5 ms·

I'm not sure of your point, but I think I disagree. The previous comment was about going from poverty to middle class. Why won't this be possible in the future?

rowanG077 4y ago
If India follows the west then it won't be possible for 2 people with education to lift a family out of poverty to middle class. In my country you basically require 2 full-time wages to be able to support a 3 person family. You wouldn't be able to buy an apartment and car for your family. I think that is the point they were making.
- gravitywave 4y ago
  That's because of idiotic zoning laws that make it nearly impossible to build multi family properties, high density residential, limit the height of skyscrapers and basically forced the entire nation to be a damn suburban hell hole, not because of a land shortage. India hopefully won't make the same idiotic mistakes the NIMBY soccer mom boomers did.
- jonas21 4y ago
  I don't know what western country you live in, but I'm guessing you have a very different definition of poverty than the article is using. The UN has a list of criteria such as: - Lacking access to electricity - Lacking access to drinking water within a 30 minute round-trip walk - Lacking access to sanitation facilities - No household members have completed at least 6 years of schooling - Any child in the household has stunted growth due to malnutrition You need at least a third of the criteria to be true in order for a household to be considered in poverty. It's likely that practically no one in your country meets this definition.
  - ninjanomnom 4y ago
    During my childhood I fulfilled the first three for about four years or so and knew many others in similar situations. This was in the US, any country with significant undeveloped land is going to have areas that have people who fulfill the first three pretty easily.
    - jonas21 4y ago
      Just out of curiosity, how far did you have to walk to fetch water, what was the source, how much did you carry back at a time, and how often did you do this? Sorry for so many questions, but I always think of the U.S. as such a developed country that it's interesting to hear counterexamples.
      - ninjanomnom 4y ago
        Every year I lived in a different location but the shortest was a bit more than half an hour trip by bike and I could only safely manage a single gallon. Usually though we'd get water when we hitchhiked into town as we could get more at once. Both of these sources came from water resupply points for trucks but no on cared if you filled a few gallon containers. Rain water was also usable in many cases but we avoided drinking it. We went out maybe once a week or so?
    - tnel77 4y ago
      I’m not calling you a liar, but I am heavily skeptical. Where and when did this occur within the continental United States?
      - ninjanomnom 4y ago
        I never said continental, this was on the Big Island in Hawaii. Though I would be shocked if there weren't similar places in the large patches of undeveloped land in the west side of the US.
- Matticus_Rex 4y ago
  There are two types of poverty being talked about here. In the United States (where it is not only possible, but common for two people with education to lift a family out of poverty into the middle class), most people below the poverty have a drastically superior standard of living to anyone below the poverty line in India. The type of "poor" where two people are working full time jobs in the US would not be considered poor in India.
Zircom 4y ago
Right now India is in a transition period and wages for these kinds of jobs are keeping pace with gains in productivity and that's how you're seeing so many lifting themselves are their families out of poverty. However, if history is anything to go by that will stop pretty soon as the hyper upper class solidifies their hold on wealth, appreciating assets, and means of production, and will start to keep larger and larger shares of profit while workers' wages stagnate, and then inflation will start to decrease the purchasing power of those stagnating wages, and the middle class will start to shrink and disappear as it is in America and other "free market" capitalist countries.
- Xeoncross 4y ago
  I'm not sure what the "free market" has to do with it. Capitalism, communism, feudalism, socialism, etc.. always end with the majority of money and power concentrated with the few. It's just human behavior to be selfish.
  - soledades 4y ago
    I agree with the first part of your point, but this in particular is an emergent phenomena that only happens with large-scale civilizations. So I think some kind of sociological argument makes more sense (I don't know what that would be though).
    - Zircom 4y ago
      I've read that there is a certain number of people that we're basically optimized to coexist within a societal structure, and modern civilization passed that a long time ago, and human beings in general just aren't capable of empathy on the scale of modern civilization. And I mean, it makes sense when you think about it. On some abstract level you have to know that even meagre standards of living in western society requires someone, somewhere to be suffering to provide it. $1 for a pound of bananas shipped from across the world before they even have a hint of yellow on them? That shit don't come without a cost, and our $1 sure as hell aint paying it. But we all just kind of don't think those people just to get through the day, because dwelling on the extent of suffering and horror we've wrought upon our fellow man in pursuit of whatever fresh hell the guys over at Oreo have managed to shape into the general form of a cookie would leave us a broken shell of a person and unable to show up for our next shift at the Big Mac factory.

rowanG077 4y ago

If India follows the west then it won't be possible for 2 people with education to lift a family out of poverty to middle class. In my country you basically require 2 full-time wages to be able to support a 3 person family. You wouldn't be able to buy an apartment and car for your family. I think that is the point they were making.

gravitywave 4y ago
That's because of idiotic zoning laws that make it nearly impossible to build multi family properties, high density residential, limit the height of skyscrapers and basically forced the entire nation to be a damn suburban hell hole, not because of a land shortage. India hopefully won't make the same idiotic mistakes the NIMBY soccer mom boomers did.
jonas21 4y ago
I don't know what western country you live in, but I'm guessing you have a very different definition of poverty than the article is using. The UN has a list of criteria such as: - Lacking access to electricity - Lacking access to drinking water within a 30 minute round-trip walk - Lacking access to sanitation facilities - No household members have completed at least 6 years of schooling - Any child in the household has stunted growth due to malnutrition You need at least a third of the criteria to be true in order for a household to be considered in poverty. It's likely that practically no one in your country meets this definition.
- ninjanomnom 4y ago
  During my childhood I fulfilled the first three for about four years or so and knew many others in similar situations. This was in the US, any country with significant undeveloped land is going to have areas that have people who fulfill the first three pretty easily.
  - jonas21 4y ago
    Just out of curiosity, how far did you have to walk to fetch water, what was the source, how much did you carry back at a time, and how often did you do this? Sorry for so many questions, but I always think of the U.S. as such a developed country that it's interesting to hear counterexamples.
    - ninjanomnom 4y ago
      Every year I lived in a different location but the shortest was a bit more than half an hour trip by bike and I could only safely manage a single gallon. Usually though we'd get water when we hitchhiked into town as we could get more at once. Both of these sources came from water resupply points for trucks but no on cared if you filled a few gallon containers. Rain water was also usable in many cases but we avoided drinking it. We went out maybe once a week or so?
  - tnel77 4y ago
    I’m not calling you a liar, but I am heavily skeptical. Where and when did this occur within the continental United States?
    - ninjanomnom 4y ago
      I never said continental, this was on the Big Island in Hawaii. Though I would be shocked if there weren't similar places in the large patches of undeveloped land in the west side of the US.
Matticus_Rex 4y ago
There are two types of poverty being talked about here. In the United States (where it is not only possible, but common for two people with education to lift a family out of poverty into the middle class), most people below the poverty have a drastically superior standard of living to anyone below the poverty line in India. The type of "poor" where two people are working full time jobs in the US would not be considered poor in India.

Zircom 4y ago

Right now India is in a transition period and wages for these kinds of jobs are keeping pace with gains in productivity and that's how you're seeing so many lifting themselves are their families out of poverty. However, if history is anything to go by that will stop pretty soon as the hyper upper class solidifies their hold on wealth, appreciating assets, and means of production, and will start to keep larger and larger shares of profit while workers' wages stagnate, and then inflation will start to decrease the purchasing power of those stagnating wages, and the middle class will start to shrink and disappear as it is in America and other "free market" capitalist countries.

Xeoncross 4y ago
I'm not sure what the "free market" has to do with it. Capitalism, communism, feudalism, socialism, etc.. always end with the majority of money and power concentrated with the few. It's just human behavior to be selfish.
- soledades 4y ago
  I agree with the first part of your point, but this in particular is an emergent phenomena that only happens with large-scale civilizations. So I think some kind of sociological argument makes more sense (I don't know what that would be though).
  - Zircom 4y ago
    I've read that there is a certain number of people that we're basically optimized to coexist within a societal structure, and modern civilization passed that a long time ago, and human beings in general just aren't capable of empathy on the scale of modern civilization. And I mean, it makes sense when you think about it. On some abstract level you have to know that even meagre standards of living in western society requires someone, somewhere to be suffering to provide it. $1 for a pound of bananas shipped from across the world before they even have a hint of yellow on them? That shit don't come without a cost, and our $1 sure as hell aint paying it. But we all just kind of don't think those people just to get through the day, because dwelling on the extent of suffering and horror we've wrought upon our fellow man in pursuit of whatever fresh hell the guys over at Oreo have managed to shape into the general form of a cookie would leave us a broken shell of a person and unable to show up for our next shift at the Big Mac factory.