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> I thought that extreme poverty has been steadily declining for years according to several reports A couple chosen paragraphs from this opinion piece written

by mrpopo 7y ago

> I thought that extreme poverty has been steadily declining for years according to several reports A couple chosen paragraphs from this opinion piece written during last year's Davos summit [0] : > What Roser’s numbers actually reveal is that the world went from a situation where most of humanity had no need of money at all to one where today most of humanity struggles to survive on extremely small amounts of money. The graph casts this as a decline in poverty, but in reality what was going on was a process of dispossession that bulldozed people into the capitalist labour system, during the enclosure movements in Europe and the colonisation of the global south. > Moreover, the few gains that have been made have virtually all happened in one place: China. It is disingenuous, then, for the likes of Gates and Pinker to claim these gains as victories for Washington-consensus neoliberalism. Take China out of the equation, and the numbers look even worse. Over the four decades since 1981, not only has the number of people in poverty gone up, the proportion of people in poverty has remained stagnant at about 60%. [0] 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...

ekianjo 7y ago
The data somewhat contradicts your second point that it "virtually all" happened in China - while it is true China is the main success story. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-population-living-in-extreme-poverty-by-world-region https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-population-living-i... India has also seen a large reduction in poverty over the years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India#/media/File:India_Poverty_Chart.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India#/media/File:I... Subsaharan Africa, however, is showing a rising level of poverty.
- elp 7y ago
  The poverty increase Sub-saharan Africa is almost entirely caused by a combination of corruption and the kind of idiotic brand of "captialism is evil" snake oil economics Oxfam peddles. The South African state owned electricity provider can no-longer generate enough electricity for my country. The government wont allow independent power producers because the large labour unions are against it. I presume because they will lose bargaining power and of course renewable energy means coal miners will suffer. Naturally this means all the other businesses in the country are shrinking. Of course every time a wealthy business owner shuts shop and leaves the country the overall inequality goes down. Now please excuse me while I go top up my generator.
asiachick 7y ago
Is that really a fair framing? 200 yrs ago I'd guess most people had to do back breaking labor most of the time just scrape by enough to eat. Hans Rosling has that video that claims washing machines as one of the best inventions ever because it relieved women of being forced to watch clothes for 6-8 hours a day. Saying the people didn't used to need money means almost nothing. Food and shelter were not free. They required labor. I think I prefer the current world where I need money to the previous world where maybe I didn't but my actual lifestyle was horrible. As for the 1981 quote, what's special about 1981. If we pick 1941? 1881?. I have no clue about poor countries but my first guess as to why poor places have stayed poor would not be "because the top 2000 rich people in the world"
- simonh 7y ago
  1981 is when we started collecting reasonably reliable data on global incomes. Before that we have varyingly credible estimates.
rayiner 7y ago
As someone from the “global south.” When I see people use the term, I play a game where I check to see if they are a westerner with a degree in something useless. Invariably, they are. The author of your article, for example, is an anthropologist from London. In the actual “global south” (like Bangladesh, where I am from), your mother would be ashamed if you got a degree in anthropology, instead of engineering, business, computer science, etc. You know, things that allow you to participate in global capitalism. People in the actual global south tend to be supportive of capitalism, because it’s literally transforming their lives: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alyssaayres/2014/10/28/bangladesh-capitalist-haven/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alyssaayres/2014/10/28/banglade... My family left Bangladesh in 1989. In that time, purchasing power adjusted per capita GDP has tripled. Infant mortality has been cut in half, and life expectancy is up by more than a decade. Malnutrition is down by more than half. The brain drain is even slowing down. While my family left, many bright young people are staying to work in burgeoning industries. It’s a goddamn miracle. Unsurprisingly Bangladeshis are among the most supportive of free markets of any country in the world. This is true all over Asia, where there is a combination of people who have developed the institutions to support capitalism, but haven’t yet become jaded by all the wealth capitalism has brought them. People who major in degrees like anthropology and use terms like “the global south” are dangerous. They’re selling snake oil. They’re anti-vaxxers or the people telling you to go on a fruit diet to treat your cancer. The gist of their pitch is this: “Ignore how all of the developed world got wealthy. Also, ignore how South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. got rich. Also, ignore how Malaysia, Thailand, etc. are well on their way to getting rich. Capitalists don’t have any answers for you. We, the anthropologists, political scientists, etc., we have the answers.” Complaining about “enclosure” of farming land? Really? They want us to go back to communal farming? Using “indigenous technology?” It’s like they fetishize our poverty. How about, instead, we do the same thing Europeans and Americans did to get rich? Empirical science, rule of law, stable government, property and economic rights, individual freedom, and free markets. (Regarding the claim that poverty has actually gone up if you use higher income thresholds. Your article doesn’t cite sources. But World Bank data shows that even at higher extreme poverty thresholds, rates have declined dramatically: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/30418/9781464813306_Ch03.pdf https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/3.... Using $5.50 as the benchmark, it’s declined by 21 points since 1990. In South Asia (which excludes China), its down by 14 points. In Latin America it has been cut in half. The only place that it’s not moved is sub Saharan Africa, and that’s because those societies lack the societal institutions to support democracy and capitalism. Which is unfortunate, but anthropologists aren’t going to be able to do anything to fix that.)

by mrpopo 7y ago

ekianjo 7y ago

The data somewhat contradicts your second point that it "virtually all" happened in China - while it is true China is the main success story. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-population-living-in-extreme-poverty-by-world-region https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-population-living-i... India has also seen a large reduction in poverty over the years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India#/media/File:India_Poverty_Chart.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India#/media/File:I... Subsaharan Africa, however, is showing a rising level of poverty.

elp 7y ago
The poverty increase Sub-saharan Africa is almost entirely caused by a combination of corruption and the kind of idiotic brand of "captialism is evil" snake oil economics Oxfam peddles. The South African state owned electricity provider can no-longer generate enough electricity for my country. The government wont allow independent power producers because the large labour unions are against it. I presume because they will lose bargaining power and of course renewable energy means coal miners will suffer. Naturally this means all the other businesses in the country are shrinking. Of course every time a wealthy business owner shuts shop and leaves the country the overall inequality goes down. Now please excuse me while I go top up my generator.

asiachick 7y ago

Is that really a fair framing? 200 yrs ago I'd guess most people had to do back breaking labor most of the time just scrape by enough to eat. Hans Rosling has that video that claims washing machines as one of the best inventions ever because it relieved women of being forced to watch clothes for 6-8 hours a day. Saying the people didn't used to need money means almost nothing. Food and shelter were not free. They required labor. I think I prefer the current world where I need money to the previous world where maybe I didn't but my actual lifestyle was horrible. As for the 1981 quote, what's special about 1981. If we pick 1941? 1881?. I have no clue about poor countries but my first guess as to why poor places have stayed poor would not be "because the top 2000 rich people in the world"

simonh 7y ago
1981 is when we started collecting reasonably reliable data on global incomes. Before that we have varyingly credible estimates.

rayiner 7y ago

As someone from the “global south.” When I see people use the term, I play a game where I check to see if they are a westerner with a degree in something useless. Invariably, they are. The author of your article, for example, is an anthropologist from London. In the actual “global south” (like Bangladesh, where I am from), your mother would be ashamed if you got a degree in anthropology, instead of engineering, business, computer science, etc. You know, things that allow you to participate in global capitalism. People in the actual global south tend to be supportive of capitalism, because it’s literally transforming their lives: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alyssaayres/2014/10/28/bangladesh-capitalist-haven/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alyssaayres/2014/10/28/banglade... My family left Bangladesh in 1989. In that time, purchasing power adjusted per capita GDP has tripled. Infant mortality has been cut in half, and life expectancy is up by more than a decade. Malnutrition is down by more than half. The brain drain is even slowing down. While my family left, many bright young people are staying to work in burgeoning industries. It’s a goddamn miracle. Unsurprisingly Bangladeshis are among the most supportive of free markets of any country in the world. This is true all over Asia, where there is a combination of people who have developed the institutions to support capitalism, but haven’t yet become jaded by all the wealth capitalism has brought them. People who major in degrees like anthropology and use terms like “the global south” are dangerous. They’re selling snake oil. They’re anti-vaxxers or the people telling you to go on a fruit diet to treat your cancer. The gist of their pitch is this: “Ignore how all of the developed world got wealthy. Also, ignore how South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. got rich. Also, ignore how Malaysia, Thailand, etc. are well on their way to getting rich. Capitalists don’t have any answers for you. We, the anthropologists, political scientists, etc., we have the answers.” Complaining about “enclosure” of farming land? Really? They want us to go back to communal farming? Using “indigenous technology?” It’s like they fetishize our poverty. How about, instead, we do the same thing Europeans and Americans did to get rich? Empirical science, rule of law, stable government, property and economic rights, individual freedom, and free markets. (Regarding the claim that poverty has actually gone up if you use higher income thresholds. Your article doesn’t cite sources. But World Bank data shows that even at higher extreme poverty thresholds, rates have declined dramatically: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/30418/9781464813306_Ch03.pdf https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/3.... Using $5.50 as the benchmark, it’s declined by 21 points since 1990. In South Asia (which excludes China), its down by 14 points. In Latin America it has been cut in half. The only place that it’s not moved is sub Saharan Africa, and that’s because those societies lack the societal institutions to support democracy and capitalism. Which is unfortunate, but anthropologists aren’t going to be able to do anything to fix that.)