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Chronically overlooked point: “it is wrong to think of the last two centuries as being one where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The poor also got

Chronically overlooked point: “it is wrong to think of the last two centuries as being one where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The poor also got richer.”

TheMblabla 6y ago
You conveniently leave out the part where the wealth of the rich become many magnitudes larger compared to the poor.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It’s not left out, it’s just a different topic. We’ve gotta be able to discuss economic history without pulling in everyone’s political hobbyhorses.
  - TheMblabla 6y ago
    The study of economics and history are inextricably political lol. And how is what I said any more political than the parent?
    - ctdonath 6y ago
      [deleted]
      - TheMblabla 6y ago
        Lol no the parent mentioned it first
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Maybe I’m misreading you, but it doesn’t sound to me like you have any concrete disagreement with the parent comment. It sounds like you’re saying we just shouldn’t talk about the topic of poverty reduction because it will distract attention from your concern about wealth inequality.
    - 987yghj 6y ago
      Only when speaking with the politically religious.
- ctdonath 6y ago
  I don’t see this as a problem, so long as the poor get richer too. The obsession with “wealth inequality” is jealousy when refusing to acknowledge how much better the poor have it than ever. As the article notes, much of what we take for granted as baseline today (vaccines, HVAC, lights, rapid transport, etc) were simply not available to even the extremely rich until recently. I contend many rich are rich precisely because they improved life for so many poor. Earn $1 for improving life for each person on the planet and you reap billion$ - that’s fair & laudable.
  - KozmoNau7 6y ago
    However we are not covering the basic needs of the poor. People are still dying of hunger, exposure and disease. We have more than enough collective wealth and resources to solve those issues, by securing housing, food and healthcare for everyone. Yet we choose not to, because it isn't profitable enough for those who already have plenty. The "not even medieval lords had access to HVAC" argument ignores that the baseline changes as society evolves. And a lot of people in first world countries still don't have access to the things you mentioned. That is an absolute travesty.
    - ctdonath 6y ago
      Pedantic. That not literally everyone lives at a given baseline doesn’t disqualify fact that we’ve raised 90% of everyone from under to over that baseline in a few decades.
      - KozmoNau7 6y ago
        People in the richest nations in the history of humanity are starving, homeless and without access to healthcare. What does that say about those who have more wealth than they could spend in several lifetimes?
  - kiliantics 6y ago
    The rich do not achieve anything on their own. They do so by employing a lot of labour and natural resources. And we know for a fact that the rich have disproportionate influence on regulation of labour practices and resources, skewing it drastically in their favour. If we all worked together to make the world better, why should only a few benefit so much?
- faceplanted 6y ago
  Yeah, there's a reason we've been talking about inequality and not just pure wealth for a century.
  - scatters 6y ago
    Because you'd be happy for the poor to get poorer if it meant the rich going from stupendously to merely ridiculously wealthy?
    - jjeaff 6y ago
      I think there is something to be said for the danger of losing or stagnating the progress of the poor and middle class if the wealthy become so rich and powerful that we effectively revert to a fuedal system. The worsening social mobility measurements are one reason to be concerned.
    - faceplanted 6y ago
      No, because the _actual reality_ is that reducing inequality makes the rich, slightly less so, and the poor significantly safer and healthier. If you tell people you want to reduce inequality we tend to correctly assume the intent is to make the poor better off, we're not AI searching for the most absolutely effective solution to reduce inequality to 0 by killing everyone or something.
- 987yghj 6y ago
  Well that's the baseline assertion that he was replying to.
- dahfizz 6y ago
  "the poor get richer and the rich get richer, faster" is very different from "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer"
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    No. Unsurprisingly, essential goods like food and housing follow the market. If the poor get richer and housing gets more expensive slightly faster, the poor will be homeless in 30 years.
    - dahfizz 6y ago
      All data discussed here is inflation adjusted. Even after price increases, the poor are getting richer.
    - akiselev 6y ago
      You're completely missing the point. 200 years ago the majority of people were illiterate and uneducated, had no electricity or indoor plumbing, no telecommunications, food insecurity tied to local conditions, and on and on. Housing was a hovel or a few square meters in a shared dorm or family house. In much of the world, freezing to death and having enough food to survive the winter was an annual concern. Today, the majority are literate and at least somewhat educated, have electricity and usually indoor plumbing, have telecommunications that communicate with at least half the world instantly, and today food insecurity mostly depends on market manipulation and international shenanigans rather than acts of god. Except for remote tribes that aren't integrated into modern society, across the world the poor are much better off than they were 200 years ago.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar. This sort of boilerplate just leads to predictable, boring, and nasty discussion. It's also sensational and gets lots of upvotes, which fans the flames. It's a failure mode for large internet forums, which simply can't do anything interesting with this material. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ctdonath 6y ago
  The quote is an important conclusion of the article. Discussing facts which challenge popular notions should not be cancelled.
  - dang 6y ago
    It's a cliché of this ideological topic, and therefore flamebait, guaranteed to provoke a shallow, repetitive argument. That's what we're asking people not to get into here. Shallow, repetitive arguments are boring. If you'd like to "challenge popular notions" in some more interesting way, that of course is fine.
datavirtue 6y ago
Poverty is relative. Compared to billionaires we all live in poverty. True poverty is not being able to attain food or shelter. Indeed many who are considered fabulously wealthy by neolithic standards are not able to find shelter or are barred from it by society (getting run off by police from public areas, national parks etc). Define poverty as something than just income from wages. Can you "fix" poverty? Compared to my living standards I know people who I consider living in poverty but to them it is just life and they are used to government help. While a noble or laudable effort, giving them money holds them back. In general, welfare benefits cement or create a lower class. I think our view of poverty is really just class guilt and fear.

Chronically overlooked point: “it is wrong to think of the last two centuries as being one where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The poor also got richer.”

TheMblabla 6y ago

You conveniently leave out the part where the wealth of the rich become many magnitudes larger compared to the poor.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
It’s not left out, it’s just a different topic. We’ve gotta be able to discuss economic history without pulling in everyone’s political hobbyhorses.
- TheMblabla 6y ago
  The study of economics and history are inextricably political lol. And how is what I said any more political than the parent?
  - ctdonath 6y ago
    [deleted]
    - TheMblabla 6y ago
      Lol no the parent mentioned it first
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Maybe I’m misreading you, but it doesn’t sound to me like you have any concrete disagreement with the parent comment. It sounds like you’re saying we just shouldn’t talk about the topic of poverty reduction because it will distract attention from your concern about wealth inequality.
  - 987yghj 6y ago
    Only when speaking with the politically religious.
ctdonath 6y ago
I don’t see this as a problem, so long as the poor get richer too. The obsession with “wealth inequality” is jealousy when refusing to acknowledge how much better the poor have it than ever. As the article notes, much of what we take for granted as baseline today (vaccines, HVAC, lights, rapid transport, etc) were simply not available to even the extremely rich until recently. I contend many rich are rich precisely because they improved life for so many poor. Earn $1 for improving life for each person on the planet and you reap billion$ - that’s fair & laudable.
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  However we are not covering the basic needs of the poor. People are still dying of hunger, exposure and disease. We have more than enough collective wealth and resources to solve those issues, by securing housing, food and healthcare for everyone. Yet we choose not to, because it isn't profitable enough for those who already have plenty. The "not even medieval lords had access to HVAC" argument ignores that the baseline changes as society evolves. And a lot of people in first world countries still don't have access to the things you mentioned. That is an absolute travesty.
  - ctdonath 6y ago
    Pedantic. That not literally everyone lives at a given baseline doesn’t disqualify fact that we’ve raised 90% of everyone from under to over that baseline in a few decades.
    - KozmoNau7 6y ago
      People in the richest nations in the history of humanity are starving, homeless and without access to healthcare. What does that say about those who have more wealth than they could spend in several lifetimes?
- kiliantics 6y ago
  The rich do not achieve anything on their own. They do so by employing a lot of labour and natural resources. And we know for a fact that the rich have disproportionate influence on regulation of labour practices and resources, skewing it drastically in their favour. If we all worked together to make the world better, why should only a few benefit so much?
faceplanted 6y ago
Yeah, there's a reason we've been talking about inequality and not just pure wealth for a century.
- scatters 6y ago
  Because you'd be happy for the poor to get poorer if it meant the rich going from stupendously to merely ridiculously wealthy?
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    I think there is something to be said for the danger of losing or stagnating the progress of the poor and middle class if the wealthy become so rich and powerful that we effectively revert to a fuedal system. The worsening social mobility measurements are one reason to be concerned.
  - faceplanted 6y ago
    No, because the _actual reality_ is that reducing inequality makes the rich, slightly less so, and the poor significantly safer and healthier. If you tell people you want to reduce inequality we tend to correctly assume the intent is to make the poor better off, we're not AI searching for the most absolutely effective solution to reduce inequality to 0 by killing everyone or something.
987yghj 6y ago
Well that's the baseline assertion that he was replying to.
dahfizz 6y ago
"the poor get richer and the rich get richer, faster" is very different from "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer"
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  No. Unsurprisingly, essential goods like food and housing follow the market. If the poor get richer and housing gets more expensive slightly faster, the poor will be homeless in 30 years.
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    All data discussed here is inflation adjusted. Even after price increases, the poor are getting richer.
  - akiselev 6y ago
    You're completely missing the point. 200 years ago the majority of people were illiterate and uneducated, had no electricity or indoor plumbing, no telecommunications, food insecurity tied to local conditions, and on and on. Housing was a hovel or a few square meters in a shared dorm or family house. In much of the world, freezing to death and having enough food to survive the winter was an annual concern. Today, the majority are literate and at least somewhat educated, have electricity and usually indoor plumbing, have telecommunications that communicate with at least half the world instantly, and today food insecurity mostly depends on market manipulation and international shenanigans rather than acts of god. Except for remote tribes that aren't integrated into modern society, across the world the poor are much better off than they were 200 years ago.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dang 6y ago

Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar. This sort of boilerplate just leads to predictable, boring, and nasty discussion. It's also sensational and gets lots of upvotes, which fans the flames. It's a failure mode for large internet forums, which simply can't do anything interesting with this material. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ctdonath 6y ago
The quote is an important conclusion of the article. Discussing facts which challenge popular notions should not be cancelled.
- dang 6y ago
  It's a cliché of this ideological topic, and therefore flamebait, guaranteed to provoke a shallow, repetitive argument. That's what we're asking people not to get into here. Shallow, repetitive arguments are boring. If you'd like to "challenge popular notions" in some more interesting way, that of course is fine.

datavirtue 6y ago

Poverty is relative. Compared to billionaires we all live in poverty. True poverty is not being able to attain food or shelter. Indeed many who are considered fabulously wealthy by neolithic standards are not able to find shelter or are barred from it by society (getting run off by police from public areas, national parks etc). Define poverty as something than just income from wages. Can you "fix" poverty? Compared to my living standards I know people who I consider living in poverty but to them it is just life and they are used to government help. While a noble or laudable effort, giving them money holds them back. In general, welfare benefits cement or create a lower class. I think our view of poverty is really just class guilt and fear.