6 ms·

Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong (2019)

21 points by pizza 6y ago

nine_zeros 6y ago
Wow, amazing propaganda. $1 will actually feed you well even in a city in India. It's cheaper in other Asian and African cities. While paltry in developed countries, getting to $1 a day was a big problem and developing countries in Asia are rapidly pioneering the change.
- ridewinter 6y ago
  The article really does glamorize the pre-industrial past. Since the author doesn't use facts to back up the claim that industrialization has made people's lives worse, how about looking at caloric intake over the past 800 years: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-supply-of-calories?time=..2013&country=FRA~GBR~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-supply-o...
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    that's actually a terrible metric. During the height of the early industrial revolution the life expectancy in Liverpool fell to 25(!) years, despite higher caloric intake as people were basically put through a manual labour meatgrinder. This is actually the glamorized superficial narrative that you're accusing the author of. More calories = progress, graphs go up = everyone happy. For most of industrialisation life was actually extremely harsh, monotonous, life expectancy fell, communal ties were destroyed and that's the case in much of the developing world today. Yuval Noah Harari gives a good overview in Sapiens as well. https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/13/did-living-standards-improve-during-the-industrial-revolution https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/13/did-livin...
    - ridewinter 6y ago
      How has life expectancy gone since the height of the early industrial revolution? How has life expectancy gone in the developing world of our day? I believe Yuval Noah writes mostly about pre-agricultural life, not pre-industrial life.
- gwern 6y ago
  It is an impressively disingenuous piece (if I may use the author's own preferred word). First, he describes economics history statistics time-series as essentially made up (I'm sure the economic historians like Deaton will be pleased to know that we know absolutely nothing about long-term trends in per capita income etc); then he turns out and claims that people were actually far better off before any statistics he deems sufficiently reliable (I guess there must be some other datasets which are reliable, what a pity we can't use it for anything else). So, the statistics that contradict him are dismissed, and he makes up the ones that favor him. Then he shifts to a nirvana fallacy: because getting out of extreme poverty still leaves you in considerable poverty, actually, it's no progress at all! Wait, there's more: poverty is increasing, because if you look at absolute numbers, there's 'we see that the number of people living under this line has increased dramatically since measurements began in 1981, reaching some 4.2 billion people today.' (Let us take a moment to ponder the intellectual honesty of an author who slides so silently from per capita or inequality to absolute numbers.) But don't worry, it really doesn't matter where all those people come from or per capita vs population growth, po-tah-to poh-ta-toe, because most of them are in China, and China, is, he informs you, not a victory for 'Washington-consensus neoliberalism' (because I guess they got all that economic growth by Mao-style collectivization of farms...?), so definitely don't try to use China as an argument for capitalism or anything crazy like that.
ridewinter 6y ago
Like many liberals, I thought it was a fact that US wages had stagnated in the past 40 years. And rich were the only beneficiaries. But in fact the median income has steadily risen: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_Unite... So I ask HN, why has this narrative become so widespread?
- rbecker 6y ago
  The graphs at https://econographics.wordpress.com/tag/wages/ https://econographics.wordpress.com/tag/wages/ paint a less rosy picture. [1] is I think what is sometimes cited. Which does show growth, but slower than productivity growth. A quick glance at the graph on top of the wiki page you linked suggests it's consistent with it. But [2] is I think most often cited, and shows hardly any growth at all post 1972 or so. I'd also be interested to know why it looks so different from your graph and [1]. Perhaps how 'real income' is defined differs from the adjustments [2] made. [1] https://econographics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/productivity-vs-compensation.jpg https://econographics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/productivi... [2] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
  - ridewinter 6y ago
    Perhaps the difference is hourly pay vs. median income. The lowest tier of workers hasn't risen as much as the median income.
SamPatt 6y ago
Folks like Stephen Pinker (Enlightenment Now), Matt Ridley (The Rational Optimist), and Max Roser (Our World in Data) have done a compelling job of presenting data that shows poverty has decreased substantially in recent generations.
- RNCTX 6y ago
  Steven Pinker writes for a conservative propaganda publication that tries to legitimize phrenology to promote racism as a science.
  - DuskStar 6y ago
    That's a nice set of ad hominem attacks there. Do you have anything to say about his arguments, or just your interpretation of unrelated views he might hold? Yes, Pinker has views that others find objectionable. But that has no bearing on whether poverty has increased worldwide. Incidentally, The Guardian lists Enlightenment Now as one of its "Books to Buy in 2018", at least according to the Amazon page [0]. (I mention The Guardian because that's who the article is from) 0: https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570 https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Pr...

21 points by pizza 6y ago

Wow, amazing propaganda. $1 will actually feed you well even in a city in India. It's cheaper in other Asian and African cities. While paltry in developed countries, getting to $1 a day was a big problem and developing countries in Asia are rapidly pioneering the change.

ridewinter 6y ago
The article really does glamorize the pre-industrial past. Since the author doesn't use facts to back up the claim that industrialization has made people's lives worse, how about looking at caloric intake over the past 800 years: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-supply-of-calories?time=..2013&country=FRA~GBR~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-supply-o...
- Barrin92 6y ago
  that's actually a terrible metric. During the height of the early industrial revolution the life expectancy in Liverpool fell to 25(!) years, despite higher caloric intake as people were basically put through a manual labour meatgrinder. This is actually the glamorized superficial narrative that you're accusing the author of. More calories = progress, graphs go up = everyone happy. For most of industrialisation life was actually extremely harsh, monotonous, life expectancy fell, communal ties were destroyed and that's the case in much of the developing world today. Yuval Noah Harari gives a good overview in Sapiens as well. https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/13/did-living-standards-improve-during-the-industrial-revolution https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/13/did-livin...
  - ridewinter 6y ago
    How has life expectancy gone since the height of the early industrial revolution? How has life expectancy gone in the developing world of our day? I believe Yuval Noah writes mostly about pre-agricultural life, not pre-industrial life.
gwern 6y ago
It is an impressively disingenuous piece (if I may use the author's own preferred word). First, he describes economics history statistics time-series as essentially made up (I'm sure the economic historians like Deaton will be pleased to know that we know absolutely nothing about long-term trends in per capita income etc); then he turns out and claims that people were actually far better off before any statistics he deems sufficiently reliable (I guess there must be some other datasets which are reliable, what a pity we can't use it for anything else). So, the statistics that contradict him are dismissed, and he makes up the ones that favor him. Then he shifts to a nirvana fallacy: because getting out of extreme poverty still leaves you in considerable poverty, actually, it's no progress at all! Wait, there's more: poverty is increasing, because if you look at absolute numbers, there's 'we see that the number of people living under this line has increased dramatically since measurements began in 1981, reaching some 4.2 billion people today.' (Let us take a moment to ponder the intellectual honesty of an author who slides so silently from per capita or inequality to absolute numbers.) But don't worry, it really doesn't matter where all those people come from or per capita vs population growth, po-tah-to poh-ta-toe, because most of them are in China, and China, is, he informs you, not a victory for 'Washington-consensus neoliberalism' (because I guess they got all that economic growth by Mao-style collectivization of farms...?), so definitely don't try to use China as an argument for capitalism or anything crazy like that.

ridewinter 6y ago

Like many liberals, I thought it was a fact that US wages had stagnated in the past 40 years. And rich were the only beneficiaries. But in fact the median income has steadily risen: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_Unite... So I ask HN, why has this narrative become so widespread?

rbecker 6y ago
The graphs at https://econographics.wordpress.com/tag/wages/ https://econographics.wordpress.com/tag/wages/ paint a less rosy picture. [1] is I think what is sometimes cited. Which does show growth, but slower than productivity growth. A quick glance at the graph on top of the wiki page you linked suggests it's consistent with it. But [2] is I think most often cited, and shows hardly any growth at all post 1972 or so. I'd also be interested to know why it looks so different from your graph and [1]. Perhaps how 'real income' is defined differs from the adjustments [2] made. [1] https://econographics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/productivity-vs-compensation.jpg https://econographics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/productivi... [2] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
- ridewinter 6y ago
  Perhaps the difference is hourly pay vs. median income. The lowest tier of workers hasn't risen as much as the median income.

SamPatt 6y ago

Folks like Stephen Pinker (Enlightenment Now), Matt Ridley (The Rational Optimist), and Max Roser (Our World in Data) have done a compelling job of presenting data that shows poverty has decreased substantially in recent generations.

RNCTX 6y ago
Steven Pinker writes for a conservative propaganda publication that tries to legitimize phrenology to promote racism as a science.
- DuskStar 6y ago
  That's a nice set of ad hominem attacks there. Do you have anything to say about his arguments, or just your interpretation of unrelated views he might hold? Yes, Pinker has views that others find objectionable. But that has no bearing on whether poverty has increased worldwide. Incidentally, The Guardian lists Enlightenment Now as one of its "Books to Buy in 2018", at least according to the Amazon page [0]. (I mention The Guardian because that's who the article is from) 0: https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570 https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Pr...