Earlier quoted context omitted.
The achievement is ... Mao died?
Wouldn't "bad leader dies, next one has better economic policies" make the situation improve by a lot in most poor places?
Yes and this is not exclusive to developing countries either.
What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?
101–110 of 181 posts
Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?
#102I lived with $0 a day during 2 years (I lived in France, in a small student room, for about €140/month)
It's sustainable and compatible with a 'normal' life, I found food from:
- student university restaurants, I asked the permission to collect in the bread 'trash', most bread was in perfect state. I heard this food was used for chicken farms
- end of markets, I was even helping merchants in exchange of their damaged but perfectly good legumes and fruits. I was coming back with a lot of food. It's important to eat the most damaged first of course
- some supermarket bins, where I could find some salad plastic bags, eggs. There was other kind of food, meat, biscuits, dishes, but I wasn't interested by those processed foods
If I had $2 per day, I'd buy a huge rice bag periodically, eggs, and damaged legumes every week at the end of markets
Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?
#103It's important to remember that the world has been unbelievably successful at getting people out of extreme poverty (inflation-adjusted $1.9 per day). We went from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 0.65 billion in 2018. Ways to go, but it is a truly amazing achievement of humanity. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the past 30 years. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
I think this number is marginally misleading, because a huge amount of that is China: > According to the World Bank, more than 850 million people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty as China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015 China was not historically poor, and this is a reversion to the mean once minimal free trade was allowed.
Still it means world ex-China went from being 30% poor to 10% poor (1050M out of 3400M in 1980 and 640M out of 6400M now). Great achievement nonetheless. While yes, most spectacular in China. That's what happens when you scrap Communism and manage to not break everything else in the process (and yes, also hack your way there quite a bit, creating quite a few long-term liabilities that will backfire soon).
Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?
#104>"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 just…
I am impressed how respectfully you make this point. I would advocate strongly against imperialistic views to solve these problems.
Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?
#105>"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…
So after reading this your first instinct was to comment how you know better than the world’s greatest philanthropist?
Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?
#106I did this in college for a week as part of a $2 dollar a day challenge for a student microfinance club. I knew well enough that it was near impossible to do it accurately in the U.S. where costs are inflated for basic things, and I also was discounting things like my tiny rent and what not, but I wanted to just go through it once as an exercise. I had $14 and I used most of it to stock up on dry beans. I think I end…
What would be the equivalent of $2 in the US?
Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?
#107I lived with $0 a day during 2 years (I lived in France, in a small student room, for about €140/month) It's sustainable and compatible with a 'normal' life, I found food from: - student university restaurants, I asked the permission to collect in the bread 'trash', most bread was in perfect state. I heard this food was used for chicken farms - end of markets, I was even helping merchants in exchange of their damaged…
I seem to remember there was a polemic about supermarkets locking their bins from scavengers. Did you have any problem at the time? Was it before or after there was a change of law?
Just a few more questions out of curiosity from a fellow french student:
How much time a day were you expending in exchange for free food? Did you also use extreme frugality for other commodities?
What motivated you to to take up this lifestyle? Do you think it would have been possible to “have family responsibilities” in your situation?
What alternatives seemed available at the time?
Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?
#108This 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,…
> This is completely misleading, close to lying. Philanthropy in a nutshell. On a more serious note, I couldn't agree more. Any sort of international metric for poverty (like the $2 here) is downright useless because it ignores all the local context. > I hope you will be touched by their stories, their challenges, and their dreams for better lives. I also hope that you’ll ask yourself what you can do to help the mill…
That’s akin to giving a fish to someone.
I think that what philanthropist can do to help is to effectively replace the government: build infrastructure, educate people, provide healthcare, employ the locals for these jobs.
Any money you give to anyone for free will just get someone rich while the rest will continue suffering.
—
Also, to directly answer your point, you can give those $50 to a person OR spend those $50 to get 50 people to donate instead. This is the point of this “expensive” documentaries.
Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?
#109I lived with $0 a day during 2 years (I lived in France, in a small student room, for about €140/month) It's sustainable and compatible with a 'normal' life, I found food from: - student university restaurants, I asked the permission to collect in the bread 'trash', most bread was in perfect state. I heard this food was used for chicken farms - end of markets, I was even helping merchants in exchange of their damaged…
I seem to remember there was a polemic about supermarkets locking their bins from scavengers. Did you have any problem at the time? Was it before or after there was a change of law? Just a few more questions out of curiosity from a fellow french student: How much time a day were you expending in exchange for free food? Did you also use extreme frugality for other commodities? What motivated you to to take up this lif…
I think now in France supermarkets are 'legally encouraged' not to lock their bins and the culture of food waste is not as prevalent.
Re: What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
NASA budget is 0.489% of US 2019 Budget, ISRO is ~0.4% of Indian 2019 Budget.
Also ISRO makes a profit through its commercial satellite launching missions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antrix_Corporation