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The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

nytimes.com

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Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#71

Post by meow_mix »

ceras wrote: post #40
guiraldelli wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to ask the same thing. Taking in consideration they use the US$1.25/day measurement since 1981 [1], today this value should be US$3.28/day [2] (based on US inflation between 1981 and 2015). Given that, I'd love to know the real value. Maybe it is still a positive perspective, but I think it'd be more realistic (or, at least, accurate). :-) [1] http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/index.htm?1 [2] http:…

It's already inflation-adjusted.

Where did you find that out ceras?

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#72

Post by beatpanda »

letitgo12345 wrote: post #58
beatpanda wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense is that view incorrect? The cost of access to the political process in America is astronomically high and keeps increasing, and acquiring the amount of money it now takes to be competitive in an election requires adopting a set of positions that are friendly to whatever industries have the most money to give. What part of that analysis is wrong? What counterexample can you offer?

While money buys political access, a large part of the responsibility does rest with the voters (who are mostly ordinary people, not big money) who keep voting for reps (or don't vote) who support regressive policies. Also big money doesn't control the govt -- there are lots of times where they don't get their way -- immigration reform being a prime example where nativist sentiment has stalled it for more than a deca…

I think you are insufficiently cynical to understand immigration reform.

The current state of immigration reform, where politicians demand (and are getting) increased enforcement without any expansion of a legal right to work in the U.S., works great for companies in labor-intensive industries. On the one hand, you get a workforce willing to get paid less than the legal minimum, and you don't have to pay things like worker's comp, social security, etc. On the other, enforcement has increased so much that those underpaid workers live in constant fear of being deported or having their families split apart, so they don't report their employers breaking the law.

For companies that have access to that pool of precarious labor, the situation is great, and they've invested a lot in not changing anything.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#73

Post by clarkmoody »

mninm wrote: post #35

"We cover planes that crash, not planes that take off." It always fascinates me how much my world view and the world view of those around me is based on the exceptional and not the mundane. The news outlets report the news assuming that the audience knows what's normal. When the news is used to become informed about the world many people come away with a skewed impression of reality. I am of the opinion that people w…

Context is dangerous to news & politics. Numbers are even more dangerous. So the likelihood of your wish coming true is almost nothing, at least in the mainstream news outlets. You'll get tons of context in long-format blogs and podcasts, where the purpose of the content is to educate. The primary purpose of media news is to make money, hence the bent toward entertainment more than anything.

Data from the FBI[1] lists information about murders, including weapon types, circumstances of the murder, relationship to the victim, etc. (2013 numbers)

Going through those numbers is enlightening and will augment your CDC data, which gives great context to overall death rates.

[1] https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/...

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#74

Post by _gopz »

> The number of extremely poor people (defined as those earning less than $1 or $1.25 a day, depending on who’s counting) rose inexorably until the middle of the 20th century, then roughly stabilized for a few decades. Since the 1990s, the number of poor has plummeted.

I assume this is adjusted for inflation, but I didn't see anything in the link. Does anyone know?

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#75

Post by arebop »

Frondo wrote: post #57
manachar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American progressives can be just as guilty, if less organized. They tend to view big business with suspicion and incorrectly think that the American government is hopelessly corrupt and in the pocket of "Big Business and/or Wall Street".

No, I don't think I ever hear American progressives assert that they want less government. Less corrupt government? Absolutely, but the idea that government is "too big" seems entirely in province of the contemporary right (and you can partition that up into the industrialists who want to abolish the EPA, the code-worded-racists who want to end welfare, the bootstrappers who want to privatize everything, etc).

Really, you have never heard American progressives call for reduced military expenditure?

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#76

Post by _gopz »

mninm wrote: post #35

"We cover planes that crash, not planes that take off." It always fascinates me how much my world view and the world view of those around me is based on the exceptional and not the mundane. The news outlets report the news assuming that the audience knows what's normal. When the news is used to become informed about the world many people come away with a skewed impression of reality. I am of the opinion that people w…

I disagree. I think that qualifying every single news report with statement about how it fits into larger global/national trends would be annoying at best. It's assumed that journalists report on things that are out of the ordinary. Of course this creates a generally macabre view of reality, but on the other hand do you want everything to sound like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-8FB6k8jik

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#77

Post by xrange »

mazerackham wrote: post #21

Another big secret, is that the source of a lot of poverty being lifted is because of China. That's right, that terribly communist government suppressing its people and free speech, is actually responsible for lifting 500 million people out of poverty over the last 30 years. That is definitely a big secret of american media, and something that it neglects to report on, in favor of free speech violations, naval exerci…

Here's another "secret":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#78

Post by api »

ekianjo wrote: post #68
dredmorbius wrote: post #30

Yes, a vast number of the world's poorest population have been raised out of nominal abject poverty, this is true. What Kristof doesn't state, however, are these facts: 1. Those people live almost entirely in China and India. 2. The rise in nominal wealth has come from a tremendous increase in energy consumption. 3. Both nations have extreme environmental problems, including the worst air pollution situations in the…

> And finally: the foundations of modern economic wealth, vast quantities of nonrenewable resources, tapped at uttelry unsustainable rates, are quite simply not sustainable. Without looking to this basis, effectively the fuel in the tank, observations of altitude or velocity tell little. the fuel in the tank has been increasing a lot actually in the past 20 years. Did you notice that the US became the first producer…

Bubbles always go higher than anyone expects, and those who attempt to call the top always look like fools for a time. Fossil fuel extraction is a bubble. That's just grade school math: finite supply, constant and increasing demand.

But when will it pop and what happens then? That's a lot tougher to know, and so far all attempts to call a top have been wrong.

But a crash will come. How bad will depend on just how far along we are in developing alternatives and how abrupt the crash ends up being. If alternatives are in full swing it will be gradual phase out and few will notice. If an abrupt crash came today it would be Cormac McCarthy's "The Road."

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#79

Post by [deleted] »

ekianjo wrote: post #69
underwires wrote: post #3

The only reason that I already know this is Hans Rosling. His work is excellent, check it out if you haven't already. http://www.gapminder.org/ https://www.google.com/webhp?q=hans+rosling&tbm=vid

Yes, yes, yes, Rosling is right all the way and he is a very good communicator on top of that, and hates the political correctness.

[deleted]

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#80

Post by deciplex »

baddox wrote: post #34
bluthru wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When money buys political speech, I don't think you can call the other side "just as guilty".

Which side has the actual ability to forcefully implement their desired policies over a large population?

Both.
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