Live data from Hacker News

India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

economictimes.indiatimes.com

151–160 of 544 posts

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#151

This is one of the messages that need to be pushed hard - globalization - with it's implications on the "first world" global middle class - has helped make this possible. It's like talking to people opposed to GMO rice. They are fine with an ideological position that GMO foods should be eliminated until you point out the alternative is hundreds of millions dead of starvation.

Why does globalisation automatically deserve credit for progress in two major economies with the most government planning? Have evaluated alternative hypotheses? Maybe Education or Scientific Literacy or something else deserves this credit.

It's quite easy to see, the early growth is hard carried by export of manufacturing from China and services from India. Yes, you can say, this wouldn't be possible without Chinese government infrastructure and incentives push and Indian government early push for premiere education, but that would have been useless without customers that are global markets.

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The west is shooting itself in the foot with socialism while Asian countries are lifting people out of poverty at an unprecendented rate. Inequality is a feature, the pie grows larger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtJwAYJ9B08 Instead of lifting poor class upwards, the west wants to pull everyone else down. Reducing quality of life and regressing in every metric of progress. The future is in Asia, places like Taiwa…

A tweet to a writer of a book with bad faith arguments ( https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/review-bad-scienc... ) and a youtube link to a talk by the president of the Ayn Rand institute does not an argument make. PS: You might find this information on how her old was financed amusing ( https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ayn-rand-social-security/ ). I know I did.

Maybe I should have listed Milton’s books. Just because professor is part of Ayn Rand institute, you're not arguing about the points presented in the lecture, but instead discarding his credibility by association. There is a massive amount of 200+ years of history of Capitalism that's difficult to succintly address here.

Here is Alex Epstein's Google talk about climate alarmicism that aligns with Shellenberger's post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6b7K1hjZk4

Shellenberger's book review (first one that shows up on google search) is just following the same tropes of Climate catastrophization. The article doesn't steelman Shellenberger, but instead reduces it down to "… yet bad science, strawman arguments, cherry-picking facts, and ad hominem attacks on scientists, media, others"; ofcourse written by folks at Yale "Climate Connections" blog.

Here are a couple of alternative reviews: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/apocalypse-never-the-...

https://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=...

Climate arguments have no counter balance. The media routinely ignores the otherside of the equation and never provides a balanced view of how we can tackle it. Instead, the zeitgeist created by progressives for last 50 years is that we should depopulate, regress, and reduce quality of life and ultimately become state dependent. The same group of scientists and environmentalists that also ran the campaign against nuclear energy.

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#153

I don't understand poverty statistics. With this news, the UK now has more people living in poverty than India (16% vs 22%?). If it is valuable to judge poverty on relative income, you would think the rational course of action would be mass immigration from the UK to India but that is clearly not the case.

Have you been through the process of emigration before, especially as a person in poverty? You make it out to be like just packing up a suitcase and setting up in a cushy new place, the reality is so far away from that.

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be close to the situation. Do you think Indian Walmart is a future inevitability?

Not op, but Walmart owns Flipkart so I think that is their play for India expansion.

This is how Walmart and other companies spread into things like India - you might even see a few Walmarts open as a "higher class American-like" store, but the vast majority will be in things like Flipkart that are directly aimed at the market.

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#156
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the USA is doing the same to other countries. It is a given that this happens, and will continue to happen. You measure how strong a democracy is by how well they can resist such campaigns. If some random Russian bots can trigger a coup in the strongest and richest country in the world then, well, that's on us.

“the US is doing the same to other countries” Source? “If some random Russian not can trigger a coup” It’s still an act of aggression regardless of whether the US is equipped to deal with it. While I agree that the US does lots of shitty things, we have way more checks and balances than our key enemies. For one, it is the people who elect those who represent us.

If in 2022 you're seriously asking for a source for US interference in sovereign nations and their elections, you have some serious reading to do.

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#157

Interested in comments from anyone who lives in India or has experience/familiarity with it as to whether reality on the ground matches the rosy picture painted in the article.

I can tell my personal story if that matters.

Background: I come from a non-UC, rural yeoman farmers family. I grew up in rural India and used to spend my summer and winter vacations working on our family farm along with my cousins. I was the first Engineer in my family and studied in a Government college, and most of my batchmates were from a similar background, with over 50% of them being lower classes.

I have witnessed India's progress from the front row and it is something my parents or grandparents could never have imagined. Many of my friends went on to achieve great prosperity, some being C-level at Unicorns, others helping build Indias nuclear submarines etc. There is substantial wealth in the hands of my 4th tier town folks and I can see the signs of (relative) prosperity. Most households have people working in the private sectors and the wealth does trickle down.

I visited a Govt. hospital recently and I was surprised to see that it is not an ugly damp place it used to be. Granted, it is not on par with NHS or US hospitals but neither is it a god forsaken place.

The infrastructure is also much better than it was in the 90s. My grandfather would be shocked to see the Nagpur Metro and would think Aliens built it.

I am also proud of the fact that India does take special care of wild life and is actively working to preserve the amazing biodiversity it has. Of course there will always be pressure from humans, but the heart is at the right place.

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#158
> India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

At what costs?

I've heard this narrative before as it has happened in many Western countries and it is continuing to happen in China. I don't have the answer, but I always wonder about the costs of lifting so many people out of poverty, for example, there could be costs related to: environment, quality of life, traditions and values, mental health, etc.

Along with that thought experiment, I wonder how did they get into poverty in the first place. A lot of areas that are now declared as poverty zones today may have been poor in the past, but were self-sufficient and self sustaining.

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#159
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real estate will get more expensive due to political greed than any other kind of development. The supply of real estate is artificially constrained by the political class, so any kind of development (say hypothetically manufacturing instead of software) will make it expensive. There used to be a time when new land for building houses was frequently sold by the government in the form of new "colonies", but that has c…

What you are describing is one part of the problem. I have friends who earn in dollars. They can easily afford to buy a couple of apartments every year. They do this and let those apartments sit vacant for a few years, waiting for them to appreciate. When many people start doing this, it artificially inflates the prices.

Sounds like a job for Georgism (if you are up for radical economic transformation) or a vacancy tax

Re: India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN

#160
I think these statistics are all BS. If you took away all of the game playing involved in defining poverty and then measured the total number of people in the world living in poverty after our massive population growth over the last decades, you will find that the sum of human misery due to poverty is by far the highest it has ever been and is only increasing.

But this way a bunch of self righteous people like Gates and Pinkerton can play statistical games and say everything is great. No, it's great for them.

Post reply on HN