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Yeah, they do? And why is it silly to remember that you are in the top percentage points of wealth, globally? Seems like you are suggesting we should ignore the

Yeah, they do? And why is it silly to remember that you are in the top percentage points of wealth, globally? Seems like you are suggesting we should ignore the fact that most humans still live in poverty?

simonh 4y ago
That view of the world is considerably out of date. Economic development in China and SE Asia generally has transformed global demographics. More than half the world's population are now middle class. The number in poverty fell from 35% in 1990 to 10.7% in 2013, again largely (but by no means solely) due to China. https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/foresight/topic/growing-consumerism/more-developments-relevant-growing-consumerism_en#:~:text=The%20size%20of%20the%20global,class%20population%20will%20be%20Asians https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/foresight/topic/growin....
- turtledove 4y ago
  That's the percentage of people living off $2 a day. I'm glad to see that number decreasing, but I think most Americans are making many multiples of that. The median household income here is $70k. Let's say you make half that, and you can sometimes fly in a plane. $35k, 3 person family. You are still in the top 20th percentile globally (while considered quite poor in the States). Does being in the top 20% make you wealthy or elite? I dunno. If you are making median income here you are probably in the top ten percent, globally. Does that make you elite or wealthy? It's subjective. I don't have a specific number. But the point still stands that you are almost to the top globally even if you are relatively poor in the States.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - simonh 4y ago
    >That's the percentage of people living off $2 a day. I'm glad to see that number decreasing, but I think most Americans are making many multiples of that. The median household income here is $70k. Sure, we have a long way to go to remediate global inequality, but huge strides have been made within my lifetime. Ive seen this myself in China, since my wife is Chinese. She grew up in a house her father, a factory worker, built from bricks. Ive seen it. She has a photo of herself as a girl making some of the tiles for the floor. She's now a senior nurse here in the UK, her sister is a departmental manager for a bank in China. I first visited her hometown Hohhot in 2001 and have seen it grow from empty streets because barely anyone could afford cars, to constant traffic jams. I used to count the cranes on construction sites on the way from the airport each visit, it was usually somewhere around 30. But anyway, for now a certain degree of inequality is an unfortunate fact of life, but it's not like anyone is imposing that from on high. Grinding poverty has been the common state of humanity for thousands of years, it's not like the lives of the ancestors of the remaining 11% in poverty were dramatically better a hundred years ago, or a thousand. It's only with globalised trade, technological diffusion, and investment powered economic development that a majority of humanity have a chance to achieve a stable and comfortable quality of life.

simonh 4y ago

That view of the world is considerably out of date. Economic development in China and SE Asia generally has transformed global demographics. More than half the world's population are now middle class. The number in poverty fell from 35% in 1990 to 10.7% in 2013, again largely (but by no means solely) due to China. https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/foresight/topic/growing-consumerism/more-developments-relevant-growing-consumerism_en#:~:text=The%20size%20of%20the%20global,class%20population%20will%20be%20Asians https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/foresight/topic/growin....

turtledove 4y ago
That's the percentage of people living off $2 a day. I'm glad to see that number decreasing, but I think most Americans are making many multiples of that. The median household income here is $70k. Let's say you make half that, and you can sometimes fly in a plane. $35k, 3 person family. You are still in the top 20th percentile globally (while considered quite poor in the States). Does being in the top 20% make you wealthy or elite? I dunno. If you are making median income here you are probably in the top ten percent, globally. Does that make you elite or wealthy? It's subjective. I don't have a specific number. But the point still stands that you are almost to the top globally even if you are relatively poor in the States.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- simonh 4y ago
  >That's the percentage of people living off $2 a day. I'm glad to see that number decreasing, but I think most Americans are making many multiples of that. The median household income here is $70k. Sure, we have a long way to go to remediate global inequality, but huge strides have been made within my lifetime. Ive seen this myself in China, since my wife is Chinese. She grew up in a house her father, a factory worker, built from bricks. Ive seen it. She has a photo of herself as a girl making some of the tiles for the floor. She's now a senior nurse here in the UK, her sister is a departmental manager for a bank in China. I first visited her hometown Hohhot in 2001 and have seen it grow from empty streets because barely anyone could afford cars, to constant traffic jams. I used to count the cranes on construction sites on the way from the airport each visit, it was usually somewhere around 30. But anyway, for now a certain degree of inequality is an unfortunate fact of life, but it's not like anyone is imposing that from on high. Grinding poverty has been the common state of humanity for thousands of years, it's not like the lives of the ancestors of the remaining 11% in poverty were dramatically better a hundred years ago, or a thousand. It's only with globalised trade, technological diffusion, and investment powered economic development that a majority of humanity have a chance to achieve a stable and comfortable quality of life.