4 ms·

>>The huge majority of the world is very poor. The poorer half of the world, almost 4 billion people, live on less than $6.70 a day. $6.70 a day is 3 and a hal

>>The huge majority of the world is very poor. The poorer half of the world, almost 4 billion people, live on less than $6.70 a day. $6.70 a day is 3 and a half times what is considered extreme poverty. I guess the site is focusing on the negative side here, maybe in order to get more donations, and that's fine, but the world wide reduction in extreme poverty in recent decades is worth commenting on. From the NY Times: "In 1990, about 36 percent of the global population — and nearly half of people in developing countries — lived on less than $1.25 a day, the World Bank’s definition of extreme poverty at the time. (It’s now $1.90 a day.) In 2000, United Nations member states pledged to cut extreme poverty worldwide — specifically to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, from 1990 levels, by 2015. Bottom line: The U.N. goal was met. By 2015, the share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty fell to 12 percent from 36 percent in 1990, a steep decline in just two and a half decades. During a single generation, more than a billion people around the world climbed out of extreme poverty, surpassing the goal."

notahacker 5y ago
> $6.70 a day is 3 and a half times what is considered extreme poverty. The question then is, do you think $6.70 a day (US ppp equiv) is actually quite a decent income, or do you think the extreme poverty threshold might be a pretty low bar to have set? (FWIW I think the UN's targets were more closely tied to the need to be low enough to stand a chance of being hit - which is fine - than Max's editorial is linked to what the donors to his data website may or may not already think about poverty.
- Jensson 5y ago
  The bar is set so you can eat healthy food and have a dry place to rest. You wont get prepared meals or expensive wares, but you can afford to eat meat, you can't afford western housing but you can afford a hut. Those two fixes most issues humanity have struggled with throughout history. Of course you can add so much more quality of life things on top of that, but at least then people don't starve or get diseases from sleeping in poor places or being malnourished. That is a poor life, but not necessarily a bad life, if you can eat and sleep well then you can live a good life. Of course in the western world a hut isn't considered proper housing so you can't rent that out, instead people have to pay for expensive housing or become homeless. Same with food etc. That increases the quality of life, sure, but is also the reason you can't live on a few dollars per day here.
  - notahacker 5y ago
    But it's a pretty imperfect approximation of minimal needs, both because it doesn't guarantee a roof and adequate food supply everywhere people live on $2 PPP per day, never mind clean drinking water and education for the kids, and because lots of people at that income definitely do get diseases from poor living conditions and diet (and if they do, even basic generic drugs are at least a couple of days' income). And let's be honest, for the most part we had huts and meat in the Neolithic era - expecting unprecedented accelerations in economic growth to get people back to that level isn't asking very much! And my original point wasn't to say that the threshold was necessarily wrong so much as to contest the idea that there was something unusual about describing people above that very low standard as "very poor". Now, sure, the same PPP-adjustment imperfections creep in and some people on $6 a day actually live recognisably lower middle class lifestyles (albeit without any foreign travel or car) but the whole point of the comparison is lots of the stuff fast food workers in the West can afford - at least if not being hammered by student debts or SF rent - is out of reach for nearly half the world.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      > and because lots of people at that income definitely do get diseases from poor living conditions and diet Many of the poorest countries today have life expectancy as USA in the 1960's, and every country in the world today have much higher life expectancy than USA in 1900. That isn't perfect, but they aren't dying in droves. I think most in the west really underestimate how far you can get on very little. Edit: I think that western labour puts the poverty line way too high. They put it so high that you basically need a population to work full time to maintain it, or rely on other countries poorer population to work even harder and not get paid for it to maintain it. I very much prefer to have a slightly lower standard and work way less than what modern western labour says we should. Of course it ought to be higher than hut and food, but I'm not sure why it can't be on the same level as modern China for example. Poor people in China get educated, live long etc.
      - notahacker 5y ago
        > every country in the world today have much higher life expectancy than USA in 1900. That isn't perfect, but they aren't dying in droves. Sure. That's aligned with my point, since [i] modern medicine exists, although the benefits of not dying from preventable disease are unevenly distributed [ii] I wouldn't consider the average US citizen in 1900 to be anything other than very poor relative to modern living standards. I've spent time in the developing world so I'm well aware you can get a long way with a lot less than developed world minimum wages. I'm also aware that, say, $2.50 PPP (typically about $0.50 in actual local currency) doesn't buy you much of a life even there. And yes, I've also chosen to work less than modern western labour says we should for large parts of my life. But again, if that was taken into account then most of the people in the bottom half of the global income distribution would be worse off, since they're the ones that don't have favourable labour laws, state pensions or the disposable income to take career breaks. I'd agree people on typical Chinese income aren't doing too badly in having material needs met, but the working hours and conditions many have to tolerate [for now] shifts a lot of them back towards "poor"
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  >> do you think $6.70 a day (US ppp equiv) is actually quite a decent income, or do you think the extreme poverty threshold might be a pretty low bar to have set? Well first of all, the point I was making was that enormous progress has been made, and the article has a very negative tone in spite of that. I'm just too old for that type of pessimism. Things do get better. And as far as the bar goes, I don't know that there is a bar. There's a quote by a labor union leader named Samuel Gompers from over a century ago, "We do want more, and when it becomes more we shall still want more". I think that about covers it. The only argument is over how we get there.
  - OnlineGladiator 5y ago
    > I'm just too old for that type of pessimism. Things do get better. I realize this is a huge tangent, but why do you feel this way? Between wealth disparity (admittedly what we're arguing here so obviously it's debatable), global warming, dwindling finite resources, unsustainable debts (I am aware of MMT) - I feel quite the opposite. It feels like we're robbing the future to benefit the now. I realize we could easily go back and forth with lists of "this is why things are worse" and "this is why things are better" but my question is why do you think, as a whole, things are improving?
    - rufus_foreman 5y ago
      >> why do you think, as a whole, things are improving I was born in 1970. I know how I grew up. I know what my parents living standard was and I know what my grandparents living standard was. I have my admittedly failing memory, but I still remember. If you want to believe things aren't improving, I'm not going to stand in your way. It's your world now. You own it. But god damn, there are reasons I would go back and live in 1976 again, but living standard isn't one of them.
      - netizen-936824 5y ago
        Has the living standard of everyone increased equally?
aszen 5y ago
A figure like that is meaningless unless u know how many people are supported on a pay like that and what is their purchasing power and whether they own any land. I know that many people in my home place earn less than 10USD a day and are able to support their families. This is largely because they own land and despite the roughest of times are able to have shelter and food. So it's not extreme poverty.

notahacker 5y ago

> $6.70 a day is 3 and a half times what is considered extreme poverty. The question then is, do you think $6.70 a day (US ppp equiv) is actually quite a decent income, or do you think the extreme poverty threshold might be a pretty low bar to have set? (FWIW I think the UN's targets were more closely tied to the need to be low enough to stand a chance of being hit - which is fine - than Max's editorial is linked to what the donors to his data website may or may not already think about poverty.

Jensson 5y ago
The bar is set so you can eat healthy food and have a dry place to rest. You wont get prepared meals or expensive wares, but you can afford to eat meat, you can't afford western housing but you can afford a hut. Those two fixes most issues humanity have struggled with throughout history. Of course you can add so much more quality of life things on top of that, but at least then people don't starve or get diseases from sleeping in poor places or being malnourished. That is a poor life, but not necessarily a bad life, if you can eat and sleep well then you can live a good life. Of course in the western world a hut isn't considered proper housing so you can't rent that out, instead people have to pay for expensive housing or become homeless. Same with food etc. That increases the quality of life, sure, but is also the reason you can't live on a few dollars per day here.
- notahacker 5y ago
  But it's a pretty imperfect approximation of minimal needs, both because it doesn't guarantee a roof and adequate food supply everywhere people live on $2 PPP per day, never mind clean drinking water and education for the kids, and because lots of people at that income definitely do get diseases from poor living conditions and diet (and if they do, even basic generic drugs are at least a couple of days' income). And let's be honest, for the most part we had huts and meat in the Neolithic era - expecting unprecedented accelerations in economic growth to get people back to that level isn't asking very much! And my original point wasn't to say that the threshold was necessarily wrong so much as to contest the idea that there was something unusual about describing people above that very low standard as "very poor". Now, sure, the same PPP-adjustment imperfections creep in and some people on $6 a day actually live recognisably lower middle class lifestyles (albeit without any foreign travel or car) but the whole point of the comparison is lots of the stuff fast food workers in the West can afford - at least if not being hammered by student debts or SF rent - is out of reach for nearly half the world.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    > and because lots of people at that income definitely do get diseases from poor living conditions and diet Many of the poorest countries today have life expectancy as USA in the 1960's, and every country in the world today have much higher life expectancy than USA in 1900. That isn't perfect, but they aren't dying in droves. I think most in the west really underestimate how far you can get on very little. Edit: I think that western labour puts the poverty line way too high. They put it so high that you basically need a population to work full time to maintain it, or rely on other countries poorer population to work even harder and not get paid for it to maintain it. I very much prefer to have a slightly lower standard and work way less than what modern western labour says we should. Of course it ought to be higher than hut and food, but I'm not sure why it can't be on the same level as modern China for example. Poor people in China get educated, live long etc.
    - notahacker 5y ago
      > every country in the world today have much higher life expectancy than USA in 1900. That isn't perfect, but they aren't dying in droves. Sure. That's aligned with my point, since [i] modern medicine exists, although the benefits of not dying from preventable disease are unevenly distributed [ii] I wouldn't consider the average US citizen in 1900 to be anything other than very poor relative to modern living standards. I've spent time in the developing world so I'm well aware you can get a long way with a lot less than developed world minimum wages. I'm also aware that, say, $2.50 PPP (typically about $0.50 in actual local currency) doesn't buy you much of a life even there. And yes, I've also chosen to work less than modern western labour says we should for large parts of my life. But again, if that was taken into account then most of the people in the bottom half of the global income distribution would be worse off, since they're the ones that don't have favourable labour laws, state pensions or the disposable income to take career breaks. I'd agree people on typical Chinese income aren't doing too badly in having material needs met, but the working hours and conditions many have to tolerate [for now] shifts a lot of them back towards "poor"
rufus_foreman 5y ago
>> do you think $6.70 a day (US ppp equiv) is actually quite a decent income, or do you think the extreme poverty threshold might be a pretty low bar to have set? Well first of all, the point I was making was that enormous progress has been made, and the article has a very negative tone in spite of that. I'm just too old for that type of pessimism. Things do get better. And as far as the bar goes, I don't know that there is a bar. There's a quote by a labor union leader named Samuel Gompers from over a century ago, "We do want more, and when it becomes more we shall still want more". I think that about covers it. The only argument is over how we get there.
- OnlineGladiator 5y ago
  > I'm just too old for that type of pessimism. Things do get better. I realize this is a huge tangent, but why do you feel this way? Between wealth disparity (admittedly what we're arguing here so obviously it's debatable), global warming, dwindling finite resources, unsustainable debts (I am aware of MMT) - I feel quite the opposite. It feels like we're robbing the future to benefit the now. I realize we could easily go back and forth with lists of "this is why things are worse" and "this is why things are better" but my question is why do you think, as a whole, things are improving?
  - rufus_foreman 5y ago
    >> why do you think, as a whole, things are improving I was born in 1970. I know how I grew up. I know what my parents living standard was and I know what my grandparents living standard was. I have my admittedly failing memory, but I still remember. If you want to believe things aren't improving, I'm not going to stand in your way. It's your world now. You own it. But god damn, there are reasons I would go back and live in 1976 again, but living standard isn't one of them.
    - netizen-936824 5y ago
      Has the living standard of everyone increased equally?

aszen 5y ago

A figure like that is meaningless unless u know how many people are supported on a pay like that and what is their purchasing power and whether they own any land. I know that many people in my home place earn less than 10USD a day and are able to support their families. This is largely because they own land and despite the roughest of times are able to have shelter and food. So it's not extreme poverty.