11 ms·
Extreme poverty: How far have we come, and how far do we still have to go?
- psiops 3y agoI'm getting the feeling our planet can't really handle a lot more of this "economic growth". At least not the way we've been doing it for the last 200 years.
- mikrl 3y agoThe planet will be fine, it survived asteroids and much worse. Even if everyone starts lobbing nuclear weapons at each other, cockroaches and many plants will persevere among the ruins, the untended fields, the forests and hills. Humanity though? Hoo boy, are we really in for it.
- avgcorrection 3y agoAre you addressing this comment to the cockroaches? If not then this obtuseness is not particularly witty.
- RobotToaster 3y agoOn the internet, nobody knows you're a cockroach.
- bpiche 3y agoOr a dog :)
- pelagicAustral 3y agoI know this is besides the point, but I've always been so happy that there are no cockroaches where I live... In fact so happy that I write comments like this, just so people know.
- mrpopo 3y agoCockroaches are not a welcome addition into your house's ecosystem, but they are still very useful in the global ecosystem, same as mosquitoes, etc. There are waste products that only cockroaches digest, there are plants that only mosquitoes pollinate, etc.
- Brusco_RF 3y agoDo you live in Antarctica?
- pelagicAustral 3y agoVery close indeed, about an hour away.
- mikrl 3y agoSoon! Soon the twolegs will irradiate everything and our time will come! chitters maniacally
- mikrl 3y agoThe parent was confusing ‘the planet’ with ‘humanity’ which is (IMO) more egregiously obtuse.
- avgcorrection 3y agoNo one is confusing the two because “saving the planet” is always meant as in “saving the planet as a hospitable environment for humans and/or animals” (a bit of a mouthful, no?). Literally no one cares about the rock called the Earth for its own sake. You might as well go and argue that some particular person from Africa can't be called “black” because his skin pigmentation is brown. That's equally productive.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago> You might as well go and argue that some particular person from Africa can't be called “black” because his skin pigmentation is brown. What if the person from Africa has brown skin pigmentation and are descendants of people from India? I had a friend in college like that who fit those qualities, but I am pretty sure he would experience backlash if he referred to himself as a black person (in the US).
- avgcorrection 3y ago... You can assume that I meant a native African person. ;)
- eckmLJE 3y agoI disagree. There are plenty of folks who would rather see the natural world preserved for its own sake, even at the expense of human growth and survival. And plenty of folks dismissing environmentalists as treehuggers who love nature more than humanity, who don't get that preserving the natural world is a prerequisite to human survival. I think the distinction is important.
- avgcorrection 3y ago> There are plenty of folks who would rather see the natural world preserved for its own sake, even at the expense of human growth and survival. Because of what...geology? The Earth itself? (No.) You might have missed the “and/or animals” part. My comment already addresses those who are more concerned (as in preoccupied) with non-human life. But I guess I should have mentioned plants as well. Mea fucking culpa.
- Aunche 3y agoHumans are the cockroaches of large mammals. We're tropical apes that managed to survive in the some of the coldest places without anything that resembles modern technology.
- dimitrios1 3y agoIn the past you had reckless manufacturing and extracting -- chemical spills and dumping, burning of an incredible amount of coal, deforestation, etc. But it was tapered by fewer people overall with disposable income, and the lack of throwaway culture and waste, less plastic, etc. Now we have more efficient processes with less waste, we have renewable sources of forestation, renewable energy sources, less coal, less chemical spills and dumping, but every body can afford and have the things that were once considered luxuries. Everyone has an HVAC now. Everyone purchases tons upon tons of little plastic pieces of shit and throws them in the trash. If you have a blueberry with a little bit of mold on it, now you throw away the pack. You have to fight for the right to repair your cheap plastic shit with silicon parts in it. You are expected to replace your plastic shit every 1-2 years with more plastic shit. We drink water and soda out of plastic bottles in absurd amounts. We use more electricity than ever before. There has to be a balance somewhere. We have to have a culture shift at some point.
- wahnfrieden 3y agoInteresting that you focus on the consumer side over the production side to blame. And what drives culture shifts?
- slothtrop 3y agoConsumers respond to incentives. I wouldn't "blame" them either, but I would expect consumer behavior to adjust to taxes or revoking subsidies for certain goods. If it were down to wagging a finger, yeah, that's for the birds. The only thing that serves is feeding the clickbait money machine inflaming a culture war. We already know that if some alternatives are on the market (electric vehicles, plant-based boxed crap), people will buy them. A large percentage of consumers buys plant-based products despite not being vegan or caring to be.
- wahnfrieden 3y agoConsumer purchasing shifting toward more correct purchases isn’t a solution at all. Your examples are essentially luxury market items that don’t scale to humanity with questionable net impact
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- elil17 3y agoI do think there are ways some economies could grow which would be good for both people and the planet. For example, if agricultural productivity in the worlds poorest countries increased a lot (for example, through improved availability of fertilizer or modern seeds), it could serve to reduce deforestation in those regions by reducing the demand for more farmland. That sort of economic growth would help lift people out of extreme poverty.
- pif 3y ago> it could serve to reduce deforestation in those regions by reducing the demand for more farmland Only if the food surplus gets used to improve the life of people, without increasing population size!
- elil17 3y agoPopulation size typically levels off as regions get wealthier - that’s a pretty well documented phenomenon as I understand it.
- moritzwarhier 3y agoThis would indeed help raise the living standards of people who are currently starving, which I would support. But there is another very well documented phenomenon (citing your answer to a sibling comment): people's consumption of natural resources, emission of pollutants and overall ecological footprint drastically increases with rising wealth. This more than makes up for any leveling in population growth. And I want to make clear that I am not against more wealth for people who are starving. Because another topic is that wealth is not evenly distributed, and mostly fuels excesses and further environmental destruction when inequality is high. Many people cite statistics claiming that the per-capita emissions (just an exemplary quantity, there's more to the environment than CO2 emissions of course) would be falling in rich western countries over the last years or even decades. AFAIK, even for "model countries" with low population density and comparatively good environmental legislation, such as Denmark, these numbers are based on basically lying with statistics. Prime example being the outsourcing of all environmental damage while keeping the gains in the country. Introductory reading (that's where I took the Denmark example from): https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/ https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/
- slothtrop 3y agoWhy the quotation marks? The good news is that technological innovation is reeling back emissions and land encroachment, the bad is that growth in developing countries is outpacing innovation such that the demand for fossil fuels is still in an upward trajectory. Quality of life is improving, at a cost. East Asia won't grow this fast forever, but we're in a position of requiring some imminent intervention. I expect to see more policy moves in the near future as nuclear and viable carbon-capture won't come quickly enough, and rich people don't want shit weather and paying out billions in damages every year either. Slowing down won't happen because we can't ask other countries not to improve their quality of life, and even if we did, they wouldn't listen. That's where the extra demand is coming from. Domestically you could put a small dent by disincentivizing purchases of SUVs or whatever.
- xwdv 3y agoThe problem is getting people to settle for less. We have an entire generation that expected to own single family homes, travel frequently, have new outfits every season, new car ever few years and live lavish lifestyles they see in the media. How do we put the genie back in the bottle and get people to accept a smaller, maybe generational home? And maybe only travel out of the country a handful of times in their life? And buy a good pair of clothes and shoes and make it last for a decade? Maybe forgo owning a car all their life? How do you get entitled people to live more humbly putting less pressure for economic growth at all costs?
- bequanna 3y agoNo. This kind of zero sum thinking is rightfully rejected by most in the US. We don’t need to live with less, we just need to do a better job. More efficiency, lower footprint. We need to do better, not do less.
- xwdv 3y agoThis comment exactly what I’m talking about. Eventually someone will have to live with less. The lifestyle I described above is not too far from what life was like over a hundred years ago. There is no efficient way out of the problem. Any efficiency gains will be used to pursue even more growth, not simply sustain what we have now. Accept less.
- Ekaros 3y agoLiving with less is exactly being more efficient. Wasting less, replacing stuff less often is using real goods more efficiently.
- mym1990 3y agoCan you expand on the 'do a better job' part? Is that a 'we need to do a better job driving big trucks around for pointless reasons' or 'do a better job of flying jets around more efficiently'? It's very obvious that you think everyone around you is an idiot, so can you please expand on your ideas for those of us too dim to understand?
- 3y ago
- bequanna 3y agoThis is the same nonsense as the “population bomb” doomerism of the 60s. Unless we nuke ourselves into oblivion, humanity will preserve and thrive. Today is the greatest time in the history of our species to be alive.
- thatwasunusual 3y ago> Unless we nuke ourselves into oblivion [...] Don't jinx it, please.
- mym1990 3y agoNot a great time for other species though. Also, just because today is good, doesn't mean tomorrow will be. You could be singing your favorite song rolling through an intersection on a beautiful day, plenty can still go wrong. Some caution didn't hurt anyone.
- bequanna 3y agoCaution isn’t the same as spreading unfounded panic.
- Ekaros 3y agoAnd we cannot even nuke ourselves to oblivion. It simply just won't happen unless we really really really work at it. Our civilisations maybe, but not everyone.
- mym1990 3y agoThe planet should be able to handle a lot more economic growth if gone about a different way, and if there is a more even distribution of wealth(I am not against billionaires per se but a lot can be done for the lower 50%). If 250 years after the industrial revolution humans have no other way to develop quickly other than pumping coal, whats the point of innovation?
- modo_mario 3y agoDo you think the planet can 'handle' the current state without growth? (If someone gives the millionth "the planet will be fine, humanity...." comment they should seriously reconsider their online presence) I feel like we 're nowhere close to getting our current resource extraction and pollution to anything resembling sustainable rate on many fronts and it's constantly growing. Cutting let's say the average americans co2 output 8fold for example whilst maintaining harder to ditch outputs such as haber-bosh and having economic growth at the same time seems far off.
- mym1990 3y agoYour first statement makes no sense in regards to what I said. I particularly said economic growth would be fine if it was gone about in sustainable ways. What does 'current state without growth mean'? The current state has growth, so if you're proposing a state of no growth, it would be a completely different situation. If you interpreted my comment as saying 'the planet is fine, humanity is fine', I would re-read it a few times, think about it for 5 minutes, and then make a comment. Capitalism itself cannot thrive when production/consumption slows down, even in terms of GDP, a -2% growth or worse is considered catastrophic to the economy. So no, I don't think we are going down a good path if the only way to stay afloat is to keep pumping out more crap.
- modo_mario 3y agoI find that given the current economy is already so ridiculously far off from sustainable that there's no realistic way we can keep pumping out more crap and at the same time be sustainable.
- nottorp 3y agoWhat's the point of the article if it's talking about absolute values instead of purchasing power adjusted values? And tbh what's the point of the poverty definitions, for the same reason?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Shrezzing 3y agoThe article does take purchasing power into account for geographical differences, and inflation into account for temporal differences. All prices are normalised into an International Dollar across space and time, so that $30 in Cape Town in 1970 would still buy you $30 worth of goods in the USA in 2023. It's outlined in the section[1] below the first graph, and the rationale for those methodologies is also outlined in that section. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief#differences-in-purchasing-power-and-inflation-are-taken-into-account https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief#differen...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jefftk 3y agoI think they are using PPP-adjusted values? If you click through to their definition (https://ourworldindata.org/higher-poverty-global-line https://ourworldindata.org/higher-poverty-global-line) they say that incomes are expressed in "international dollars" and "One international dollar has the same purchasing power as one US dollar in the US".
- nottorp 3y agoVery intuitive!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hliyan 3y agoShouldn't we be looking at the percentage of people who suffer from food insecurity and lack of access to permanent housing to begin with? How far a dollar stretches, changes over space and time.
- hgsgm 3y agoI know it's been extremely suspicious of this extreme poverty metric, because anyone who earns a wage but can't afford sufficient food and shelter is "non-extreme poverty" , while subsistence farming is "extreme poverty". It seems to play into the global capitalist scheme of luring people into debt servitude with a false promise of high wages in a distant city / country.
- Aunche 3y agoYou think researchers who dedicate their lives to measuring extreme poverty don't even account for a problem that you instantly thought about? > In all these statistics, the researchers are not only taking people’s monetary income into account, but also their non-monetary income and home production. One reason why this is important is because many poor people are small-scale farmers who produce their own food.
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoSeems about par for the brain trust here
- bllguo 3y agookay. pray tell how a definition of poverty that claims 93% of china, 94% of mexico, 40% of spain, etc. is poor is useful. we can see the damn data in front of us, so you can feign outrage all you want - they clearly did not account for the problem. it has nothing to do with competence. we can and have defined per-country poverty lines, which these people obviously know. this is a malicious effort to present a twisted narrative of western superiority.
- verteu 3y ago
- simonh 3y agoIn rich countries poverty is a moving target. Here in the UK the poverty rate now is about the same as it was in the 1980s, but the average purchasing power of people in poverty has doubled. That's about the same as it has for average earners. This is because poverty is defined as earning 60% below the median income. Changes in the poverty statistics here are about changes in wealth distribution, not material circumstances. So not only does this make it very hard to compare poverty statistics between very different economies, it makes it very difficult to compare it historically. Ive no problem tracking inequality, and it's a legitimate way to view fairness in a society, but it's highly misleading when applied blindly to people in fundamentally different societies and economies with totally different costs of living and internal wealth distributions. Yes, I know the $30 was adjusted for purchasing power between rich and poor countries, but it's not adjusted for purchasing power over time, so it can't track actual changes in material circumstances. That's why the extreme poverty stats are more relevant for change over time.
- bradley13 3y agoDespite good intentions, extreme poverty cannot easily be solved from outside a country. Looking at some of the worst countries: When they receive aid, as often as not that aid is sold off, and the proceeds land in the pockets of corrupt politicians. Or it is destroyed in continuous civil war. Or it puts local farmers out of business, because they cannot compete with "free". Etc, etc. Solutions must come from within the countries, and those solutions must involve cultural change: reduced tribal hatreds, fewer civil wars, less corruption, and so forth. Without such change, a lot of external aid just worsens the problems it is supposed to solve.
- 4d66ba06 3y agoGive Directly has an interesting approach, direct cash transfers. Seem to have studies that show it helps.
- javajosh 3y agoLook at Haiti. The government has failed, violent gangs rule the streets. And yet the people are against foreign intervention. Those groups that do go in are attacked their people kidnapped for ransom and so on. It will be an interesting test of your theory since they seem to be saying: you're right. You can't fix our problems. We need to fix it ourselves. I don't envy the ordinary everyday Haitians who are going to suffer so much. But hopefully they'll have something meaningful and lasting because it will come from them.
- Lord-Jobo 3y agoHaiti has an extremely long history, continuing to this very day, of being completely and totally railed by the 'First World'. This is a very long, comedic, and yes fairly politically biased, overview of that history (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saljZXoexhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saljZXoexhc) TLDR; Haiti is a victim of the first world's evil. TLDRBIWRS(but i will read some); the second that Haiti won their independence and grew a black democracy (the first nation to ban slavery), the empires of the world turned them into a pariah and destroyed them systematically through means such as being literally held at gunpoint by Charles X to join a massive and incredibly predatory loan. One that took 130 years to pay off(1825-1947!!!). They were economically isolated by the Thomas Jefferson immediately. The US financial vice in 1910, in response to German investment, provoked a dictatorship in Haiti, then the US occupied. Eventually FDR pulled out, but the financial vice stayed in place until 1947, post revolution. That chaos churned for 20 years, and JFK pulled all aid in 1961. Haiti was forced into another ridiculous 100 year contract, this time by U.S. Dupont. The CIA dug deep and control the haitain intelligence agency in the 1980s. drugs, guns, assassinations, normal CIA stuff for the 80s. The first true positive action from outside the country took place in 1994, when Clinton and Carter brought an exiled leader back and lead to a proper democracy. But, the second they asked for reasonable concessions from the US in 2000(which failed due to the US rotten congress and its self preservation), the EU and US cut aid significantly. Again. Chaos leads to a 2004 coup, one where the US meddled and has still not provided counter evidence to circumstances that appear to show the US forcing out Aristide, the leader Carter and Clinton had brought back. Devastating earthquake and rebuild/restructure towards tourism through the 2010s. 2017, a new leader 'elected' with a heavy hand from the US who oversaw this election. This leader attempts a coup, and is assassinated in 2021. Another devastating earthquake. Gang violence in 2022.
- zackmorris 3y agoThe poorest people today live in countries that have achieved no economic growth. This stagnation of the world’s poorest economies is one of the largest problems of our time. Unless this changes, hundreds of millions of people will continue to live in extreme poverty. It's easy to understand this sentiment, but it's incorrect. Growth won't save us. To understand why, I recommend reading this: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason... The median household income in Lafayette is $41,000. With the wealth that has been created by all this infrastructure investment, a median family living in the median house would need to have their city taxes go from $1,500 per year to $9,200 per year. To just take care of what they now have, one out of every five dollars this family makes would need to go to fixing roads, ditches and pipes. That will never happen. Thus, Lafayette has a predicament. Infrastructure was supposed to serve them. Now they serve it. To use the US as an example, cities are overbuilt by a factor of perhaps 5:1. Yet they continue spending more and more tax revenue on new infrastructure to chase growth. I believe that this is where the political right wing's feeling that taxes are too high comes from. I also believe that it's where the political left wing's feeling that there isn't enough tax revenue comes from. IMHO the solution to all of this is to stop chasing new revenue from growth. Wealthy people already have more money than they can spend. And poor people spend the entirety of their time working to make rent. This is mostly the fault of the wealthy, because they have the resources to address fundamental problems in our economy through innovation or by paying their taxes, but choose not too. They get rich and say "I got mine" and no longer see the plight of those struggling around them. The biggest bang for the buck would come from raising tax brackets post-inflation and to stop charging income tax for about the bottom half of the country, which has no wealth to speak of. Which might look like raising the minimum income before taxes begin for single filing status from $12,950 to perhaps $50,000. Then raise taxes substantially on people earning more than about $250,000 per year. The additional funds should go to UBI and paying down the national debt to free up revenue that we used to have for education, defense, etc. Yes this negatively incentivizes high incomes, but it also incentivizes countless millions of underemployed people to work hard and finally enjoy the fruits of their labors, especially young people who have never known life beyond subsisting month to month. If we don't do this, we'll condemn another generation to lost decades, just like what happened to my generation - Gen X. I believe that young people will use the investment in their generation to pay it forward and solve the multifaceted crises facing humanity and the planet. Loosely that looks like moving to a libertarian self-sufficiency to counter corporate price gouging, in the form of off-grid energy and local food production. And adopting a progressive culture at large that works counter to trickle-down economics, having the primary goal of alleviating suffering. This is the only way that I see to get more people self-actualized with their basic needs automated, so that the global average individual income of $10,000 per year can go to a higher quality of life instead of bills. I'm sure there are holes in this plan and admittedly it closely aligns with the midlife feelings of anxiety/exhaustion/failure that I struggle with personally. But I'm not the only one.