4 ms·

> During globalization we've had the fastest and greatest reduction of poverty on earth. Really? I've seen this claimed but I've never seen it substantiated.

• distant_hat 8y ago
  Huge numbers moved out of grinding poverty in China and India. Its not even debatable.
  • claudiawerner 8y ago
    True. I'm very anti-capitalist but no modern anti-capitalist disagrees that capitalism has (and must, to work) given people what Marx called double freedom.
    • andrenth 8y ago
      Why do you remain anti-capitalist if you understand that?
      • claudiawerner 8y ago
        Because I view capitalism (or, strictly speaking, capital) as authoritarian (mandating human energy be expended to its ends, working in tandem with welfare states towards administered living), exploitative (the labour produced by wage labourers in aggregate is less than the aggregate profit created due to their labour) and allowing only an ever-shrinking space for genuine human expression (it degrades art by forcing it to be marketable and commodified). I'm not alone in this; even pro-capitalists agree that a relationship can be exploitative even if both parties benefit in some way - they just disagree that capitalism is the cause of such a relationship which we can see the world over. I think the argument for capitalism improving peoples' lives by measurable degree is a valid one, but it is only as valid as the argument that feudalism (for instance) improved the lives of those without any sustenance or access to land at all. I think we have the capability to do better than pursuit of profit.
        • andrenth 8y ago
          But how specifically do you think we can do better? Can it be done without a different kind of human being that does not pursuit his own self-interest?
    • Treegarden 8y ago
      maybe double freedom is better then starving of famine in the rice fields working 16 hour days?
      • claudiawerner 8y ago
        I never said it wasn't. But like all things there are multiple aspects, not merely 'pros' and 'cons'.
• nyolfen 8y ago
  i have a difficult time believing you're engaging in good faith when something like this is so easily verifiable https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/World-Poverty-Since-1820.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/World-Poverty-Sin... https://i.imgur.com/OhhQtwB.png https://i.imgur.com/OhhQtwB.png https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
• jopsen 8y ago
  The rate of extreme poverty is falling fast. Proving that it was globalization is of course non-trivial. But some businesses created millions of jobs in China and many other places.. some of these were local, some of them not so local. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty
• orangecat 8y ago
  https://www.politifact.com/global-news/statements/2016/mar/23/gayle-smith/did-we-really-reduce-extreme-poverty-half-30-years/ https://www.politifact.com/global-news/statements/2016/mar/2... . You can debate how to define "poverty", and I'd certainly agree that somebody making $1.91/day isn't terribly well off, but real income has been consistently rising especially in the last 30 years.
  • cbHXBY1D 8y ago
    Except a number of researchers and academics dispute that fact. Many say that it's a PR campaign for the World Bank and that it doesn't tell the whole story. If you raise the poverty line just a little higher to $5 then abject poverty has been increasing. https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/974966050625413122 https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/974966050625413122 https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/8/30/the-moral-egregiousness-of-poverty-is-worse-than-ever-before-in-history https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/8/30/the-moral-egregio...
    • bryanlarsen 8y ago
      Your own link says that even that has fallen from 71.8% in 1990 to 58.1% in 2013.
• jdpedrie 8y ago
  It doesn't take much more than a google search to find substantiation for the claim. https://www.politifact.com/global-news/statements/2016/mar/23/gayle-smith/did-we-really-reduce-extreme-poverty-half-30-years/ https://www.politifact.com/global-news/statements/2016/mar/2...
• frakr 8y ago
  https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/09/19/decline-of-global-extreme-poverty-continues-but-has-slowed-world-bank https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/09/19/d...