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Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

economist.com

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Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#221
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Central Limit Theorem smooths any errors. Decades of observation data make instrument errors very easy to spot. In recent decades daily MODIS (satellite) polar orbit overpasses provide air column and ground temp data that infills station data (from 1900 onwards). There's a science to ground truthing, error detection, and data correction. Here's the gross single number continent wide average over a century: http:/…

Only sometimes. It is easier to measure in cities, and thus introduce bias based on whatever pavement is populate. There is a lot of data, and the people who measure this (or at least some of them) are aware of the issues and so correct for them. However you cannot just blindly apply the central limit theorem.

Who said anything about blindly?

Apart from yourself, implying that happens as a matter of course?

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#222
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the mean rolling average of all tempreture readings across Australia moved by 0.5 across a twelve month period that would indeed be a significant change that would certainly mean something .

Indeed, but not if your thermometer could only measure in 2°C increments. You don't gain accuracy by averaging a bunch of rough measurements, especially if the micro-climate has a lot of diversity. Statistics is tough.

Luckily the Australian BOM Weather Station specifications require that air and soil temp sensors have a -60° C to +60° C range with a 0.1° C resolution and a ±0.1° C accuracy.

The specs are in attachment 2 of the BoM Observation Specification manual.

Spurious comments are easy, looking stuff up is tough.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>moralizing over diet Interesting. There's seems to be some fuckery with Indian hunger data, i.e. malnourishment, stuntness have stalled at a relatively high level 10 years ago and even occasionally gets worse. Which kind of makes sense if one realizes India added 400 million mouths in last 20 years, and distribution is an issue. I remember also news a few years ago Indian average height decreasing, all proxy indicat…

I honestly think most Indians eat too many calories, not too little. It's just trash nutritionally speaking, and deficient in protein, which is a large determinant of height. It's cultural > It's a... different development trajectory. My two cents: the rest of the world is highly westernized. If you consider Islam a western religion (which you should, since it's a derivative of Judaism, and is a cousin to Christianit…

Interesting! I agree that India’s colonial history is unique in that it wasn’t settled by Europeans like North America.

But Judaism isn’t a western religion, it’s a Middle Eastern religion with strong ethnic ties. Hence it hasn’t evolved and branched like all the major religions have. Christianity isn’t western religion either, but modern Protestantism and Roman Catholicism arguably are. Eastern Orthodox is actually a great example of the diversity of all major religions— they have national churches (Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox).

Islam is multi ethnic of course and so there are branches that are western (Albania is an example) but calling Islam as a whole “western” is mostly incorrect.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#224
post #16
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is measured and there are targets - https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/

That's correct but my point is what kind of poverty is the poverty line measuring if it does not take into account how much people are getting to eat. This access to PPP adjusted dollar amount is clearly not a good heuristic for it because somehow extreme poverty has been alleviated while having a hunger index worse than North Korea.

[deleted]

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#225
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>It’s hard to believe today but South Korea in the 1960’s was the poorest nation on Earth. In % GDP terms S.Korea is a top spender on research, development and education. To give you a contrast in the recent Delhi elections, the party that built quality schooling for the poor was voted out. These are deep undercurrents of the Indian society. Watching a poor persons child get schooling and eventually a shot at gettin…

This is a very sweeping generalization. The party that got voted out was mired in corruption scams and their premise to power was fighting against corruption. Politics in India can be a lot more nuanced than you claim it to be. What you are saying is one part of the equation.

>>The party that got voted out was mired in corruption scams

Thats basically every single political party. And thats actually baked into core assumptions before even going to vote. Regardless of who you put in power will steal.

The edge comes from using you as a attack dog to aim against people they hate. Not honesty.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#226
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Central Limit Theorem smooths any errors. Decades of observation data make instrument errors very easy to spot. In recent decades daily MODIS (satellite) polar orbit overpasses provide air column and ground temp data that infills station data (from 1900 onwards). There's a science to ground truthing, error detection, and data correction. Here's the gross single number continent wide average over a century: http:/…

Only sometimes. It is easier to measure in cities, and thus introduce bias based on whatever pavement is populate. There is a lot of data, and the people who measure this (or at least some of them) are aware of the issues and so correct for them. However you cannot just blindly apply the central limit theorem.

> It is easier to measure in cities, and thus introduce bias based on whatever pavement is populate.

That's a myth.

* MODIS sat readings are available under the precessing polar orbit path and are indifferent to urbanisation or not.

* National BoM networks have always included stations outside of cities and great care is taken to position stations and to normalise readings.

* Urban Heat Island Bias is a myth of long standing; asked and answered three decades ago, two decades ago, a decade ago.

Why is it _still_ being raised in 2025?

See: https://skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect-interm...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pidRKmq2iGI

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#227
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>urban Bangalore only has around 20 seats in Karnataka's Legislative Assembly out of 224 total. This means that state governments have little to no incentive to care about providing urban services and goods, when they can better invest in other constituencies that actually can flip the tide in elections. That is because citizens themselves don't care. Single biggest motivation of the Indian voter base is using the p…

> That is because citizens themselves don't care. This isn't about citizens. Fundamentally, residents in a mega-city like Bangalore simply do not matter in a parliamentary democracy like Karnataka. Bangalore doesn't make you CM, so there's no incentive for Karnataka's politicians to invest in it. > Every time a political party Urban management is not about political party - it's about bureaucracy. INC, BJP, JDS, etc…

>>so there's no incentive for Karnataka's politicians to invest in it.

Do you seriously stay in Bangalore man? Because you don't sound real. Nearly every major politician has real estate and small industries stake in Bangalore. Politicians are NOT the problem, people are. People are not interested in good things. Their sole life is spent hoping other people have a worse life than theirs.

>>Urban management is not about political party - it's about bureaucracy

Most garbage picking vechicles, big tippers et al belong to local MLA's. Again do you even stay in Bangalore?

>>Bangalore is notoriously bad at urban planning and management.

My family has been in Bangalore for like a century. It was the best city ever. But you can't exactly have "urban planning" if migrants start growing 20% yoy for 30 years straight.

>>Bangalore on the other hand has remained underdeveloped due to land mafias.

Again do you stay here? Ever applied for a KIADB or BDA plot, waited for decades? Literally IT industry exists because of private land owner investments.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No AC in the summer, no proper medical care and the possibility of dying from a mild tooth problem, only having access to food that's in-season, zero running water, needing to have your poop hauled away in buckets, needing to spend all day just to travel 15 km, being blamed for a random crime and executed days later with no real evidence. I think this is greatly exaggerated. Actual royalty had access to vast amount…

Where are you getting ice from in 1500s Italy? You get an arrow pulled out of your skull, but what are you doing with the resulting infection? People bring you food from far away, but there's no refrigeration and it's hauled at 15 kilometers a day. You can pay someone a lot of money to bring avocados from 1000 kilometers away by foot today. But you won't want to eat those avocados. Get bit by the wrong mosquito? You'…

You ignored my point that however you slice and dice it the royalty could afford ample leisure time that modern day people cannot, even the upper classes spend more time working than almost anyone from nobility.

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#229
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No AC in the summer, no proper medical care and the possibility of dying from a mild tooth problem, only having access to food that's in-season, zero running water, needing to have your poop hauled away in buckets, needing to spend all day just to travel 15 km, being blamed for a random crime and executed days later with no real evidence. I think this is greatly exaggerated. Actual royalty had access to vast amount…

>No medical care? You could have a surgeon invent an implement to pull an arrow out of your skull and save your life, just because you are important enough for that. ...and die 2 weeks later from an infection because antibiotics haven't been discovered yet >Only food in season? You could pay people to bring you food from other places far away lands no one has ever seen in such seasons. The lack of air freight means e…

But the example I am giving from real life did not die of an infection 2 weeks later

Re: Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels

#230

China and India had similar levels of poverty 50 years ago. How come China today is so different from India today? In terms of cleanliness and poverty elimination specifically. I know China liberalized in the 80’s and India in the 90’s. So you could say that’s a 10 year difference. But China 10 years ago was still very different from India even today. Does anyone have any ideas?

Theory (I live half a world away though): totalitarianism. China has a very strong and top-down government, where if the leadership decides for example that streets should be clean, millions of government officials make it happen. I don't know if that is just good organization or if it's backed by e.g. legal repercussions if it's not done right though. But of course it's got major downsides, as the Chinese government…

> Theory (I live half a world away though)

It has nothing to do with totalitarianism. Anyone who has actually lived in India or China for more than a month, as I have, knows that cleanliness and poverty are cultural factors as well. People casually throw garbage around and don’t seem to care, it’s cultural. I saw countless scenes in different Indian cities where people sat around garbage and filth (not homeless individuals), seemingly unbothered by it.

There’s also a culture of cheating on exams, which diminishes the value of education certifications. Attitudes in customer service can be striking too, like when I was at a pharmacy, and the clerk was engaged in a private phone conversation while a whole line of customers waited for him to finish. Or drivers who arrive hours late and then get annoyed if you find another ride etc

People who believe that India will catch up to China soon are living on a different planet.

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