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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

#151

Post by WalterBright »

Frondo wrote: post #139
chrisco255 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have access to all the world's information. They can travel across continents in a number of hours for less than two weeks wages. They can push a button on their phone to have gourmet food delivered to their house in under an hour. They can press another button on their phone to fetch a personal driver that will deliver them to any destination. They can choose to drive themselves, of course, and can travel hundr…

America's poor can't travel (it costs! even if you bus it, you need time off work, a place to stay, etc), they can't have gourmet food delivered (it costs!), they can't fetch a driver (it costs!), they often can't drive themselves (cars cost!). They also generally can't afford medical care, child care, a wide variety of leisure activities (plays, shows, even movies cost!) They do have access to information and music,…

> America's poor can't travel

How do you explain the hundreds of thousands of destitute migrants tramping thousands of miles to get here?

They'll get treated for free in emergency rooms. Medieval doctors were worse than no medical care at all, ever.

> even movies cost!

During the Depression, the movie houses were full of people sleeping, as they were cheaper than a hotel.

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

#152

Post by WalterBright »

Koshkin wrote: post #142
altvali wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? I'm interested to learn more.

An example: the communist revolution in Russia in 1917. (The “negative effect” included millions of people getting murdered, killed by the famine, or imprisoned.)

All the communist revolutions reduced the standard of living of the poor. Venezuela is the latest example.

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

#153

Post by spaetzleesser »

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.”

That may be true from a purely materialistic point of view but a lot of the unpleasantness of being poor is stress. Not knowing if you can feed your children tomorrow, you may become homeless, if you work minimum wage you often get treated like crap. Medieval kings didn’t have to worry about that.

In short, this is a pretty condescending line mainly uttered by people who aren’t poor and don’t know how it is to be poor.

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

#154

Post by stevenwoo »

altvali wrote: post #137
WalterBright wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Can you elaborate? I'm interested to learn more.

Piketty covers this extensively in Capital and Ideology and comes to the opposite conclusion with charts of data of wealth taxation versus income inequality in every country for which there is reliable data. There has only been progressive wealth taxation for a short time period in the USA and the UK off the top of my head.

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

#155

Post by spaetzleesser »

WalterBright wrote: post #110
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?

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

How about they all distribute their wealth directly? Or even better, don’t amass that much wealth but pay their workers better. They can still keep more than enough to live better than medieval kings.

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

#156

Post by WalterBright »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #73
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.

There's quite a broad range of "poor" in America. At least medieval kings never ran out of food, which people in food deserts do regularly. And medieval kings would have been quite secure, compared to the extreme violence that makes up daily life in many of America's urban poor communities, which are some of the most dangerous in the world. I'm thankful that I've gotten to live in Northwest DC, South Chicago, West Ba…

> Our country's extremes are often as bad as a war-torn country.

I infer you've never spent time in a war-torn country.

My father told me that in Germany after the war, if you were smoking a cigarette, people would follow you until you threw the butt away. They'd fight over the butt, and the winner would combine the bits of tobacco left with other bits and sell the result.

Accurate figures are not known, but likely millions starved to death in Germany after the war.

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

#157

Post by philipkglass »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #147
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to your housing costs isn't increased payments, but cheaper housing. Housing prices are spiraling out of control almost everywhere because we refuse to build more of it through asinine zoning restrictions. High housing costs have such ripple effects on the cost of everything else that it's incredibly frustrating to see everything else but cheaper and more available housing be proposed as a means to help…

I kind of agree with your idea that we should work to decrease housing prices, but the problems with housing are not as simple as remove zoning and building restrictions and watch prices fall. One example. Energy prices are the base input to everything including housing, so if you want to make housing cheaper then better energy policy might be a good start.

Energy is a large portion of the cost of aluminum ingots or tanker cars full of ammonia. It is not a large portion of the cost of constructing new housing. I wouldn't start with energy prices if I were trying to figure out how to make housing affordable. I'd try to contrast e.g. Tokyo, where housing is reasonably affordable, against the city of New York, where it is much less affordable. Japan doesn't have cheaper energy than the US.

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

#158

Post by dustintrex »

greysphere wrote: post #145
danschmitt wrote: post #24

It is always nice to see such narratives based on robust data. For similar stories backed by data I can also recommend the book "Factfulnes" by Hans Rosling [1]. When we talk about basic needs, our global community is making tremendous progress. At the same time, we should not forget that the same system that abolishes poverty also creates enormous inequality, which not only makes people unhappier, but also leads to…

>we should not forget that the same system that abolishes poverty also creates enormous inequality Is this true? The post uses Sweden as the exemplar, which has the lowest poverty (on its chart) and also one of the lowest inequalities as measured by the Gini coeffcient (30). This page [1] seems to offer a handful of data, but nothing that outlines a clear 'higher Gini -> less poverty.' If anything it seems pretty unc…

You could argue that the wealth of Swedes comes from the (indirect) exploitation of the poor. IKEA and H&M are household names that give Swedes and the world cheap clothing and furniture, virtually all of which is made by comparatively much poorer people in China, Bangladesh, etc.

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

#159

Post by changxi_hn »

wussboy wrote: post #150
WalterBright wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The homeless issue in the US is much more of a drug addiction and alcoholism problem than a down on one's luck problem. Something like 90% of the homeless are in that category. > Who needs plumbing when you have a servant to bring you whatever you want? I like hot showers. I bet you do, too. Besides, what do you think happens to kings when they get a toothache? No anesthetic, nothing to be done except an idiot with a…

As Pinker points out in Enlightenment Now, progress is devilishly hard to measure. I enjoy more air conditioning than the Rothschilds. But I feel like they perhaps enjoyed other things that I can never aspire to…

No post body was provided.

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

#160

Post by maerF0x0 »

every discussion of poverty needs a discussion of absolute vs relative poverty. I'd say this report tips it's hand

> The share in poverty in any country depends on two factors: the average level of income and the level of inequality.

reducing inequality itself, while correlated, is not necessary for poverty reduction.

I'd love to see one of these official boards to decide that poverty is over when some absolute measure happens (even the currency one is a mess due to inflation numbers and currency manipulation) .

Eg to illustrate the point: maybe we could say poverty is over when less than .01% of the population dies from malnutrition. (plus other measures).

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