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The history of the end of poverty has just begun

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Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#101

Post by hkt »

gruez wrote: post #98
goodpoint wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"extreme poverty" is a very arbitrary threshold and some charts are using a fixed threshold that is based on purchasing power and not updated based of *real* cost of life compared to what goods and services are enjoyed by less poor people. Furthermore, inequality is actually rapidly increasing in many societies. Yet, one can cherry-pick an arbitrary threshold making the whole analysis profoundly misleading.

>that does not updated based of real cost of life Does being adjusted for PPP not do that?

PPP is designed precisely to allow fair comparisons. The article refers to it as "international dollars". It is important to note it did not refer to USD anywhere: it is talking about $30PPP per day, which in real currency is a wildly variable amount but which buys approximately the same things.

Without understanding the distinction between PPP and USD, it is not possible to fully comprehend the article.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#102

Post by coldtea »

slibhb wrote: post #88
coldtea wrote: post #48

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…

"Poverty" (the word) is relative and has a cultural meaning. But it's not clear that we should care about those components of the word/concept. If the poorest person in the world has a car, a home, food, and water, are they poor just because other people have much more? Even if they are, does it really matter? We find poverty viscerally disturbing because it comes with privation. If we get to a point where that is no…

>If the poorest person in the world has a car, a home, food, and water, are they poor just because other people have much more?

Yes. And we could ask the same for things the poorest medieval peasant had, that a caveman didn't. Would you say the medieval peasant wasn't poor?

>Even if they are, does it really matter?

Yes. We're social animals.

Here's another way to look at it.

Would it be ok if the poorest black person in the world had a car, a home, food, and water, but the poorest white people had much more? If not, why? It would be better than today, no?

Because it's racism? But if the same situation is good if we omit the racial qualifiers (which makes it your example, which you claim we should consider ok), why does it turn bad when the subsets are selected racially?

I'd argue it was already bad even in your original example (when the rich vs poor dichotomy didn't have the race qualifiers). It's just than in one case it's bad as class+race, and the other it's bad just because of class.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#105

Post by beepbooptheory »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #86
beepbooptheory wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a little funny to say an essentially communist society has a scarcity of labor... It's like yes, that's kinda the point! They often note on the show itself that it is in fact replicator tech itself that sealed the deal for their era of post-scarcity, so yeah, that would imply some kind of scarcity in handmade goods. I think when people generally talk about "post-scarcity" it isn't that literally everything…

"sealed the deal" meaning that the replicator wasn't essential for their economy. Today we have industrial farming, robot factories and ships that can carry 100,000 tonnes, allowing us to produce an incredible amount of stuff with very little human labour. The difference between that and a replicator based economy is small. If the Star Trek reputation economy is feasible in the 24th century, it's feasible today.

I agree its logistically feasible and plus it would have broad support from regular people.

Main issue I can see is swift and devestating interventions from the USA.

Remember, star trek timeline had to go through a century of fascism and war before they could get to post-capitalism. We want post capitalism, not scarcity.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#106

Post by coldtea »

gruez wrote: post #96
coldtea wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems like you're just trying to redefine "poverty" to mean "income inequality". No, I'm trying to properly define property, instead of leaving it as a hazy term. And this includes income inequality, because what's considered poor is not static (see my example regarding the feudal peasant in their hut, the early 20th century immigrant family, or a modern trailer poor). > It's unclear why you want to redefine "pover…

>No, I'm trying to properly define property, instead of leaving it as a hazy term. Alright, after looking at the wikipedia article, you're technically correct in the sense that the word only means "poor", therefore people are free to define it in whatever they want (either in relative or absolute sense). However, in the context of international development, it almost always refers to absolute poverty. Even in governm…

>There's certainly an absolute component to it, even if countries shift to using relative measure once they get rich enough.

Then perhaps to clarify things we should separate the absolute components from the relative ones? For example, I've mentioned hunger (lack of access to food), or similarly for access to healthcare, etc. Those can be quantified absolutely.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#107

Post by hkt »

chrisco255 wrote: post #63
dane-pgp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings. And today's rich are doing even better than that, so there's no harm in taxing their wealth, right?

Yes, because the government is generally bad at using capital and the ROI on higher tax rates reaches negative at some point, nevermind that it can print as much as it wants.

Most crashes are caused by misallocated capital in the markets, and state intervention on a massive scale is usually the answer.

The state isn't an amazing tool, but it is the best one we have. It can bring about universal healthcare and education, mass housebuilding programmes, regulation and optimisation of dysfunctional markets.. and even put human beings on the moon.

Meanwhile, "investors" pile money into.. um, dogecoin?

The "government is bad" narrative is too simplistic to be helpful. I'd suggest broadening your outlook.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#108

Post by hkt »

rhcom2 wrote: post #49
WalterBright wrote: post #33

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.

GDP per capita includes public spending, but (I'm guessing here) may not include a weighting for what people value. So America's epic military budget counts towards that figure, but the comparison with (eg) universal healthcare elsewhere is dollar for dollar. Which is to say, GDP per capita does not reflect public values, only public spending.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#109

Post by WalterBright »

coldtea wrote: post #58
WalterBright wrote: post #33

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.

> 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, th…

Let's see, they're taller (better nutrition), live in heated / air conditioned dwellings, indoor plumbing, flush toilets, clean water, fresh food year round, no smallpox, far fewer diseases, far better educated, infinitely better medical and dental care, better clothing, TV, phones, ...

And they live longer, too.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#110

Post by WalterBright »

dane-pgp wrote: post #47
WalterBright wrote: post #33

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.

> Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings. And today's rich are doing even better than that, so there's no harm in taxing their wealth, right?

History shows that confiscating the wealth of the wealthy has a negative effect on the poor.
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