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What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

gatesnotes.com

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Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#91

Post by atlasunshrugged »

jokoon wrote: post #78

> More than one billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, driven by improvements in health, agriculture, and education. I don't understand, is the increasing inequality and income concentration a mirage, a lie, or propaganda? It would be nice to introduce the concept of relative and absolute wealth. If you increase the size of the cake, the poor will get more crumbs, and you did reduce poverty, bu…

I think that's their plan, see this article about their push into lobbying

https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-melinda-gates-lob...

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#92

Post by lunchbar123 »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #88
lunchbar123 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since i live here, I can tell you people living on this salary in Africa are not living a 'regular' life. They live in shacks and they eat a malnourished diet, they sometimes tap electricity illegally (and dangerously), they do not have money for clothing or any sort of improvement. On top of that they have to deal with things like heightened crime in their areas or the fact that a bit of bad weather can destroy thei…

Completely agree with you, I did not say anything different. I just said the currency conversion can make a huge difference. With $2 a day you starve to death in USA, a burger costs more than that.

gotcha

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#93

Post by michaelmrose »

13of40 wrote: post #45
swayvil wrote: post #35

Believe it or not, you can grow food, hunt squirrels and build a nice lean-to for zero dollars a day. People forget that.

My mother, for the last 30 years or so, has been a log cabin, raise goats, make Thanksgiving dinner over a propane fire kind of minimalist. Even so, she told me about this old guy who lived down the road who claimed to live on something like 8 USD per month. According to him, his secret was that he absolutely eschewed all vices.

Where are you legitimately allowed to live outside?

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#94

Post by luisdfp »

>"We asked ourselves why the world had to be like this and what we could do to help. Our search for answers altered the course of our lives and led us to start our foundation."

It's a shame but it seems to me like Bill came up with the wrong answer due to a bad diagnosis of the problem.

If you really want to help these people, your best bet would be to highlight how rampant corruption affects these countries and how their rulers should be held accountable for it.

Foreign aid, by itself, will never be enough to solve this problem as long as there are tyrannical and corrupt regimes.

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#95

Post by nabla9 »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #79

This is completely misleading, close to lying. I lived with less than $2 a day. The average salary in the country was less than $100 and this was in Eastern Europe, not in Africa. What changes the story completely is that the exchange rate makes all the difference in my case: we all had a fairly regular life, but the exchange rate was showing a very dark picture. Yes, we were not able to buy American cars in dollars,…

You made simple and understandable mistake.

Gates talks explicitly about World Bank’s international poverty line measured in PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) dollars. It accounts for differences in the cost of living across countries (the PPP exchange rates).

example: PPP for India is 18.128. In India the international poverty line ($1.9 PPP) is $0.10 per day in USD.

---

Gates writes:

> Still, the number of people living on less than $2 a day—$1.90 is the World Bank’s international poverty line—is over 700 million.

and links to article that defines the powerty line: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2015/10/04/w...

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#96

Post by peteretep »

hansjorg wrote: post #81
jngreenlee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still a true story...nothing diminishes the significance of this.

The "lifted out of poverty" meme is most often brought up to validate various forms of western imperialism. If most of the lifting has been done by China, which did not yield (did not relinquish control over natural resources, etc.), then that's bunk.

Nah, you threw the baby out with the bath water there; the other East Asian countries that embraced the west became much much richer much much faster after WWII.

China just managed to dramatically shit itself from the Great Leap Forward through to the early 90s, and is now undergoing the growth spurt that it’s Eastern neighbours experienced decades previously.

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#97

Post by PeterisP »

luisdfp wrote: post #94

>"We asked ourselves why the world had to be like this and what we could do to help. Our search for answers altered the course of our lives and led us to start our foundation." It's a shame but it seems to me like Bill came up with the wrong answer due to a bad diagnosis of the problem. If you really want to help these people, your best bet would be to highlight how rampant corruption affects these countries and how…

Realistically, the only thing that results in a "how their rulers should be held accountable for it" is a violent change of regime. There universally are large groups of local people who'd like their corrupt rulers to be accountable, so you theoretically could support that process by buying and delivering large quantities of weapons to the opposition of the regime so that they can (try to) overthrow it and bring justice to the ruling clique. Or, alternatively, orchestrate an external invasion either by neighboring countries or USA.

However, is this really what Bill Gates should be trying to implement in other countries?

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#98

Post by legulere »

peteretep wrote: post #96
hansjorg wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "lifted out of poverty" meme is most often brought up to validate various forms of western imperialism. If most of the lifting has been done by China, which did not yield (did not relinquish control over natural resources, etc.), then that's bunk.

Nah, you threw the baby out with the bath water there; the other East Asian countries that embraced the west became much much richer much much faster after WWII. China just managed to dramatically shit itself from the Great Leap Forward through to the early 90s, and is now undergoing the growth spurt that it’s Eastern neighbours experienced decades previously.

They are also much smaller. If you compare China to India it didn’t do that badly after all

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#99

Post by PeterisP »

onion2k wrote: post #77
ninguem2 wrote: post #74

How can a country that has people living in such abject poverty justifies sending a probe to the Moon?

In 2011 1.5 million families in the USA lived on less than $2 a day before benefits[1]. Is it time to defund NASA? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

If we're talking about spending space money on benefits, then talking about 'income before benefits' is kind of irrelevant. The whole point is that USA and Europe can afford both social benefits and space, but India apparently has to choose and has chosen to not support these very poor people.

Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?

#100

Post by xyzzyz »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #86
rypskar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poverty rate of $2 a day isn't about living off $2 converted to the local currency, if is about living off the local currency with a value of what $2 is worth in USA. You can compare it to live off what half a cup of coffee costs at Starbucks.

Not true. The article is not about living with the equivalent of $2 in USA, but a few African countries and values converted in dollars. A few years ago some colleagues of mine spent a month in rural, mainland China, trying to see how people live with a few dollars a day. While those people were poor, the numbers are very misleading when you convert in dollars.

No, you’re wrong. It’s not about converting what they earn to dollars using direct exchange rate, it’s about converting it to dollar’s purchasing power.
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