7 ms·

The world would be moving away from poverty a lot faster if there was less inequality.

splintercell 9y ago
Or the argument can be made that the world is moving away from poverty at the back of 1%ers. The point being that 1% is getting richer than the average person of their own country, by lifting the poorest person of a poor country upwards. The only loser here is the middle class of rich countries, not middle or poor class of poor countries.
- collyw 9y ago
  Correlation doesn't imply causation, or ave you got any supporting evidence of that?
- sokoloff 9y ago
  The middle class in America today is wildly, wildly better off than 100, 50, 25, or 10 years ago, IMO. 100 years ago, they didn't have phase-change refrigeration, instead relying on ice. (That's why your grandmother might still call it an "ice box".) 50 years ago, they didn't have air conditioning. 25 years ago, they didn't have cars that would reliably run for 250K miles with airbags, anti-lock brakes, traction control, and which required very regular servicing to keep running. 10 years ago they probably didn't have a smart phone with the world's information in their back pocket. All of those things are now readily affordable and very commonplace in the middle class.
  - ttoinou 9y ago
    All great results of relatively free markets. And we have people complaining about housing and healthcare.... I know the solution to theses issues
TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
I really dislike the effects that globalization and growing inequality has had on rural America in particular, but I'm not sure that _global_ poverty would be improving at the rate that it has been without globalization. Much of impoverished eastern Asia has been growing economically because manufacturing jobs have been shipped there from the richest areas in the world. Without that massive injection of capital into those areas, it would have been incredibly tough, if not impossible to get the momentum required to generate such growth.
- dmix 9y ago
  This would be true only if China, et al, just took the jobs and did them the same. But Asia is not just known for their cheap labour, they are really really good at running factories and manufacturing products. If their only value prop was cheap labour then manufacturing could easily have flourished in plenty of other countries with cheap labour (eastern europe, latin america, africa?). And plenty are geographically closer and have more similar language/culture to the western markets than Asia. But there is more to it, Asian countries have a talent for it and have mastered manufacturing and related industries like steel production. I doubt any American factories could legitimately compete with Asia, even if the wages were the same, without some heavy-duty automation. And Asia has many other advantages around vertical integration of factories, such as access to raw materials, from there and other countries they've developed relationships with. Now it's possible these advantages are just a side-effect of the fact the industry residing in Asia in recent decades but I believe there's far more to it, even regardless of the wage advantages, they are very much deserving of that industry.
  - GcVmvNhBsU 9y ago
    I highly doubt there is some hereditary trait that makes Asians better at running factories than those other countries. It's more likely that given the tremendous amount of manufacturing that's been pushed to those countries, they have had ample practice to become leaders at the process. If you look holistically at what happened, you're more likely to find why so much moved to Asia. Geographically speaking there may have been closer low-wage countries, but distance alone does not determine where you can build appropriate facilities. Geologically, China has access to large ports, allowing large amounts of tonnage to flow in and out. You have a generally easy path from China to California. Eastern Europe is out because you can't easily ship to and from. Similarly, jungles and mountains in Latin/South America and Africa keep large manufacturing bases from being built. Africa lacks sufficient ports - its largest ships 1/10 the tonnage that Shanghai does. At a local political level, you have governments willing to subsidize manufacturing and tolerate certain working conditions that other governments wouldn't. From an international perspective, you have incentives to bring capitalism to the borders of previous socialist countries as a destabilization measure (large increases in US-China trade in the 80s).
dmix 9y ago
Yes, lowered inequality is a good metric for success but it's very popular these days for it to be sold as a complete solution in itself. The problem with pure redistribution as a model for increasing wealth in developing countries, or stagnant wealthy ones, is that you can only take someones money and give it to another person once. You can't transfer a wealthy persons ability to generate wealth to another person or country. A long term reduction in poverty and a more balanced relative income ratios has to come through self-sustainable economic development in the middle, and upward mobility from the bottom. Wealth transfer is just a temporary fix, an initial boost - but it is not an adequate endgame... as many pure socialist countries quickly learned after the glow of the early days wore off. Redistribution as a primary policy is also increasingly difficult to pull off via central policy, given global marketplace, technology's impact on finance, and the growth of countries which act as tax havens. There is plenty of indifference in practice towards legitimately taxing the wealthy but it's been a hot topic globally for a while now and I fear this obsession has been a large distraction from figuring out how to help the middle/bottom develop their own jobs and businesses. To push up their wages and salaries as the primary goal, not just increasing the tax base for better government services and reduced tax burden on the middle.
- ameister14 9y ago
  >lowered inequality is a good metric for success For measuring the success of what, exactly? Economic success? Average incomes? Doesn't seem to be a very good metric for either. Lowered inequality seems to me to be a good metric for measuring the success of attempts to lower inequality, and not much else.
  - euyyn 9y ago
    It's a good metric for success at giving everyone equal opportunity at birth.
    - ameister14 9y ago
      Not really. You can have low income inequality through redistribution of wealth and still have massive differences in opportunity at birth based on other, non-monetary societal factors.
ameister14 9y ago
It's hard to prove that, actually.
jesusisreal 9y ago
and we’d all go to heaven if we all believe in jesus. both have the same exact possibility of occurring

Or the argument can be made that the world is moving away from poverty at the back of 1%ers. The point being that 1% is getting richer than the average person of their own country, by lifting the poorest person of a poor country upwards. The only loser here is the middle class of rich countries, not middle or poor class of poor countries.

collyw 9y ago
Correlation doesn't imply causation, or ave you got any supporting evidence of that?
sokoloff 9y ago
The middle class in America today is wildly, wildly better off than 100, 50, 25, or 10 years ago, IMO. 100 years ago, they didn't have phase-change refrigeration, instead relying on ice. (That's why your grandmother might still call it an "ice box".) 50 years ago, they didn't have air conditioning. 25 years ago, they didn't have cars that would reliably run for 250K miles with airbags, anti-lock brakes, traction control, and which required very regular servicing to keep running. 10 years ago they probably didn't have a smart phone with the world's information in their back pocket. All of those things are now readily affordable and very commonplace in the middle class.
- ttoinou 9y ago
  All great results of relatively free markets. And we have people complaining about housing and healthcare.... I know the solution to theses issues

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago

I really dislike the effects that globalization and growing inequality has had on rural America in particular, but I'm not sure that _global_ poverty would be improving at the rate that it has been without globalization. Much of impoverished eastern Asia has been growing economically because manufacturing jobs have been shipped there from the richest areas in the world. Without that massive injection of capital into those areas, it would have been incredibly tough, if not impossible to get the momentum required to generate such growth.

dmix 9y ago
This would be true only if China, et al, just took the jobs and did them the same. But Asia is not just known for their cheap labour, they are really really good at running factories and manufacturing products. If their only value prop was cheap labour then manufacturing could easily have flourished in plenty of other countries with cheap labour (eastern europe, latin america, africa?). And plenty are geographically closer and have more similar language/culture to the western markets than Asia. But there is more to it, Asian countries have a talent for it and have mastered manufacturing and related industries like steel production. I doubt any American factories could legitimately compete with Asia, even if the wages were the same, without some heavy-duty automation. And Asia has many other advantages around vertical integration of factories, such as access to raw materials, from there and other countries they've developed relationships with. Now it's possible these advantages are just a side-effect of the fact the industry residing in Asia in recent decades but I believe there's far more to it, even regardless of the wage advantages, they are very much deserving of that industry.
- GcVmvNhBsU 9y ago
  I highly doubt there is some hereditary trait that makes Asians better at running factories than those other countries. It's more likely that given the tremendous amount of manufacturing that's been pushed to those countries, they have had ample practice to become leaders at the process. If you look holistically at what happened, you're more likely to find why so much moved to Asia. Geographically speaking there may have been closer low-wage countries, but distance alone does not determine where you can build appropriate facilities. Geologically, China has access to large ports, allowing large amounts of tonnage to flow in and out. You have a generally easy path from China to California. Eastern Europe is out because you can't easily ship to and from. Similarly, jungles and mountains in Latin/South America and Africa keep large manufacturing bases from being built. Africa lacks sufficient ports - its largest ships 1/10 the tonnage that Shanghai does. At a local political level, you have governments willing to subsidize manufacturing and tolerate certain working conditions that other governments wouldn't. From an international perspective, you have incentives to bring capitalism to the borders of previous socialist countries as a destabilization measure (large increases in US-China trade in the 80s).

dmix 9y ago

Yes, lowered inequality is a good metric for success but it's very popular these days for it to be sold as a complete solution in itself. The problem with pure redistribution as a model for increasing wealth in developing countries, or stagnant wealthy ones, is that you can only take someones money and give it to another person once. You can't transfer a wealthy persons ability to generate wealth to another person or country. A long term reduction in poverty and a more balanced relative income ratios has to come through self-sustainable economic development in the middle, and upward mobility from the bottom. Wealth transfer is just a temporary fix, an initial boost - but it is not an adequate endgame... as many pure socialist countries quickly learned after the glow of the early days wore off. Redistribution as a primary policy is also increasingly difficult to pull off via central policy, given global marketplace, technology's impact on finance, and the growth of countries which act as tax havens. There is plenty of indifference in practice towards legitimately taxing the wealthy but it's been a hot topic globally for a while now and I fear this obsession has been a large distraction from figuring out how to help the middle/bottom develop their own jobs and businesses. To push up their wages and salaries as the primary goal, not just increasing the tax base for better government services and reduced tax burden on the middle.

ameister14 9y ago
>lowered inequality is a good metric for success For measuring the success of what, exactly? Economic success? Average incomes? Doesn't seem to be a very good metric for either. Lowered inequality seems to me to be a good metric for measuring the success of attempts to lower inequality, and not much else.
- euyyn 9y ago
  It's a good metric for success at giving everyone equal opportunity at birth.
  - ameister14 9y ago
    Not really. You can have low income inequality through redistribution of wealth and still have massive differences in opportunity at birth based on other, non-monetary societal factors.

ameister14 9y ago

It's hard to prove that, actually.

jesusisreal 9y ago

and we’d all go to heaven if we all believe in jesus. both have the same exact possibility of occurring