India lifted 415M out of poverty in 15 years, says UN • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by dlivingston » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 1:27 AM UTC

spoils19 wrote: post #136

nsenifty wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first job was in Infosys back in 2001. Coming from a lower-middle class farming family, it was a huge deal. My monthly gross was something my dad (farmer) + mom (school teacher) would earn in an entire year. I remember my dad proudly putting a portrait of NR Narayana Murthy (founder of Infosys) on our wall - it is usually reserved for gods/ancestors or revered sages.

That's awesome to hear! Our family does something similar - we have a line of portraits above our family photos of the various CEOs that have hired us throughout the years - namely coal and oil company owners.

How interesting, what country are you in and what's the motivation to do so? Similar to parent comment's reason?

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

#312

Post by dlivingston » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 1:29 AM UTC

vram22 wrote: post #284

vanattab wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is fil?

Father-in-law. Like BIL for Brother-in-law. Apropos, I've always wondered where the terms gf and bf, for girlfriend and boyfriend, came from, i.e. the West, or India. Wonder, because many such short forms come from or are unique to Indian English.

I mean, acronyms are pretty common to the modern English language in general. Is what you're talking about a bit different? Can you dive in a bit?

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

#313

Post by jonas21 » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 1:32 AM UTC

rowanG077 wrote: post #296

dkokelley wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure of your point, but I think I disagree. The previous comment was about going from poverty to middle class. Why won't this be possible in the future?

If India follows the west then it won't be possible for 2 people with education to lift a family out of poverty to middle class. In my country you basically require 2 full-time wages to be able to support a 3 person family. You wouldn't be able to buy an apartment and car for your family. I think that is the point they were making.

I don't know what western country you live in, but I'm guessing you have a very different definition of poverty than the article is using. The UN has a list of criteria such as:

- Lacking access to electricity

- Lacking access to drinking water within a 30 minute round-trip walk

- Lacking access to sanitation facilities

- No household members have completed at least 6 years of schooling

- Any child in the household has stunted growth due to malnutrition

You need at least a third of the criteria to be true in order for a household to be considered in poverty.

It's likely that practically no one in your country meets this definition.

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

#314

Post by steve76 » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 1:35 AM UTC

another_devy wrote: post #131

factsarelolz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has injected untold billions into the Indian market through off shoring phone support. India has made hundreds of millions of dollar scamming America's most vulnerable population.

US has not injected billions into India! Capitalist companies trying to find cheaper and disposable labour has done it. Of course the US Government police allows that but the policy is there because of these companies not other way around. > scamming America’s most vulnerable population Nothing from that goes to Government taxes or public benefits. These people are not out of poverty by scamming. please try not to do…

[dead]

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

#315

Post by Matticus_Rex » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 1:38 AM UTC

rowanG077 wrote: post #296

dkokelley wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure of your point, but I think I disagree. The previous comment was about going from poverty to middle class. Why won't this be possible in the future?

If India follows the west then it won't be possible for 2 people with education to lift a family out of poverty to middle class. In my country you basically require 2 full-time wages to be able to support a 3 person family. You wouldn't be able to buy an apartment and car for your family. I think that is the point they were making.

There are two types of poverty being talked about here.

In the United States (where it is not only possible, but common for two people with education to lift a family out of poverty into the middle class), most people below the poverty have a drastically superior standard of living to anyone below the poverty line in India. The type of "poor" where two people are working full time jobs in the US would not be considered poor in India.

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

#316

Post by msworddebugger » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 1:43 AM UTC

surement wrote: post #291

stubish wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which encourages investment and spending, stimulating the economy, rather than letting money sit idle.

not everyone wants to actively invest their money, "spend/invest your money or lose it" is a pretty shitty attitude

It’s the reality. Money is an abstraction over value. You provide value to get money, you spend money receive value. Some value is provided by nature (clean air, wild berries, etc.) and is therefore priceless. However, most value is created by applying energy and human attention to base inputs. Money is not a battery for work in the physics sense, or for work in the labor sense. If you earn money through labor today, there is no guarantee that there will be someone tomorrow willing or able to do the same labor you did for the same money. Humans want to believe in stored value (see bitcoiers, goldbugs), but the reality is the majority of value in the world is delivered by systems that must be continually operated such as energy grids, water systems, retailers, internet infrastructure providers, farms, and factories. There is nothing that guarantees these systems will exist tomorrow except for the efforts or regular people like you and me, so there is nothing that guarantees that your money will be worth anything tomorrow except for the belief that everyone will keep showing up and trying.

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

#317

Post by yboris » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 1:44 AM UTC

damagednoob wrote: post #36

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.

Here is an interactive data visualization comparing incomes within and between countries:

https://income-inequality.info/

All incomes are in PPP (purchasing power parity) dollars, so you can see that living at the US poverty line of $11k/year places one at about 85th percentile (having more income than 85% of the world's population).

You can see the code for it on Github as well: https://github.com/whyboris/Global-Income-Distribution

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

#318

Post by Zircom » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 1:45 AM UTC

dkokelley wrote: post #283

retinaros wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its amazing. and unfortunately they will be the last generation that will be able to do it. just like for western countries everything will become unaffordable and the middle class wont be able to buy houses

I'm not sure of your point, but I think I disagree. The previous comment was about going from poverty to middle class. Why won't this be possible in the future?

Right now India is in a transition period and wages for these kinds of jobs are keeping pace with gains in productivity and that's how you're seeing so many lifting themselves are their families out of poverty.

However, if history is anything to go by that will stop pretty soon as the hyper upper class solidifies their hold on wealth, appreciating assets, and means of production, and will start to keep larger and larger shares of profit while workers' wages stagnate, and then inflation will start to decrease the purchasing power of those stagnating wages, and the middle class will start to shrink and disappear as it is in America and other "free market" capitalist countries.

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

#319

Post by rhaway84773 » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 1:49 AM UTC

sabujp wrote: post #275

anuvrat1 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want the reasoning, this IMF paper[1] goes into the detail. Generally gist is development rate (like GDP) is high in developing country, so is the inflation [1: Inflation Targeting as a Framework for Monetary Policy]: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/issues/issues15/

India's central bank target inflation rate is 4% +- 2%, and even now the rate is still at 7-8% and they're in no hurry to try to reduce it ( https://www.reuters.com/world/india/exclusive-india-govt-in-... ).

7% inflation as opposed to a targeted high of 6% is very different from 7% (actually 8+%) inflation, from a targeted high of about 2-4% (the Fed doesn’t publish a range I believe…they only say they target 2%…in practice, historically, they’ve treated 2% as a high, but I believe thats changed since the Great Recession so I’ll generously assume a +-2% range).

What’s even more relevant to the Indian situation is that much of that inflation is being driven by the strength of the dollar which has made imports more expensive.

The U.S., of course, is on the other side of that problem. The ridiculously strong dollar means that solely currency effects should be making things cheaper for Americans.

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

#320

Post by rhaway84773 » Tue, Nov 08, 2022, 1:53 AM UTC

joenot443 wrote: post #14

Do millennial and gen-z Indians have a similarly skeptical view towards capitalism held by so many young people in NA and the EU? I had a friend tell me the other day that I couldn't be anti-racist if I wasn't anti-capitalist, because capitalism is by inherently racist. Ever since 2018 or so it seems as if anti-capitalism has become part of the mainstream progressive Western viewpoint, while I don't remember that bei…

No. Indians are very pro capitalism. Especially since the 90s reforms which are largely the precursor to Indias growth.

However, Indians don’t have an ideological attachment to capitalism. It’s looked upon as the best way to grow and improve things in most, but not all, avenues. So Indians are still in favor of socialist policies where they are working well. So, Indians probably would not be in favor of privatizing Indian Railways, or eliminating the many subsidies and free supplies given to the poorest, or eliminating the 50% foreign investment cap in many industries.