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What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?
- rolph 7y agoit can get even worse. i wonder how many people here have had to live on however many empty beer cans you can collect and cash in in a day.
- falcongod082 7y agoJust wait until they figure out how to make a guillotine out of those beer cans, they will eat good that day.
- watersb 7y agoI haven't had to go that far, but for about six months I had a food budget of less than $2 per day. If I had needed to pay for housing, health care, everything on $2 I am not sure how I would do so.
- hanniabu 7y agoWhat did your meals consist of?
- rolph 7y agowild fruits and small game, garden vegetables from purchased and scavenged seeds, high fat items bought with change.
- rolph 7y agoat that point there is no housing there is "where can i sleep hidden away so as not to be found", and health care is whatever first aid skills you have until you maybe find a clinic.
- falcongod082 7y agoIt's important to feel good about how capitalism inspires those that you feed off off. A happy cow is a healthy cow.
- icelancer 7y agoThe first world's needless cry of "exploitation!" is the third world's actual opportunity.
- falcongod082 7y agoI keep telling people that, but they get mad when I give them opportunities to serve me.
- diminoten 7y agoThey certainly do not get mad when you give them jobs.
- falcongod082 7y agoI give tons of companies jobs, it doesn't change anything.
- falcongod082 7y agoI apologize, it occurs to me that English isn't your first language. A job isn't something that you give to to others, it's something that you need that others fulfill.
- diminoten 7y agoNo it isn't.
- beefield 7y agoYou sound just like a person that would love to come at my place tomorrow and do my dishes and clean the apartment for a dollar?
- H8crilA 7y agoIt's important to remember that the world has been unbelievably successful at getting people out of extreme poverty (inflation-adjusted $1.9 per day). We went from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 0.65 billion in 2018. Ways to go, but it is a truly amazing achievement of humanity. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the past 30 years. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
- falcongod082 7y agoWell, it's not nothing...but making the ridiculously poor slightly less poor isn't something I'd call an "amazing achievement" since it's stupid easy to make them not poor.
- gcc_programmer 7y agoWow... Please elaborate how exactly to make these people not poor? And please let us know what you are doing to help these people? This is an amazing achievement and people like you better start understanding it: we have no idea, literally no idea, how it feels like to live with $2 a day... Watching those videos does not do it justice. I myself have no idea what it's like, I try to imagine it but my brain can't. If you want to educate yourself, hopefully you do, I suggest reading "Factfullness": it talks about the same problem, among other things.
- falcongod082 7y agoGive it time, for the past 40 or 50 years we've been working towards that goal by getting rid of workers and consumer rights, you might be able to experience it yourself before you die. It's really amazing what income disparity can do for a country.
- gcc_programmer 7y agoYou did not answer my question but answered your own. What are you talking about?
- bickfordb 7y agoWhat's it like to be connected to Jeffrey Epstein?
- neom 7y agoI've mentioned this book here before, but I can't stress enough how good it is. $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America: https://www.amazon.com/2-00-Day-Living-Nothing-America/dp/054481195X https://www.amazon.com/2-00-Day-Living-Nothing-America/dp/05...
- black_13 7y agoIts ironic that to describe book Requires amazon
- joe_the_user 7y ago"..households surviving on virtually no cash income..." This is talking about people living on less than $2/day cash income. Which is still quite different from trying to get all needs with $2 cash each day, something that is more or less impossible in the US today. Those without cash live on hand-outs, soup kitchens and government assistance. Certainly, US poverty has gotten worse over the last twenty years and is a serious problem, of course. But it seems like the focus on $2/day in particular fails to see poverty in any holistic sense. Counter point from the Guardian on the whole Gates approach: "Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-g...
- neom 7y agoIt a collection of stories that help build empathy.......
- c-smile 7y agoThe irony: that site does not work in Microsoft Edge browser...
- swayvil 7y agoBelieve it or not, you can grow food, hunt squirrels and build a nice lean-to for zero dollars a day. People forget that.
- StavrosK 7y agoAh, yes, the wonderful quality of life of barely surviving.
- swayvil 7y agoIt's a matter of priorities, obviously.
- 13of40 7y agoMy mother, for the last 30 years or so, has been a log cabin, raise goats, make Thanksgiving dinner over a propane fire kind of minimalist. Even so, she told me about this old guy who lived down the road who claimed to live on something like 8 USD per month. According to him, his secret was that he absolutely eschewed all vices.
- michaelmrose 7y agoWhere are you legitimately allowed to live outside?
- 13of40 7y agoActually you're allowed to live outside in most of the public land in the Western US. There are some rules about having to change watersheds every so often, IIRC, but throwing up a tent and staying in one spot for a few weeks is completely legitimate.
- aspaceman 7y agoThere are so many folks in the comments who seem to be focused on a particular narrative. There's a lot of comments saying "It's so much better than it used to be!" While true, this feels to me like a deflection. It seems to come up any time inequality is mentioned here. It feels like an excuse. "yes things may be hard for someone making $2 a day, but they're better now so it's all ok." I find it to be a distraction. I don't care if things are better than ancient times. I think they can improve significantly more, and I'm frustrated by such short-sighted viewpoints distracting from the point of the article.
- smallgovt 7y ago>> I don't care if things are better than ancient times. The world population living in poverty has decreased from >1.7 billion to 700 million over the past 25 years. So, it's not a comparison to ancient times. We've made considerable progress in just the past couple decades. There's still a lot of work to be done, and we should celebrate the progress made at the same time.
- wsxcde 7y agoAnother way of looking at it is that two of richest countries in the world from 300 years ago spent the most of the past 300 years with most of their citizens in extreme poverty. Now that those countries are catching up again, we're seeing these reductions in extreme poverty. In other words, these improvements are not the result of a valiant effort to fight poverty, but a regression to the historical meaning happening because the effects of colonization are beginning to fade away.
- aspaceman 7y agoWhy does a decrease in world poverty matter in a thread about living on $2 a day? I really don’t care about your stats, make your own post if you wanna talk about them. My point is that folks like you redirect the topic because you’re uncomfortable with reality. I don’t think we’re anywhere close to “celebrating”
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- inamberclad 7y agoI'm kinda put off by the production of these videos. It feels like some artsy vlog or artisan type video, but instead it's highres slowmo shots of someone's sheet metal hut and the sunlight coming through smoke and dirt while they slog through another day with nearly nothing to show for it. I feel like the videographers missed the point by trying to make it pretty.
- azinman2 7y agoThey’re trying to capture the story in a compelling, accessible way. I feel like the production quality helps honor the people and their stories, adding credibility.
- tobr 7y agoMaybe not surprising when you go to the world’s 2nd richest person, a person whose net worth keeps increasing by billions per year, to learn what it’s like to live on nothing.
- dgellow 7y agoBill Gates didn’t produce the videos himself ...
- MuffinFlavored 7y agoWhat percentage of his time and net worth has Bill Gates given to those in poverty over the years?
- badrabbit 7y agoSomething to keep in mind: while exteme poverty is worse than what a 1st world person could probably imagine,you have to also think about all the nuiances and costly omplications of first world living that go away in a poor 3rd world country. Mandatory health,rent,home owner, car (liability) insurances don't exist. Housing codes are not that good or not enforced well which means cheap housing (think huts for example) with no running water,plumbing,extensive electrical wiring,toilet and more is a lot cheaper than in a developed nation. People don't use microwaves,dish washers,laundry machines and similar convenient appliances. Bills are mostly limited to electricity and cellphone. Income tax is pretty much non-existent for people in extreme poverty. If you survive all the way to adulthood in extreme poverty you probably havr a well fortified immune system. Things also cost what people are willing to pay for them. At least the bare neccesities will always be affordable to the majority,which means if there is extensive poverty in a certain area then food,used clothing,etc... Are affordable (albeit not of good quality). My point is, a "day in the life" is probably a lot different than you might think. It's not so much that they struggle to pay rent,good healthcare or afford food (typical american poverty) but more like if they get sick for simple curable diseases they just die. Because they make so little,they can't afford to let the kids go to school at all after a certain age (the kids help) or even if they can they can't do homework or study with bad housing or lacking electricity and other tech. In many cases,kids walk really far to get to school (think 5+ miles). Nutrition is of course horrible. The type of poverty you would experience in the US is different. You have food pantrys and emergency medical treatment is always available or at least you can get to a hospital within a few hours. Public libraries and relatively great public schools make raising a child a bit easier. In the US though,housing means a lot of complicated requirements,things cost a lot more,you feel a lot worse with what you lack which means the mental trauma is very high which in turn drives many to turn to easily accessible vices and crime trapping the person in a spiral of misery. Poverty is horrible wherever it happens and very tragically it persists in the west wearing a different mask. Growing up in extreme povery and experiencing it after living in a 3rd world country are not comparable. When you grow up in a certain environment you accept certain realities(e.g.: I can't afford a 3rd meal and toilet paper vs I have to live in my car with my child because I got evicted ).
- Ayesh 7y ago
- geraltofrivia 7y agoMany people have stopped living on less than $2 a day in the past decades, according to the article. But does this take inflation into account? Surely the value of $2 has also dropped in these decades?
- dchest 7y agoIt does. From the linked World Bank article: "The Bank uses an updated international poverty line of US $1.90 a day, which incorporates new information on differences in the cost of living across countries (the PPP exchange rates). The new line preserves the real purchasing power of the previous line (of $1.25 a day in 2005 prices) in the world’s poorest countries."
- ninguem2 7y agoHow can a country that has people living in such abject poverty justifies sending a probe to the Moon?
- onion2k 7y agoIn 2011 1.5 million families in the USA lived on less than $2 a day before benefits[1]. Is it time to defund NASA? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
- PeterisP 7y agoIf we're talking about spending space money on benefits, then talking about 'income before benefits' is kind of irrelevant. The whole point is that USA and Europe can afford both social benefits and space, but India apparently has to choose and has chosen to not support these very poor people.
- dallathee 7y agoNASA budget is 0.489% of US 2019 Budget, ISRO is ~0.4% of Indian 2019 Budget. Also ISRO makes a profit through its commercial satellite launching missions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antrix_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antrix_Corporation
- bildung 7y agoI think this is a legimite question! Personally I don't have a clear answer. Two arguments for a space program country with lots of poverty (like India or the USA): * Establishing a high tech industry with programs like this potentially leads to increasing tax revenue for the country, thereby making funds available for fighting poverty. * It could be used as a point of identification for the population in the country, helping to see oneself as a citizen in a nation, not just a member of a tribe, enlarging the "us" in "us vs. them". This can lead to more empathy towards the poor (as they are now part of "us"), which can pave the way for political changes leading to less poverty. To enable changes in a democratic country, you don't just need the funds, you have to have a political plan that resonates with a big part of the population.
- dluan 7y agoI did this in college for a week as part of a $2 dollar a day challenge for a student microfinance club. I knew well enough that it was near impossible to do it accurately in the U.S. where costs are inflated for basic things, and I also was discounting things like my tiny rent and what not, but I wanted to just go through it once as an exercise. I had $14 and I used most of it to stock up on dry beans. I think I ended up with around one and half meals a day, basically of nothing but beans and rice. I didn't last the full week.
- Eyght 7y agoFor about a year I lived off ~$16/week(not including rent) here in Sweden (which is not known as a cheap country to live in). I could just about get by and put away some meager savings. But those savings were continuosly lost to random unforeseen expenses in the $20 range. In my opinion it's not possible to live like that for any longer stretch of time. As soon as an emergency presents itself, you're wiped out and end up destitute. I had the luck of being young and mentally and physically healthy, and I only had to provide for myself. That being said, it wasn't an easy time for me. 1/10 would not recommend.
- mikepurvis 7y agoI wonder if this would get a lot easier with a group. Like, is it easier for 50 people to survive on $100/week of food than for one person to survive on $2. Obviously not practical for most western lifestyles, but I'm just imagining the various economies of scale around making a big pots of soup, chili, hummus, baking bread, etc. All of these things are labour intensive but can be done extremely cheaply if you're working from raw materials and your fixed costs (tools, equipment, etc) are covered.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> I wonder if this would get a lot easier with a group. Like, is it easier for 50 people to survive on $100/week of food than for one person to survive on $2. Yes, and this is basically the financial norm for the poor. Everyone has some money coming in, and the precise amount varies, as does the need for money ("unforeseen expenses in the $20 range"). So large families provide financing internally; when you have less money to hand than you need, you get help from your extended kin, and when you have more than you need, it goes to help your kin. This is often phrased as "borrowing", but it isn't really; these transfers aren't supposed to be paid back. When variations in income and expenses are backstopped by a group of dozens of diversified people, you can live right on the edge of your average earning power. When you're a single atomized person, you have more need for a buffer of savings, because your income and expenses are so comparatively erratic.
- mappu 7y agoThis surprised me - > He supports his wife and three children with his income of about 1500 Rwandan francs per day (about USD $1.73) My understanding is that raising a child in most developed western countries is just mind-bogglingly expensive. The purchasing power here has to be wildly skewed from the actual FRw/USD forex rate. What does 1500 FRw look like in USD (or EUR or AUD or, ...), not going by the official forex rate, but normalized for the cost of raising three children? Like the Big Mac Index but a childcare index.
- jokoon 7y ago> More than one billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, driven by improvements in health, agriculture, and education. I don't understand, is the increasing inequality and income concentration a mirage, a lie, or propaganda? It would be nice to introduce the concept of relative and absolute wealth. If you increase the size of the cake, the poor will get more crumbs, and you did reduce poverty, but it's not really a fair improvement. I wish Bill Gates would have to guts to do politics. He seems smart but to me it's never enough.
- atlasunshrugged 7y agoI think that's their plan, see this article about their push into lobbying https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-melinda-gates-lobbying-group-2019-6?IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-melinda-gates-lob...
- AdrianB1 7y agoThis is completely misleading, close to lying. I lived with less than $2 a day. The average salary in the country was less than $100 and this was in Eastern Europe, not in Africa. What changes the story completely is that the exchange rate makes all the difference in my case: we all had a fairly regular life, but the exchange rate was showing a very dark picture. Yes, we were not able to buy American cars in dollars, but a local built Renault copy was a few thousands dollars new. All the prices were extremely low in dollars, but meaningful in local currency. We had not just the basics (food, electricity, house), but an almost normal life. 25 years later, the average salary is more than 10 times more, in US dollars only. An iPhone is now 10 times cheaper, but the price structure is more or less the same and nothing changed, just the exchange rate. The food is 10 times more expensive in dollars, rent is 10 times more, the few things that are more expensive today in local currency are the ones that are heavily taxed, like gas and tobacco.
- rypskar 7y agoThe poverty rate of $2 a day isn't about living off $2 converted to the local currency, if is about living off the local currency with a value of what $2 is worth in USA. You can compare it to live off what half a cup of coffee costs at Starbucks.
- AdrianB1 7y agoNot true. The article is not about living with the equivalent of $2 in USA, but a few African countries and values converted in dollars. A few years ago some colleagues of mine spent a month in rural, mainland China, trying to see how people live with a few dollars a day. While those people were poor, the numbers are very misleading when you convert in dollars.
- xyzzyz 7y agoNo, you’re wrong. It’s not about converting what they earn to dollars using direct exchange rate, it’s about converting it to dollar’s purchasing power.
- luisdfp 7y ago>"We asked ourselves why the world had to be like this and what we could do to help. Our search for answers altered the course of our lives and led us to start our foundation." It's a shame but it seems to me like Bill came up with the wrong answer due to a bad diagnosis of the problem. If you really want to help these people, your best bet would be to highlight how rampant corruption affects these countries and how their rulers should be held accountable for it. Foreign aid, by itself, will never be enough to solve this problem as long as there are tyrannical and corrupt regimes.
- PeterisP 7y agoRealistically, the only thing that results in a "how their rulers should be held accountable for it" is a violent change of regime. There universally are large groups of local people who'd like their corrupt rulers to be accountable, so you theoretically could support that process by buying and delivering large quantities of weapons to the opposition of the regime so that they can (try to) overthrow it and bring justice to the ruling clique. Or, alternatively, orchestrate an external invasion either by neighboring countries or USA. However, is this really what Bill Gates should be trying to implement in other countries?
- mklarmann 7y agoI am impressed how respectfully you make this point. I would advocate strongly against imperialistic views to solve these problems.
- novalis78 7y agoI noticed how most of them are trying to save money ‘to better their lives’ or are taking out loans in their local currency. The inflation rate of these currencies is devastating. Perhaps instead of overthrowing a corrupt upper percentage of their country they could find ways to evade their purchasing power and capital accumulation being drained away...
- arcturus17 7y agoSo after reading this your first instinct was to comment how you know better than the world’s greatest philanthropist?
- 11235813213455 7y agoI lived with $0 a day during 2 years (I lived in France, in a small student room, for about €140/month) It's sustainable and compatible with a 'normal' life, I found food from: - student university restaurants, I asked the permission to collect in the bread 'trash', most bread was in perfect state. I heard this food was used for chicken farms - end of markets, I was even helping merchants in exchange of their damaged but perfectly good legumes and fruits. I was coming back with a lot of food. It's important to eat the most damaged first of course - some supermarket bins, where I could find some salad plastic bags, eggs. There was other kind of food, meat, biscuits, dishes, but I wasn't interested by those processed foods If I had $2 per day, I'd buy a huge rice bag periodically, eggs, and damaged legumes every week at the end of markets
- jgtrosh 7y agoI seem to remember there was a polemic about supermarkets locking their bins from scavengers. Did you have any problem at the time? Was it before or after there was a change of law? Just a few more questions out of curiosity from a fellow french student: How much time a day were you expending in exchange for free food? Did you also use extreme frugality for other commodities? What motivated you to to take up this lifestyle? Do you think it would have been possible to “have family responsibilities” in your situation? What alternatives seemed available at the time?
- jamesb93 7y agoI think now in France supermarkets are 'legally encouraged' not to lock their bins and the culture of food waste is not as prevalent.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoIn my UK city the supermarkets started locking their bins; describing it as a polemic seems a bit like burying your head in the sand. The problem appeared to be injuries (of scavengers, and the potential for the supermarket to be liable) and extra work of cleaning bin areas. High-street bakeries used to sell off all the food cheap at the end of the day. At some point in the last 15 years - Greggs took over all my local bakeries (or out-competed them). Greggs policy is now not to sell off stuff because then poor people will buy it instead of paying full price - they throw it away instead (according to staff at my Greggs).
- sireat 7y agoI have a friend who lives on less than 20 pounds a week in London (while paying 1500 pounds a month on rent). How does he do it? * By using perishable sales at Tesco and other places. * By bartering for food I saw him pick up a bag of ripe but fine peaches for 10 pence and a 3-4pounds of chicken wings for 99 pence. Loaves of bread were 10-20 pence. This is not easy to do by any means because the competition is fierce. The scenes are reminiscent of Black Friday insanity in US. Shows the economic realities of living in London. Personally, I would rather try to pay less on rent and more for food but that is not always an option.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoWe're out of the woods now it seems [no longer destitute] but the 8pm scrum at Tesco was always a bit fraught. It seems like the supermarkets don't have as many deals as much now, I suspect they donate more to food banks (they can probably write it off at a higher value than they could sell it?). Tesco in particular no longer have a "cheap" section, it remains on the shelves. I'd guess that's so that people will mistakenly buy expiring goods (netting them a higher sale price, and earlier repeat sale). All elements of the squeeze on the poor and the widening poverty gap.
- coldtea 7y agoThis is made to appear like an insight of the lives of those living on less than $2/day, but if you look closely, the videos have them talk about micro-loans they get and such, as a covert ad for [1]. Which is OK, I guess, but it's never explicitly mentioned, and the way 5 out of 6 people in the videos talk about those loans is entirely non-organic. Those are not some random people making < $2 day, but people selected because they participated in those loans... [1] https://www.gatesfoundation.org/what-we-do/global-growth-and-opportunity/financial-services-for-the-poor https://www.gatesfoundation.org/what-we-do/global-growth-and...
- thatfrenchguy 7y agoOf course they are, those shark foundations and companies are really pushing micro-loans as both life changing and charity, when it’s been a long time since we’ve known it has really bad effects and is the new cool way to prey on the poor. They would helicopter money at people if they really wanted to help them.
- dymk 7y ago> shark foundations Characterizing the Gates foundation as sharks? Interesting. > when it’s been a long time since we’ve known it has really bad effects and is the new cool way to prey on the poor. What? source for that claim please. It's far from an obvious or widespread idea that making access to small amounts of capital easier leads to more problems for poor people.
- coldtea 7y ago>Characterizing the Gates foundation as sharks? Interesting. Don't know for the parent, but as a European, where we have seen all kinds of things in the political and economic sphere, we tend to be less gullible and more cynical. Many charitable funds are basically ways to take huge tax breaks and still have control of your money. Others are based on you giving an insignificant amount of your fortune (which can still be huge percentage wise, but it's insignificant in its consequences to you: if you have 100 billions, even giving away 99 of them leaves you with enough money to sustain a lavish lifestyle for several generations) and trade it for a say in global politics and power. In other words, you use your funds to 'play god' and help manage the world the way you like it... >What? source for that claim please. It's far from an obvious or widespread idea that making access to small amounts of capital easier leads to more problems for poor people. https://www.businessinsider.com/hundreds-of-suicides-in-india-linked-to-microfinance-organizations-2012-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/hundreds-of-suicides-in-indi...
- cjlars 7y agoAlso see the documentary "Living on One Dollar," where a group of US students try living at the international poverty line for some months in Guatemala.
- JordanFarmer 7y agoInteresting that Bill points out in particular the poverty and hardships of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Interesting because it once had 3000 medical facilities and over 300 hospitals. Something like 80% literacy rate and 60%+ school aged kids attending school. The largest middle class in all of Africa, slavery was illegal (though that doesn't mean it didn't happen). This was of course when it was a Belgium colony. There were 80,000 Belgians living there. There was a massive infrastructure of trains and roads. Many diseases that kill tens of thousands now had been nearly eradicated through vaccinations. Quite a far cry of how life is there now... Belgium was going to transition away and give the Congo it's independence, but the Congolese people had no patience for that and began getting violent. This led to a premature departure with a weak and new Congolese government. What followed was civil war and complete destruction of all infrastructure and means of living free of poverty... A sad story for sure. You can't blame the Congolese people for wanting their independence and certainly the Belgian people didn't treat them as equals (segregation wasn't the law, but it was a common social practice). I sure wish things could have worked out better. Though the Congolese people didn't have autonomy, quality of life was far better. Be careful what you wish for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Congo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Congo
- anm89 7y agoWhat a trite concept. The entire world isn't denominated in dollars. I'm currently in Colombia where I could eat 3 great meals out at a restaurant for maybe $6(and really a whole lot cheaper than that if my goal was to make due with less) Poverty isn't defined by how much american currency you'd get at exchange for your cost of living.
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoI find the size of the families interesting. You can only stretch the $2 so much when you have a wife and 3 children to support even if poverty..as a notion..differs globally. Poverty is directly correlated to large family size. This is true all over the world.