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Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?

nytimes.com

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Re: Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?

#51

Post by oldspiceman »

jal278 wrote: post #47
paul_f wrote: post #24

Unless one defines poverty clearly, then I cannot accept this premise. For example, the US census bureau uses 48 different poverty thresholds and does not explain clearly where they came from. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/measur... Here are some other interesting comments that should throw the entire conversation into doubt: - They are intended for use as a statistical yardstick, not as a com…

While the particular measure of poverty may be in question, and in general poverty may be a tricky intuitive concept to nail down, the entire conversation is not thrown into doubt: We can quibble all day about the meaning and quantification of terms, but the underlying intuitive concept is what is important. I think we can agree that poverty in the US has not been eradicated -- although theoretically it seems possibl…

True but a single measurable criteria is essential. It won't completely capture 'poverty' but it's a step in the right direction. Once the first poverty measure is completely reduced, we could examine the next. I'm amazed that this doesn't exist.

Re: Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?

#52

Post by VLM »

opendais wrote: post #13

I think the underlying problem is the bottom end of the US labor market only has two ladders up and they pulled out from under them: Manufacturing Education to get a better job [I don't mean college. I mean something like a trade school to become a plumber or the like]. The kind of blue collar manufacturing jobs they could get is largely done in other countries and imported to the US. There simply aren't enough of th…

Why would going into debt to get a degree magically create a job?

This is a classic display of macro vs micro economics. On a micro scale an individual always gets ahead of the competition by becoming over credentialed (and over educated helps too). But on a macro scale, all the local waitresses and bartenders already have fluffy non-STEM bachelors degrees so more education would merely make the average waitress a little older and deeper in debt, or make the high school grad janitor unemployed in favor of the new poli sci grad janitor. Its not going to deliver my food any quicker or make the bathrooms at the bar any cleaner, no economic gain at all other than bank interest (socialize losses and privatize gains!)

Re: Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?

#53

Post by zacharytelschow »

outside1234 wrote: post #12

A rising boat in the economy also raises the bar in terms of costs. Just think of what has happened in San Francisco - huge increase in wealth also has lead to a huge increase in costs.

A policy of essentially not allowing new construction in SF has led to a huge increase in costs. This topic has been hammered on repeatedly.

Re: Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?

#54

Post by NoPiece »

Growth is only one of hundreds of factors that affect poverty. Looking at only one factor without considering others is misleading. Poverty rates have been steady in the face of the disintegration of the family unit - perhaps growth is what is keeping it from skyrocketing? Unless you know what poverty would have been with no growth or negative growth, you can't measure and make the assumption that growth isn't positively impacting poverty.

Re: Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?

#55

Post by maxerickson »

opendais wrote: post #28
maxerickson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that the trades are reasonably well served. So the people with work do fine in a trade, but there aren't well paying jobs for millions more people there. (I'm thinking of the U.S. where home building is at a relatively low rate right now)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-ha... http://www.coloradoan.com/story/money/2014/05/07/subcontract... http://contractormag.com/plumbing-contractor/skilled-tradesm... I think you are mistaken based on the fact I can find plenty of articles talking about a shortage. Likely due to the fact people think like you [and assume there is enough people]. It wouldn't absorb millions but it'd still redu…

I didn't mean to be as dismissive as you've taken my comment to be. But for a country of 300 million, a shortage of several hundred thousand construction workers is a source of mild friction, not something demanding pervasive policy changes.

(I'm being sloppy with numbers, but you've highlighted a larger, growing county that is ~3,000 workers short, and there are only about 3,000 counties total, many of which are smaller than Larimer and experiencing population contractions)

Re: Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?

#56

Post by sumeno »

lucb1e wrote: post #46
malyk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The machines are creating wealth for the owners of the machines which isn't being (re)distributed to the former workers at all. That's the crux of the problem. Maybe there will be another revolution in jobs that need to be done that these people will be able to take up, but until that time we are sentencing a huge number of people to live in poverty. We need to find a way to help those people until this new class of…

> The machines are creating wealth for the owners of the machines which isn't being (re)distributed to the former workers at all. Isn't it? You're right in that I have yet to hear someone laying off staff and then paying them because machines do all the work, but on the whole I do think everyone profits. At least in the Netherlands you get money during the time that you are looking for employment. > we are sentencing…

"Free" to start our own farms?

Where are they getting the land? Where are they getting the crops and equipment needed? Where are they getting the general knowledge of how to even grow a farm that can sustain a family?

Re: Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?

#57

Post by api »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #34
api wrote: post #3

It's interesting to me that the stagnating or declining middle class is largely a first world issue, while in the developing world the middle class is exploding. The best explanation I've encountered is Peter Thiel's commentary on horizontal vs. vertical development. We've taken an energy and industrial system that absolutely cannot scale to seven billion people and now we're trying to make it scale to seven billion…

Rich guy says "wealth redistribution" doesn't work. Suure, let's take that at face value.

Actually Thiel didn't say that, but I assume given his right-libertarian views he's against it. Peter Thiel is a mixed bag for me. He sometimes has profoundly interesting things to say, but then he says things that strike me as either deeply naive or disingenuous. I'm still not sure which, and no I do not think naive and billionaire are mutually exclusive. I spent enough time in the ivy league orbit to know that "elite naiveté" is a thing.

I'm personally both for it and against it. I'm against it in perfect world post-violence volitional society land, but I'm for it in pragmatic real Earth that we live on right now land.

The problem is that we absolutely do not live in a volitional society, and pretending we do often results in worse injustices than the pragmatic approach. Our world is run by gangsters and armies with fraud and guns. It's not that far removed from the ancient tribalism we clawed our way out of. Wealth redistribution is an acceptable band aid that moves us in the right fundamentally humanistic direction. It empowers the great unwashed masses to improve their bodies and minds. Abolishing wealth redistribution amounts to a kind of unilateral disarmament unless you can also convince all global elites to stop using violence and deception to advance their own economic goals.

Re: Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?

#58

Post by dllthomas »

malyk wrote: post #23
lucb1e wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people who do "automatable" work can't make much money anymore. I tend to think of it "don't have to do that work anymore". They can focus on other things, but basically the work is done for us. So the machines are creating wealth and in the end people will have to work less and less. I'm not sure this is the right example, but wasn't it revolutionary of the Ford motors factory to introduce 8-hour work days in the…

The machines are creating wealth for the owners of the machines which isn't being (re)distributed to the former workers at all. That's the crux of the problem. Maybe there will be another revolution in jobs that need to be done that these people will be able to take up, but until that time we are sentencing a huge number of people to live in poverty. We need to find a way to help those people until this new class of…

"We need to find a way to help those people until this new class of jobs people imagine will appear actually become reality."

Without overly discouraging them from looking for those new jobs, because that's an important part of how we create new classes of jobs.

Personally, I think a low basic income is our best bet, but I'm eager to hear other suggestions.

Re: Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?

#59

Post by jdlshore »

happyscrappy wrote: post #41
jdlshore wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article makes a fairly compelling case that they're not better off. Do you have anything better than an argument from incredulity?

I don't find the author's contortions compelling in the slightest. I mean he doesn't even define poverty because it would poke giant holes in his story.

It's fairly clear from the article, and from the report it's quoting [1], that the discussion is about wages, with "poverty" used as a shorthand. The source report also says that "the poverty level wage in 2013 was $11.45."

I was able to find that definition with a casual skim of the source report. (It's possible that they go into more depth about their methods; I didn't care to look.) Your inability to find it, combined with your hyperbolic language, says more about your biases than it does about the argument they're making.

I'll let this be my last comment.

[1] http://www.epi.org/publication/raising-americas-pay/

Re: Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?

#60

Post by lifeofanalysis »

This analysis is an opinion without proper analysis. There could be many other structural reasons. For instance, my gut says that the poverty is increasing even though the growth is good because the balance of trade for the USA has worsened significantly ever since the global trade took off [1] right around 1975, just at the beginning of the "decline" that this article talks about. So if someone in China is willing to do your job for $2/day, your wages are going to go down even as the investors benefit from increases in profits of the businesses manufacturing more in China. I wish the author had done at least a tiny bit of analysis, rather than spouting opinions based on inanities like "the tide lifts all boats". In this case, the boats of the poor are slowly sinking to the level of global wages for any given job.

[1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/united-states-balance...

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