What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day? • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by tim333 » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 8:27 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #158

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they are, those shark foundations and companies are really pushing micro-loans as both life changing and charity, when it’s been a long time since we’ve known it has really bad effects and is the new cool way to prey on the poor. They would helicopter money at people if they really wanted to help them.

The parent more or less correct, if speaking a bit loosely. Microfinance has been a disaster pushed by indeed horrible loan sharks, though the Gates Foundation isn't by itself such a thing. "Hundreds Of Suicides In India Linked To Microfinance Organizations": https://www.businessinsider.com/hundreds-of-suicides-in-indi... Counter point from the Guardian on the whole Gates approach (also linked on another thread here)…

The Guardian article is iffy, discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19026201

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

#162

Post by edanm » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

barking wrote: post #115

arcturus17 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So after reading this your first instinct was to comment how you know better than the world’s greatest philanthropist?

Is he greater than, say, the guy who founded DFS Group, who has now given away all his wealth in line with his plan to do so which he set in place decades ago? Edit named wrong company initially

Ummm, yeah? Bill Gates has also famously committed to giving away substantial parts of his wealth to charity, and has even gotten other billionaires to do the same.

Although, let's not actually compare greatness here, anyone voluntarily giving away their vast fortunes to charity deserves applause in my mind, and saying that one is greater than the other is kind of pointless.

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

#163

Post by joe_the_user » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 9:10 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #161

joe_the_user wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent more or less correct, if speaking a bit loosely. Microfinance has been a disaster pushed by indeed horrible loan sharks, though the Gates Foundation isn't by itself such a thing. "Hundreds Of Suicides In India Linked To Microfinance Organizations": https://www.businessinsider.com/hundreds-of-suicides-in-indi... Counter point from the Guardian on the whole Gates approach (also linked on another thread here)…

The Guardian article is iffy, discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19026201

I disagree. In your linked comment, ColdTea's comment is insightful.

Edit: I linked to this article because it makes an informed critique of Gates but the ultimate point is that all that is being measured by removing "extreme poverty" is a movement from subsistence (living outside the money economy) to existence within it. This isn't accomplished by charity and trends for those within the money economy have not been towards increasing wages.

A move out of subsistence could be good, bad or indifferent, depending on particular conditions and who interprets the situation. But the big thing is it's particular (and pretty much inevitable) change, not a general "trend to the good" and ultimately the question is where those in the money economy get good and rising wages, something Gates seems to pay zero attention to.

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

#164

Post by barking » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #162

barking wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he greater than, say, the guy who founded DFS Group, who has now given away all his wealth in line with his plan to do so which he set in place decades ago? Edit named wrong company initially

Ummm, yeah? Bill Gates has also famously committed to giving away substantial parts of his wealth to charity, and has even gotten other billionaires to do the same. Although, let's not actually compare greatness here, anyone voluntarily giving away their vast fortunes to charity deserves applause in my mind, and saying that one is greater than the other is kind of pointless.

Well I was responding to someone who implied that Bill Gates was the greatest. Chuck Feeney lives in a rented apartment drives a modest car and has essentially given away his entire $8 billion dollar wealth. It's hard to top that for generosity in my opinion.

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

#165

Post by peter303 » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 11:52 PM UTC

dluan wrote: post #75

I 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…

A variant is the food stamp challenge where you limit food to the standard allotment of about $6 a day. If you can get a whole month upfront, you can make bulk purchases as others point out. Also you probably need to cook most food from scratch and avoid convenience food and eating out.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_stamp_challenge

I have read several stories where celebrities struggle with this for a week.

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

#166

Post by peter303 » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 12:00 AM UTC

H8crilA wrote: post #5

It'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

This is the point of Steve Pinkers last two books Enlightenment Now. He has many graphs of social progress in recent centuries. He attributes this to a society run much more on human reason than in the past, including science, laws, and large governments.

We still have a great deal more room for improvement.

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

#167

Post by Ayesh » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 3:37 AM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #48

Something to keep in mind: while exteme poverty is worse than what a 1st world person could probably imagine,you have to also think about all the nuiances and costly omplications of first world living that go away in a poor 3rd world country. Mandatory health,rent,home owner, car (liability) insurances don't exist. Housing codes are not that good or not enforced well which means cheap housing (think huts for example)…

I would upvote this +100 if I could!

What you said about growing up in poverty and experiencing it later are super different things. I grew up in Sri Lanka and while I have not lived in one, we have small villages in tea estates where 50-100 families have created small village, all of whom work in the same estate. Even today, they make about $3 a day, and they have totally different economics to compare with the outside world. Food exchange is quite common (someone grows one type of vegetables, and the other, a different type), and costs like transportation and utilities are not that extreme because they already have a store, a small school, and even a public water well for drinking, shower, toilets, etc. I am totally agreeing with your last paragraph saying there are different types of poverty.

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

#168

Post by tobr » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:10 AM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #133

tobr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not surprising when you go to the world’s 2nd richest person, a person whose net worth keeps increasing by billions per year, to learn what it’s like to live on nothing.

What percentage of his time and net worth has Bill Gates given to those in poverty over the years?

You should also ask what percentage of their net worth he has taken? He is getting richer every day.

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

#169

Post by JordanFarmer » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 6:02 AM UTC

Interesting that Bill points out in particular the poverty and hardships of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Interesting because it once had 3000 medical facilities and over 300 hospitals. Something like 80% literacy rate and 60%+ school aged kids attending school. The largest middle class in all of Africa, slavery was illegal (though that doesn't mean it didn't happen). This was of course when it was a Belgium colony. There were 80,000 Belgians living there. There was a massive infrastructure of trains and roads. Many diseases that kill tens of thousands now had been nearly eradicated through vaccinations.

Quite a far cry of how life is there now... Belgium was going to transition away and give the Congo it's independence, but the Congolese people had no patience for that and began getting violent. This led to a premature departure with a weak and new Congolese government. What followed was civil war and complete destruction of all infrastructure and means of living free of poverty... A sad story for sure. You can't blame the Congolese people for wanting their independence and certainly the Belgian people didn't treat them as equals (segregation wasn't the law, but it was a common social practice). I sure wish things could have worked out better. Though the Congolese people didn't have autonomy, quality of life was far better.

Be careful what you wish for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Congo

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

#170

Post by anm89 » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 6:39 AM UTC

What a trite concept. The entire world isn't denominated in dollars. I'm currently in Colombia where I could eat 3 great meals out at a restaurant for maybe $6(and really a whole lot cheaper than that if my goal was to make due with less)

Poverty isn't defined by how much american currency you'd get at exchange for your cost of living.