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Can we talk about what a fucking terrible visualization the elephant chart is? We often note how useless "fastest growing" is, because it is easy to get large c

Can we talk about what a fucking terrible visualization the elephant chart is? We often note how useless "fastest growing" is, because it is easy to get large changes when you have a small denominator. So income can grow worldwide for the bottom by 100% and only add a few dollars to their wealth. Meanwhile the top 1℅ might add 25% to their income at millions of dollars. This is a chart designed to make us feel good about poor people getting a pittance. Meanwhile the top 100 people in the world have more wealth than the bottom fifty percent. We need growth of tens of thousands of percent at the bottom for decades to move forward.

vslira 10y ago
Marginal utility of money decreases, which means these "pennies" at the hands of literally billions of poor make a whole world of difference to them. The American Middle Class has the right to be angry about their stagnation, but it's undeniable that the world is better for most people if you compare it to the 90's and early 00's.
- astazangasta 10y ago
  However, my point is that those "pennies" could easily have been "dollars" instead at the cost of a fraction of the top of the income distribution, and this graph is celebrating "pennies" for the poor as a victory and masking millions or billions flowing to the wealthiest.
Hondor 10y ago
What harm is there in the richest people being richer? If they hoard their money, they're temporarily increasing the value of everyone else's. If they spend it, they're trickling it back down to the poor.
- astazangasta 10y ago
  Easy: they appropriate a greater portion of humanity's productivity towards themselves. Wealth is power, the ability to express desire and recruit human effort to its fulfillment. When the rich have all the money, the poor cannot express their own desires and end up just working to satisfy the ends of the rich.
  - Hondor 10y ago
    Can you give a concrete example? Something that I can't do now with all these super rich people around that I could have done when they weren't so much richer than me. If I'm competing with them to buy a Picasso, sure, they'll outbid me, but what about things I actually want to do, like buy equipment for my hobbies or go travelling. Are they making that more expensive?
harryh 10y ago
Someone living on $2/day (the generally accepted figure for extreme poverty) is living on about $730 per year. A single year of 10,000% growth would get that person to an annual income of $73,000 which would be well into the global 1%. Annual growth of 10,000% for even a single decade would give that person an annual income of: $73,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 That's 73 sextillion dollars. For reference Gross World Product is around 100 trillion. I think you're setting the bar a little high!
- astazangasta 10y ago
  Yeah, I didn't think that out very carefully, obviously exponential growth at any substantial rate would have that kind of effect. The perils of composing text in the loo. My main point still stands, though...
  - harryh 10y ago
    I don't think it does to be honest. Income growth for the world's poorest has been astonishing over the last several decades. The gains are very real and very meaningful.
    - astazangasta 10y ago
      In what terms are they "very meaningful"? There are still hundreds of millions of people living in slums in cities around the world; if these people now survive on $2 instead of $1, why is this "very meaningful"?
      - Klockan 10y ago
        What are you talking about? The difference between $2 and $1 is extremely meaningful. $1 a day means that you can barely afford enough rice to survive, at $2 you can start diversify your food and maybe save up for better clothes.
Bartweiss 10y ago
I mean, I think it's informative even if percentage results are misleading in some ways. In particular, it's relevant because growth is a good representation of status relative to local prices. If I remember, a tantalum miner in the DR Congo makes several dollars a day - a bit above the $2/day threshold, but then you have to correct for extortion/pay-to-work. In those Congo mining towns, buying a hot dinner costs around $0.05. So for those miners, seeing your income double is a hell of a big deal, even if it's only to $4/day. Getting $10/hour wouldn't be a big raise, it would be bizarre hyperinflation. To be clear, I don't think this means $4/day is a good outcome. Even with low local prices, it's still a pittance and the people getting it are living horribly in global terms. I share your annoyance with "extreme poverty is being eradicated!" stories, because they imply movement to a good position, rather than a less atrocious one. But for the sake of analysis like this, I think percentage change is still a useful way to go. Raw dollars just means that everything at the bottom is effectively zero, while growth reveals interesting effects like the 5th percentile seeing near-zero gain while the 10th sees real growth.

vslira 10y ago

Marginal utility of money decreases, which means these "pennies" at the hands of literally billions of poor make a whole world of difference to them. The American Middle Class has the right to be angry about their stagnation, but it's undeniable that the world is better for most people if you compare it to the 90's and early 00's.

astazangasta 10y ago
However, my point is that those "pennies" could easily have been "dollars" instead at the cost of a fraction of the top of the income distribution, and this graph is celebrating "pennies" for the poor as a victory and masking millions or billions flowing to the wealthiest.

Hondor 10y ago

What harm is there in the richest people being richer? If they hoard their money, they're temporarily increasing the value of everyone else's. If they spend it, they're trickling it back down to the poor.

astazangasta 10y ago
Easy: they appropriate a greater portion of humanity's productivity towards themselves. Wealth is power, the ability to express desire and recruit human effort to its fulfillment. When the rich have all the money, the poor cannot express their own desires and end up just working to satisfy the ends of the rich.
- Hondor 10y ago
  Can you give a concrete example? Something that I can't do now with all these super rich people around that I could have done when they weren't so much richer than me. If I'm competing with them to buy a Picasso, sure, they'll outbid me, but what about things I actually want to do, like buy equipment for my hobbies or go travelling. Are they making that more expensive?

harryh 10y ago

Someone living on $2/day (the generally accepted figure for extreme poverty) is living on about $730 per year. A single year of 10,000% growth would get that person to an annual income of $73,000 which would be well into the global 1%. Annual growth of 10,000% for even a single decade would give that person an annual income of: $73,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 That's 73 sextillion dollars. For reference Gross World Product is around 100 trillion. I think you're setting the bar a little high!

astazangasta 10y ago
Yeah, I didn't think that out very carefully, obviously exponential growth at any substantial rate would have that kind of effect. The perils of composing text in the loo. My main point still stands, though...
- harryh 10y ago
  I don't think it does to be honest. Income growth for the world's poorest has been astonishing over the last several decades. The gains are very real and very meaningful.
  - astazangasta 10y ago
    In what terms are they "very meaningful"? There are still hundreds of millions of people living in slums in cities around the world; if these people now survive on $2 instead of $1, why is this "very meaningful"?
    - Klockan 10y ago
      What are you talking about? The difference between $2 and $1 is extremely meaningful. $1 a day means that you can barely afford enough rice to survive, at $2 you can start diversify your food and maybe save up for better clothes.

Bartweiss 10y ago

I mean, I think it's informative even if percentage results are misleading in some ways. In particular, it's relevant because growth is a good representation of status relative to local prices. If I remember, a tantalum miner in the DR Congo makes several dollars a day - a bit above the $2/day threshold, but then you have to correct for extortion/pay-to-work. In those Congo mining towns, buying a hot dinner costs around $0.05. So for those miners, seeing your income double is a hell of a big deal, even if it's only to $4/day. Getting $10/hour wouldn't be a big raise, it would be bizarre hyperinflation. To be clear, I don't think this means $4/day is a good outcome. Even with low local prices, it's still a pittance and the people getting it are living horribly in global terms. I share your annoyance with "extreme poverty is being eradicated!" stories, because they imply movement to a good position, rather than a less atrocious one. But for the sake of analysis like this, I think percentage change is still a useful way to go. Raw dollars just means that everything at the bottom is effectively zero, while growth reveals interesting effects like the 5th percentile seeing near-zero gain while the 10th sees real growth.