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It'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 f
by H8crilA 7y ago
It'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?
- falcongod082 7y agoMy apologies, you're correct. I've heard that there exists a field of study called economics in which we know how all of that works, if that's actually true then we know how to cure poverty.
- falcongod082 7y agoDid you not like that truth?...did you not want to admit that we choose to let poverty continue?
- RyanAF7 7y agoSad you have such a narrow view.
- jngreenlee 7y agoThat's not true at scale. We're not talking share-shifting of dollars, but making a more anti-fragile system overall that lifts everyone.
- falcongod082 7y agoI agree, but most folks aren't ready for the share-shifting of privilege that that would entail.
- TaylorAlexander 7y agoI’m gonna need you to cite a source for that claim.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pdonis 7y ago> it's stupid easy to make them not poor Really? How so?
- falcongod082 7y agopay them, boost their economy, etc...there are exceptions for countries that are screwed politically but if the government is decent and willing to work with you it's pretty simple.
- username90 7y agoThe problem is that every country that is still very poor is also full of corruption, so we have already solved all the simple cases you talk about.
- aspaceman 7y agoTake money from rich people Give money to poor people. Only reason that's hard is rich people wanting to keep their money. Not some grand natural equilibrium.
- falcongod082 7y agoThis also works and is pretty much what Murrica did until shortly after WWII.
- jlawson 7y agoWhich rich people do you think all that money came from exactly? This is an absurd fixed-pie view of reality.
- luckylion 7y agoAnd you'll also need a set of policies to keep that going in perpetuity, otherwise the money is going to accumulate in a few hands again.
- journalctl 7y agoMaybe by not enabling like ten people to control the majority of the wealth.
- peteretep 7y agoI think this number is marginally misleading, because a huge amount of that is China: > According to the World Bank, more than 850 million people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty as China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015 China was not historically poor, and this is a reversion to the mean once minimal free trade was allowed.
- jngreenlee 7y agoIt's still a true story...nothing diminishes the significance of this.
- peteretep 7y agoThe achievement is ... Mao died?
- H8crilA 7y agoAnd probably Deng Xiaoping's re-architecture of China. Still, what caused the advance does not diminish the success of humanity. Progress is progress.
- hutzlibu 7y ago"Progress is progress. " It is? Don't you think, there can also be progress in the wrong direction?
- luckylion 7y agoWouldn't "bad leader dies, next one has better economic policies" make the situation improve by a lot in most poor places?
- imtringued 7y agoYes and this is not exclusive to developing countries either.
- JSavageReal 7y agoThe article mentions this in the beginning, what's your point? I love how every time there's talk of povery, some first world beneficiary jumps in to point out how much better poor people are compared to the past. Why they think that's relevant is beyond me.
- gingabriska 7y agoI am originally from South East Asia but lived in America and Europe. In India, I've lived many days on less than $3 a day.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y agoAnd it's not just money. Very tangible measures such as mortality before age 5 have greatly improved. From https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality#global-decline-of-child-mortality https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality#global-decline-of... In 1800 the health conditions of our ancestors were such that 43% of the world’s newborns died before their 5th birthday. These estimates are shown in the visualisation below. In 1960 child mortality was still 18.5%. Almost every 5th child born in that year died in childhood. Over the last decades we have seen a very rapid decline of child mortality globally. In 2015 child mortality was down to 4.3% – 10-fold lower than 2 centuries ago. You have to take this long perspective to see the progress that we have achieved.
- peter303 7y agoThis is the point of Steve Pinkers last two books Enlightenment Now. He has many graphs of social progress in recent centuries. He attributes this to a society run much more on human reason than in the past, including science, laws, and large governments. We still have a great deal more room for improvement.