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A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

jasonhickel.org

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Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#211

Post by dahart »

zeroname wrote: post #187
dahart wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even the data that Hickel picked (excluding China) shows is that the trend is down. In the infographic Gates tweeted, it claims to show a 75% reduction in global poverty between 1980 and today. In Hickels chart, it goes up 5% from 1980-2000 and down maybe 7% from 2000 to today. You’re claiming they both show a downward trend today so therefore they’re basically the same? That’s not just misleading, but also misses…

This is Bill Gates' infographic: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxSZ58_XQAAoxM8.jpg:large It does show a 75% in extreme poverty. That happens to be a straight down trend. Nobody even disputes this. It also shows a number of other things, such that "democracy" is actually stagnating. Bill Gates' actual remark on it is that people underestimate how much things have improved over the last two hundred years . Hickel picks t…

I don't care to litigate Hickel's argument, and I don't even necessarily agree with him. It just seems like you're ignoring the actual points Hickel made. The questions you're asking here are all answered in article, so maybe read it again?

The main argument is one of degree. Hickel isn't contradicting whether the trend is down or up, and indeed it's somewhat irrelevant whether the trend is down. What he's pointing out is that the infographic is quite misleading in the impression that it gives to the lay person. Extreme poverty has a specific definition that isn't very useful when trying to understand the big picture, because "extreme poverty" is below the line where you get enough food to live, and it's very far below the line where you can expect a reasonable life. The high level message that the infographic conveys is that poverty in general is nearly gone, where the reality of global poverty is quite different, and not going away as fast as "extreme poverty". Saying that Gates & Pinker never claimed poverty is solved is hiding behind a technicality. The social media they're sharing has a very clear implication, and most people aren't digging into the details and minutiae of this argument.

It would settle this whole thing to put all the trend lines for extreme poverty vs regular poverty vs lower class vs middle class vs upper class all on one graph. No matter what your opinion is here, it's true that using only extreme poverty on a single graph is cherry-picking and likely to not convey an accurate impression of the overall situation.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#212

Post by cc439 »

zeroname wrote: post #204
cc439 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In only his lifetime Sweden went from having an infant mortality rate similar to that of the poorest countries today, to being one of the world leaders. This simply isn't true. Between 1900 and 1905, Sweden's infant mortality rate was merely 2.3 per 1,000 live births [1] which is basically the same as they currently report (2.6 per 1,000 [2]) according to the CIA world factbook. Compare that with Lesotho's rate of 4…

> This simply isn't true. Between 1900 and 1905, Sweden's infant mortality rate was merely 2.3 per 1,000 live births [1] which is basically the same as they currently report (2.6 per 1,000 [2]) You're mixing up maternal mortality (the mother dies) with infant mortality (the child dies). It would be quite remarkable indeed if somehow medicine in Sweden today achieved a slightly worse infant mortality than at the begin…

Well I'm stupid, I'll delete the comment until I can find a good source.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#213

Post by vokep »

throwaway47861 wrote: post #209
zeroname wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You lost all credibility right here. I suppose people living in their economically-alright bubbles will never be able to look objectively at how awful things are in so many places in the world. The point isn't that things aren't awful , but that used to be more awful and continue to be less awful , despite popular perception to the contrary. > You just prefer the cozy illusion that it's all getting better. It is ge…

> > Statistical averages mean nothing to the millions of family barely making ends meet and not being able to pay for the kids' gyms and proper nutrition. > Again, that's not the point. If that's not the point then any other discussion is tragically irrelevant. The "global average is better" is a meaningless assertion. Everybody in the world has roughly one testicle. How useful is that piece of info? And how useful i…

>And how useful is the "global average is getting better" to people who want to raise kids well-fed but currently cannot?

Very much so. Those same people in the past, instead of worrying about feeding their kids well, would be worrying about feeding their kids anything at all, they'd be worrying if the kids even have a chance at survival.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#214

Post by zeroname »

throwaway47861 wrote: post #209
zeroname wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You lost all credibility right here. I suppose people living in their economically-alright bubbles will never be able to look objectively at how awful things are in so many places in the world. The point isn't that things aren't awful , but that used to be more awful and continue to be less awful , despite popular perception to the contrary. > You just prefer the cozy illusion that it's all getting better. It is ge…

> > Statistical averages mean nothing to the millions of family barely making ends meet and not being able to pay for the kids' gyms and proper nutrition. > Again, that's not the point. If that's not the point then any other discussion is tragically irrelevant. The "global average is better" is a meaningless assertion. Everybody in the world has roughly one testicle. How useful is that piece of info? And how useful i…

We're looking into the question of whether poverty is going up or down. We're not figuring out the solution to poverty.

Let's say I point to improved cancer mortality (on average, of course) as a result of human progress, are you going to argue that it's all irrelevant since some people still die from cancer? You're simply straying from the topic.

> And how useful is the "global average is getting better" to people who want to raise kids well-fed but currently cannot?

Not useful at all, obviously. Kids can't eat statistics. They also can't eat your HN comments, for that matter.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#215

Post by sullyj3 »

throwaway47861 wrote: post #210
haberman wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose people living in their economically-alright bubbles will never be able to look objectively at how awful things are in so many places in the world. You just prefer the cozy illusion that it's all getting better. These two statements do not contradict each other, at all. It is possible for two things to simultaneously be true: things are awful for many people, AND things overall are better than they used to…

> It is possible for two things to simultaneously be true: things are awful for many people, AND things overall are better than they used to be. That is correct and I agree. What I am saying is that the global average getting better is a skewed and rather meaningless metric. The fact that 100_000 EU/USA citizes are slighly better off at the cost 1_000_000 asians -- random numbers to demonstrate how an imbalance can b…

> What I am saying is that the global average getting better is a skewed and rather meaningless metric. The fact that 100_000 EU/USA citizes are slighly better off at the cost 1_000_000 asians -- random numbers to demonstrate how an imbalance can be evened out -- does not mean that humanity's economy is getting better. Not at all.

I'm pretty sure Pinker doesn't use average income as a metric. I'm not really sure where you're getting that from. The relevant metric is number of people living below the poverty line, which is a metric which doesn't have the same issue.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#216

Post by zeroname »

dahart wrote: post #211
zeroname wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Bill Gates' infographic: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxSZ58_XQAAoxM8.jpg:large It does show a 75% in extreme poverty. That happens to be a straight down trend. Nobody even disputes this. It also shows a number of other things, such that "democracy" is actually stagnating. Bill Gates' actual remark on it is that people underestimate how much things have improved over the last two hundred years . Hickel picks t…

I don't care to litigate Hickel's argument, and I don't even necessarily agree with him. It just seems like you're ignoring the actual points Hickel made. The questions you're asking here are all answered in article, so maybe read it again? The main argument is one of degree. Hickel isn't contradicting whether the trend is down or up, and indeed it's somewhat irrelevant whether the trend is down. What he's pointing o…

> The questions you're asking here are all answered in article, so maybe read it again?

I've only asked a single question: What is wrong with what Bill Gates actually said? Hickel doesn't deal with what Bill Gates actually said, he talks a great deal about things that he didn't say. Indeed I am ignoring a lot of these points because they are irrelevant to whether "poverty" or "extreme poverty" is actually going down.

> Hickel isn't contradicting whether the trend is down or up, and indeed it's somewhat irrelevant whether the trend is down.

It isn't irrelevant at all! The title of Hickel's article is "Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong."

There really are only three possibilities here: Poverty is decreasing, increasing, or stagnating. The data says poverty is decreasing. So how can Bill Gates possibly be wrong? Answer: He isn't wrong, Hickel just wants to talk about how neoliberalism and globalization is bad, i.e. not actually anything that either Gates nor Pinker claimed.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#217

Post by jjcc »

barrkel wrote: post #7
colechristensen wrote: post #2

Can anyone summarize what is going on here? It seems like a flamewar with graphs, and not interesting enough to invest the time in reading.

I followed this a little bit when it popped up on Twitter last week. The fight appears to be about whether rising global prosperity is helping poor people or mostly just poor people in China; and around the edges, about whether your definition of poor is simply GDP, or includes other harder to quantify things like commons, or if you want to measure it against the US poverty line at purchasing power parity dollars. It…

Thanks for summaries.

Inside China there are many years of experience of helping poor areas get out of poverty. After years of failure it has been widely known knowledge among developed area people that many historically poverty areas became poor largely because of the local people and subculture of the areas. Policies that very close to charity donation don't work

I'm not talking about ethnic minority areas. It might be a big surprise to outsider that there exist such big differences among Han Chinese. Yes China is a big country with a big variety. There are less competitive and lazy Chinese Han people. Because all are Han Chinese there is no political correctness as taboo to talk about it. That's why the hard lesson is well known that a strong socialist policy like give a way free money will encourage the poor people stay in poverty. That can explain the Chinese aid to African usually in the form of loan. Interest can be low but it's very important that the money need to pay back so the borrowers will force to take responsibility and be accountable to get out of poverty. Free money doesn't work. Now the loan is distorted as "loan trap" in MSM which a lot of Chinese who know the lesson see as "blatant lie".

Today with enough tax money the government can afford implement many socialist/liberal policy but still focus on build infrastructure , reduce tax, even provide free house, usually not free money. Maybe there are some exceptions mainly. Total capitalist policy also have problem. There are always less competitive people that can not catch up any way so they need charity like support. So mixed policy should have some balance.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#218

Post by Balgair »

grecy wrote: post #13

One of the most amazing things I learned reading the excellent "Factfullness" by Hans Rosling [1] is that the poorest countries in the world are currently improving faster than any country ever did, at any point in history. That's correct - countries like Lesotho and Central African Republic are improving faster than his home country of Sweden ever did, at any time. In only his lifetime Sweden went from having an inf…

A repost of an old comment of mine with some good sources of the late Dr. Rosling's:

Factfulness is available, for free, here: http://www.factfulness.science/

The late Dr. Rosling's website is fantastic and a good example of easy to use GUIs for data science. Play around with the data yourself here: https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=2018;;&ch...

Try taking the quiz here to see if you are smarter than a chimp: http://factfulnessquiz.com/

I'd encourage everyone to read Factfulness. It's fairly quick to churn through and very enlightening. The world really is getting better.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#219

Post by dang »

throwaway47861 wrote: post #198
spandrew wrote: post #169

It's a bit frustrating to read his follow-up letter because it largely ignores the root counterpoints Pinker made in favour of pushing the data integrity angle. Hans spends an awful lot of time poking holes in the historical accuracy of income data. But Pinker states in very basic, understandable terms that the benchmark isn't the point — setting the benchmark at $7 or 100k doesn't stop the fact that wealthy has tren…

> Do people have access to more wealth (things they desire) than before? The answer is yes. You lost all credibility right here. I suppose people living in their economically-alright bubbles will never be able to look objectively at how awful things are in so many places in the world. You just prefer the cozy illusion that it's all getting better. Statistical averages mean nothing to the millions of family barely mak…

Please don't take HN threads in flamey directions, and especially not by getting personal about it.

Your comment would be fine with just the last paragraph.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#220

Post by cuspycode »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #156
andrepd wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The trend is the same regardless of which poverty line you pick. Poverty is decreasing, education, literacy and health are rising. The story changes quite a bit - and you know it. If we use $7.40 per day, we see a decline in the proportion of people living in poverty, but it’s not nearly as dramatic as your rosy narrative would have it. In 1981 a staggering 71% lived in poverty. Today it hovers at 58% (for 2013, the…

"in a world that’s as fabulously rich as ours, obscene" ??? Wealth is mostly a function of intelligent social organization. Why are we so much more vastly wealthy than we were 100 years go? Just because we pump more gas? No - we're smarter. Wealth is what a country generates , not what it has . It's not like a 'pile of gold' that we have that magically turns into iPhones. Most places that have extreme poverty are rif…

Swedes have lots of real natural resources. Check your facts.
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