Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined? • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by collyw » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 6:17 PM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #4

Looks like they're moving the goal posts a little bit here. "Poverty" today is not the same as "poverty" decades ago. The standard of living for people in poverty today is (a lot) higher than the standard of living for people in poverty decades ago.

A lot of people are giving definitions of poverty here. No one has mentioned the emotional aspect of it. I recently read a description of "being rich" as "never having to worry about money".

If we think about poverty as almost "always having to worry about money" then poverty is probably very much like it was.

Sure people living in poverty may have a mobile phone, and TV. Will giving up those mean giving up the constant stress of not having enough money? For a month or two maybe. Then you will be back to square one.

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

#72

Post by happyscrappy » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 6:17 PM UTC

jdlshore wrote: post #59

happyscrappy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, comb…

There is nothing hyperbolic about saying the poor are better off today.

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

#73

Post by kbenson » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 6:23 PM UTC

opendais wrote: post #21

kbenson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

given these are likely people who could never graduate college I don't think that's a given at all. IMO, whether a large portion of the populace thinks they could graduate, would want to go to college, or feels they have the option to go to college does not imply whether they actually could finish if they desired.

Do you honestly want to argue 51% of the people in poverty can pass a college level Math or English class? As well as afford the time away from working to gradate? I don't think that is true. http://www.duck9.com/College-Student-Drop-Out-Rates.htm Over 50% are from financial or academic disqualification reasons... http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 We are talking about 50-60% graduation rates in 6 years f…

I'm arguing that very many of them have the potential to, and that it's outside factors (such as finances, motivations, and determination) that make the difference in a lot of cases.

It's possible I misread the intent of your original comment and we aren't in disagreement on this.

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

#74

Post by baldfat » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 6:37 PM UTC

happyscrappy wrote: post #22

spodek wrote: post #2

Growth describes the size of the economy. Poverty describes distribution. While size and distribution may correlate long enough that people start to believe they causally relate, they don't have to. "A rising tide lifts all boats" is a nice belief and accurate for many boats and tides, but there's no reason to believe that what holds for boats holds for economies, any more than the behavior of dominoes held for South…

If you can't stipulate that the poor are better off today than decades ago I don't know what to tell you. For some reason people insist on the "things are getting worse" narrative reality be damned.

Yes the poor are better off. The question is do you want your parents or children living in America poor? I sure don't and I keep trying everything I can to get them equipped to succeed.

It is a natural human way of thinking that the present is worse. Couldn't find a better article in the 5 seconds I looked. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201212/...

Having worked with Urban Children since 1990 it is a million times better! I rarely see a hungry child. Neglect hasn't really changed.

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

#75

Post by smacktoward » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 7:42 PM UTC

zachrose wrote: post #49

happyscrappy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't stipulate that the poor are better off today than decades ago I don't know what to tell you. For some reason people insist on the "things are getting worse" narrative reality be damned.

A true socialist would say that inequalities are themselves unjust.

You misspelled "communist."

A socialist can live with inequalities, as long as they're not glaring and the floor is high enough to allow a decent living.

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

#76

Post by akgerber » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 8:40 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #40

akgerber wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The eight-hour day didn't come from the generosity of the rich, but because workers fought like hell for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day

Right now it's possible though. I'm not sure it was like that in the past. Maybe it was, I'm not saying it wasn't, but from what I heard people in general were a lot less wealthy in the past. The bottom 20% of society (in terms of income) still walks around in rich clothes compared to the top 20% a few hundred years ago while not working more hours.

Walmart clothes (the clothes of today's poor) aren't particularly nice compared to hand-tailored suits (the clothes of the upper crust hundreds of years ago, and presently).

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

#77

Post by sharemywin » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 8:59 PM UTC

MarkMc wrote: post #69

jonnathanson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really depends on what indices and metrics you're looking at when you describe "standard of living." Apples-to-apples comparisons between living standards in, say, the 1950s and the 2010s do not involve things like the distribution of internet access, TV sets, or microwave ovens -- consumer goods whose general cost has come down dramatically over time, and whose distribution reflects more of a supply-side story than…

I don't understand why you reject 'supply-side story' things like TV sets, microwave ovens and internet access. I'd certainly feel worse off if you took away my TV - or replaced it with a 1970's black-and-white version. Isn't it obvious that the cost and quality of TVs affects people's "standard of living"?

So you'd trade your TV for adequate healthcare? It's not that those things don't have value it's just compared to the real issues for someone in poverty they don't add up to all that much.

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

#78

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 9:07 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #37

wutbrodo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is what's behind (in part) the growth in the economy; but nothing you said has anything to do with what the parent comment was talking about, which is that people who are automated out of work generally aren't participants (and recipients) of that growth. This isn't a new problem by any stretch of the imagination. Almost every technological advance has had the same effect (pretty much by defini…

> people who are automated out of work generally aren't participants (and recipients) of that growth. Not directly, no. But in the end it is better for humanity as a whole, plus you get money from the government if you are unemployed for a while and prove that you are trying to get employed.

> Not directly, no. But in the end it is better for humanity as a whole

I know, that's exactly what I'm saying. This discussion isn't as simple as "this is good and this is bad" in black-and-white terms. We're talking specifically about the fact that poverty rates and growth aren't tightly coupled, and I was explaining why.

> plus you get money from the government if you are unemployed for a while and prove that you are trying to get employed.

This is also what I said (the "soft landing"). Though UI (unemployment insurance) lasts a year or two, so you're sorely mistaken if you think that UI per se functions as a substitute for a social welfare system.

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

#79

Post by sharemywin » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 9:08 PM UTC

This article is comparing apples to orgies(it was in my spell check so I went with it). Since most of the growth in the US economy over the last few decades has been from globalization you would need to look a poverty levels for the areas we outsourced most of the manufacturing jobs to.

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

#80

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 9:18 PM UTC

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…

> Last I heard we are still free to start our own farms and live off of those, but it seems people rather like having things like cars, power, the Internet and other luxuries of the past few decades. And most people living in "poverty", as you say, have all of the above.

This is an enormously common fallacy. There are certain things that have their costs driven down very easily by technological innovation (consumer goods, electronics, transport, etc) and certain things that are very resistant, at least on short and medium time scales (healthcare, education, land for obvious reasons). Being increasingly able to afford things like Internet and cars may make it seem like someone CAN'T be "poor" because rich people 40 years ago didn't have it, but that's a lot less significant than their relative ability to access the (much more important) things in the second category. (Inasmuch as Maslow's pyramid is a good heuristic for priorities, you can think of these as things further down the pyramid).

This phenomenon is clearly common-sense after a moment's thought, but I found an article that goes into this phenomenon in more detail: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/its-expe...