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>Real data on poverty has only been collected since 1981, by the World Bank. Perhaps we didn't collect data on poverty globally before that, but we most certai
by Mirioron 8y ago
>Real data on poverty has only been collected since 1981, by the World Bank.
Perhaps we didn't collect data on poverty globally before that, but we most certainly collected data on poverty before that regionally.
- prepend 8y agoThis is the oddest argument in the article, I think. No one claims the data are perfect or identical before 1981, but it’s what we have and it’s used. I think it’s acceptable to provide an alternate proxy. Or to critique the methods rigorously. But it is frustrating when a rhetorical trick is used to point out how the pre-1981 data are different than 1981, that is known by anyone reading Pinker, and then throw out all pre-1981 data and claim it is meaningless. And even more strangely, that poverty during this period is just unknowable. I would think that the best way to critique this is to develop some other method of proxying poverty rate that doesn’t show drops. Later in the article, the author shows this with the $7.90 poverty rate, but only from 1981.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y agoI stopped reading after he began with that GDP point and spent so much time on it. Felt like a manipulative attack to dismiss an entire argument (“your argument is so laughably wrong, you can’t even get basic facts right.”)