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Are we transitioning to post-scarcity economy?
No such thing as a post-scarcity economy, even in the fictional universe of Star Trek. When you have replicators that can produce any food or clothing or small pieces of equipment you need, you end up bartering over planets, star systems, or wormholes [1]. [1] https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Price_(episode)
Dr. Jason Hickel has—I think—a pretty fair criticism of these graphs [1], that I'll try to summarize here: 1. Treating "poverty" as a binary "yes/no" thing, where having > $1.90/day suddenly alleviates you from poverty seems like a bit of a stretch. $1.90/day is probably way too low a number to cover adequate nutrition, shelter, and basic human needs. 2. While the percentage of people in poverty by this measure has d…
One problem, other comments hint on the same thing, is that poverty is not an absolute, it's relative. We would consider ourselves poor if we lived as a family of five in a tiny early 20th New York immigrant's appartment, even though we'd be much better off than a feudal peasant living in a straw hut with no electricity and a distant water well (the "working class" of its day), which in turn would be must better off…
The end of poverty began in the US around 1800, when the specter of famine was finally eliminated. Throughout the 19th century, Americans grew in height and life expectancy, resulting in America's poor being the richest poor people in the world. Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings.
This is a hard pill for society to swallow. On the poor end people legitimately feel like they are not well off because they have so much less than many others. On the high end, rich people don't like the idea that 200 years from now they will be seen as relatively poor.
While there's clearly a lot in the whole $1/day thing, it's not as clear cut. If you live in Sweden on $30 a day and pay $900 a month in rent, that leaves you with just 31 cents a day. Meanwhile if you live in India on $5 a day and pay $50 a month in rent you'd have $3.35 a day left over, and $3 in rural india goes a lot further than $3 in Sweden. Those are of course extreme examples, and the levels of poverty in pla…
They claim to have adjusted the values for the price differences between countries. Although I'm not sure if rent was included in that adjustment.
I had a short stint in the US with a work & travel program and, my personal experience kind of painted the picture that people in the US are simply horrible with their finances. I was young, and I was smart and coming from, what I now realise, was poverty. It seemed to me I could have _easily_ had a good life over there, without even trying. Basically the ethos of FI community would have worked beautifully there. Spend less than you earn, try to have a clean life. Easy.
I think people need to have at least a little while living in poverty to understand what it really looks like. I remember my childhood in one of the ex communist countries, it was... wild. Uncertainty everywhere, we could not afford basic shit. I saw catalogues from some nice EU country and I was _flabberghasted_ that people could afford such nice things. And I was young, I couldn't even process things properly. But there was obvious disconnect between my life and some of the media, promotional material, films, cartoons I was seeing. It certainly gave me a interesting perspective.
The end of poverty began in the US around 1800, when the specter of famine was finally eliminated. Throughout the 19th century, Americans grew in height and life expectancy, resulting in America's poor being the richest poor people in the world. Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings.
> resulting in America's poor being the richest poor people in the world. That's a pretty big assertion without evidence especially with America's awful healthcare system and it's smaller safety net than some other countries.
The end of poverty began in the US around 1800, when the specter of famine was finally eliminated. Throughout the 19th century, Americans grew in height and life expectancy, resulting in America's poor being the richest poor people in the world. Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings.
Only in some very limited aspects. "Oh, they can eat wild strawberries in winter" or "have access to modern technology whereas a medieval king didn't" and such.
The don't have the power of medieval kings, the don't have the wealth of medieval kings, they don't have the estates of medieval kings, the servants and free time of medieval kings, they certainly don't command the respect medieval kings had, they don't have many luxuries of medieval kings, and lots of other things besides. They also have to work shitty jobs (even two jobs), they can end up homeless and live in the streets (including out in the cold), a random cop can abuse them, etc.
There's more to "better quality if life than medieval kings" than modern medicine and gadgets...
Are we transitioning to post-scarcity economy?
This century long bull run managed to offset extreme poverty, but it destroyed the biosphere as a result, and left us with nothing to work with.
The world soon will be a big spiral of blood as we fight each other for what's left.
TLDR: No, we are not headed for a post-scarcity economy.
While there's clearly a lot in the whole $1/day thing, it's not as clear cut. If you live in Sweden on $30 a day and pay $900 a month in rent, that leaves you with just 31 cents a day. Meanwhile if you live in India on $5 a day and pay $50 a month in rent you'd have $3.35 a day left over, and $3 in rural india goes a lot further than $3 in Sweden. Those are of course extreme examples, and the levels of poverty in pla…
I wonder if there were some sort of metric that could account for parity in the power in purchasing between two locations?