https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)...

Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

#42

Post by avmich »

hannasanarion wrote: post #27
avmich wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If you are sick and dying, you're probably not taking any income.

It's easier for me to imagine sick person doing some work for himself or his family than sick person doing many kinds of work for others in monetary economy. If you have society with little use of money, I think relationship between health and poverty is different than in modern capitalism.

Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

#43

Post by jsjolen »

avmich wrote: post #37
hannasanarion wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Poke around on gapminder What do you mean?

He's talking about Gapminder: https://www.gapminder.org/

He's basically telling you to educate yourself ;-)

Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

#44

Post by mberning »

makerofspoons wrote: post #3
tdrgabi wrote: post #2

This 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…

It's the 21st century and we are still propagating the noble savage stereotype.

Also, none of the people promoting this regressive ideal are willing to be the first to give up current lifestyle either.

Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

#45

Post by neolefty »

BucketSort wrote: post #24
tryptophan wrote: post #5

I 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.…

Yes, having wealth and not fretting about it — and finding truly important things to focus on — is a skill too!

Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

#46

Post by watwut »

sct202 wrote: post #31
tdrgabi wrote: post #2

This 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…

Yeah my parents are from one of those formerly poverty stricken places, and there was money, trade, and land ownership. So many people who are living today have experienced their lives improving rapidly within their memory, that it seems ridiculous to claim the opposite.

Your parents are from "prior to colonization"? That is unlikely. Regardless of original claim of before colonization, your parents might see end of it.

Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

#47

Post by dragonwriter »

bovermyer wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, 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:…

> Unfortunately, the author of this piece seems to suffer from the delusion that subsistence life is ideal.

That does not seem to be the argument.

The argument seems to be that money-based measures that might be valid for comparing poverty within fully capitalist, money-oriented societies are not sensible ways of comparing societies across a continuum from not-at-all money-oriented or capitalist to fully capitalist, money-oriented.

Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

#48

Post by coldtea »

bovermyer wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, 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:…

>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

Which is not really relevant to whether poverty is decreasing or not. You can have some better tools or preventions decreasing infant mortality without getting people out of poverty otherwise.

You can also force people out of traditional livable rural non-commercial existence with 0 $/day and into hellish city poverty with few $/day, and it would look like an improvement in the books.

Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

#49

Post by bko »

bovermyer wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, 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 specific passage from the article where the author romanticizes subsistence economies:

> 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. This way of life was violently destroyed by colonisers who forced people off the land and into European-owned mines, factories and plantations, where they were paid paltry wages for work they never wanted to do in the first place.

Re: Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong

#50

Post by CamTin »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #40
CamTin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

When you say ultra rich, you really mean not third world country poor.

That's true for penicillin, but what about more exotic medical procedures? "Socialized" medicine is railed against for "rationing" but all markets have rationing as well. The whole point of a market is to ration resources to those most willing and able to pay.

But yes. In general the line that matters is "Can I afford it?". If it doesn't exist, the answer is no for everbody. If it does exist, and has a price tag on it, the answer is no for some people and yes for others. The "no"s in the latter situation are pretty much in the same situation as they were before the good existed.

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