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Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?

67 points by sinned 12y ago

spodek 12y ago
Growth describes the size of the economy. Poverty describes distribution. While size and distribution may correlate long enough that people start to believe they causally relate, they don't have to. "A rising tide lifts all boats" is a nice belief and accurate for many boats and tides, but there's no reason to believe that what holds for boats holds for economies, any more than the behavior of dominoes held for Southeast Asian countries. For that matter, it doesn't hold for all boats. A big enough tide could completely submerge a boat firmly enough anchored to the sea floor, for example.
- squozzer 12y ago
  I think you're on to something with the anchor-chain analogy. It's also possible that the government lies about economic growth.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  If you can't stipulate that the poor are better off today than decades ago I don't know what to tell you. For some reason people insist on the "things are getting worse" narrative reality be damned.
  - Retric 12y ago
    Poor people in the US are getting shorter so at least when it comes to nutrition they are worse off. Now, if you assume cellphones make up for that it's possible but rather subjective. Afterall poor people in the developing world also have cellphones.
    - happyscrappy 12y ago
      Do you have a source for that? I would imagine it has more to do with immigration.
  - jdlshore 12y ago
    The article makes a fairly compelling case that they're not better off. Do you have anything better than an argument from incredulity?
    - zacharytelschow 12y ago
      The article simply makes the case that they aren't making more money, but it doesn't make the case that they're not better off.
      - CodeMage 12y ago
        "Better off" than what? That should be the key question. A lot of people in these comments seem to think that just because poor people's conditions are better now than X years ago, that means that they're less at a disadvantage compared to the rest. That kind of logic reminds me of this: http://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/66889970151/seananmcguire-cumbersome-cucumber http://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/66889970151/s...
    - happyscrappy 12y ago
      I don't find the author's contortions compelling in the slightest. I mean he doesn't even define poverty because it would poke giant holes in his story.
      - jdlshore 12y ago
        It's fairly clear from the article, and from the report it's quoting [1], that the discussion is about wages, with "poverty" used as a shorthand. The source report also says that "the poverty level wage in 2013 was $11.45." I was able to find that definition with a casual skim of the source report. (It's possible that they go into more depth about their methods; I didn't care to look.) Your inability to find it, combined with your hyperbolic language, says more about your biases than it does about the argument they're making. I'll let this be my last comment. [1] http://www.epi.org/publication/raising-americas-pay/ http://www.epi.org/publication/raising-americas-pay/
  - gadders 12y ago
    Yeah, but if you use weasel words and change poverty to "relative poverty" you can massage the figures to make it appear that nothing ever improves.
    - coldtea 12y ago
      Yes, because if people live better than dustbowl era farmers, we should all be satisfied and not check if they got a relative improvement compared to society's riches as well. With this logic, anybody living better than a caveman should be grateful, even if he has to sleep in the streets and can't afford health care, because, hey, cavement couldn't afford those things either.
      - gadders 12y ago
        So I think if people are living a better lifestyle in absolute terms, then yes they should be grateful. And yes, we should always try and improve this. Whether their personal wealth is a larger or smaller proportion of global riches is irrelevant.
        coldtea 12y ago
        >Whether their personal wealth is a larger or smaller proportion of global riches is irrelevant. That's what the guys that get the larger proportion of global riches say -- people who play life in "easy" mode.
        gadders 12y ago
        Is this where I need to check my privilige? Apart from being born white in a first world country, I wouldn't claim any advantages for myself. I grew up poor (poorer than today's standard of poverty) and the only advantage I had was a modicum of intelligence.
  - zachrose 12y ago
    A true socialist would say that inequalities are themselves unjust.
    - smacktoward 12y ago
      You misspelled "communist." A socialist can live with inequalities, as long as they're not glaring and the floor is high enough to allow a decent living.
  - baldfat 12y ago
    Yes the poor are better off. The question is do you want your parents or children living in America poor? I sure don't and I keep trying everything I can to get them equipped to succeed. It is a natural human way of thinking that the present is worse. Couldn't find a better article in the 5 seconds I looked. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201212/why-does-the-past-seem-happy http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201212/... Having worked with Urban Children since 1990 it is a million times better! I rarely see a hungry child. Neglect hasn't really changed.
api 12y ago
It's interesting to me that the stagnating or declining middle class is largely a first world issue, while in the developing world the middle class is exploding. The best explanation I've encountered is Peter Thiel's commentary on horizontal vs. vertical development. We've taken an energy and industrial system that absolutely cannot scale to seven billion people and now we're trying to make it scale to seven billion people. The result is a kind of low-grade, very slow malthusian event in which people in the developed world are (relatively speaking) impoverished by exploding energy and resource costs. What we need is vertical development -- technological development -- to create systems that actually will scale. Everybody can't drive a hydrocarbon powered car. It can't be done. I think this also explains why first world poverty rates are not shrinking. The poorer you are the more price sensitive you are to things like energy prices, so the poor are impacted by scarcity exponentially more than the wealthy. Note that if this is true then wealth redistribution might not help. It might just trigger price inflation in scarce resources. Redistribute more and they'll inflate more, and more, and more. ... But then again maybe it would help by causing lots of investment money to chase that demand and develop alternatives. It would cause hockey stick price signals across all the rate limiting inputs for the economy. Hmm... well now... maybe we should drop money from helicopters...
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  Rich guy says "wealth redistribution" doesn't work. Suure, let's take that at face value.
  - api 12y ago
    Actually Thiel didn't say that, but I assume given his right-libertarian views he's against it. Peter Thiel is a mixed bag for me. He sometimes has profoundly interesting things to say, but then he says things that strike me as either deeply naive or disingenuous. I'm still not sure which, and no I do not think naive and billionaire are mutually exclusive. I spent enough time in the ivy league orbit to know that "elite naiveté" is a thing. I'm personally both for it and against it. I'm against it in perfect world post-violence volitional society land, but I'm for it in pragmatic real Earth that we live on right now land. The problem is that we absolutely do not live in a volitional society, and pretending we do often results in worse injustices than the pragmatic approach. Our world is run by gangsters and armies with fraud and guns. It's not that far removed from the ancient tribalism we clawed our way out of. Wealth redistribution is an acceptable band aid that moves us in the right fundamentally humanistic direction. It empowers the great unwashed masses to improve their bodies and minds. Abolishing wealth redistribution amounts to a kind of unilateral disarmament unless you can also convince all global elites to stop using violence and deception to advance their own economic goals.
jlarocco 12y ago
Looks like they're moving the goal posts a little bit here. "Poverty" today is not the same as "poverty" decades ago. The standard of living for people in poverty today is (a lot) higher than the standard of living for people in poverty decades ago.
- munificent 12y ago
  This is interesting. Do you have any details?
  - AnimalMuppet 12y ago
    In 1950, middle class was a small house, one car, probably not a dishwasher, only one television in the house (if that), no computers (duh), no cell phones (also duh), no designer jeans, no fancy sneakers, much less snack food, much less eating out. You could live exactly that life today (maybe even on one income), but people would think that you were in poverty, or close. (Note well: I am not claiming that official statistics would say that you are in poverty. But I think this thought exercise does show that the goalposts have moved over the last 60 years.)
    - hershel 12y ago
      Today poverty comes with some extra baggage - lower access to the healthcare system and much worse healthcare results, increased crime rate, low social status , higher stress, etc. Not everything in life is about possessions.
      - jlarocco 12y ago
        Actually, healthcare access has improved for everybody in the last 60 years, enough so that life expectancy has increased by 10 years. Homicide (and presumably other violent crime) is about the same as 1950. Further, "poor" people have always had lower social status and higher stress, so there's no change there. In 1950 it wasn't uncommon for people to still use outhouses and not have electricity. Life expectancy reference: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_indicators.htm http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_indicators.htm homicide rate reference: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873729.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873729.html
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AnimalMuppet 12y ago
Somewhere around a billion people have been lifted out of poverty in the past 30 years or so. (Citing from memory, don't have a source handy, but it's about that number). It's amazing how good that is. But they weren't in the US. So why hasn't US poverty declined? The same reason it has declined other places: globalization.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Actually, "globalization" isn't the reason, the reason is "two different definitions of poverty".
outside1234 12y ago
A rising boat in the economy also raises the bar in terms of costs. Just think of what has happened in San Francisco - huge increase in wealth also has lead to a huge increase in costs.
- zacharytelschow 12y ago
  A policy of essentially not allowing new construction in SF has led to a huge increase in costs. This topic has been hammered on repeatedly.
opendais 12y ago
I think the underlying problem is the bottom end of the US labor market only has two ladders up and they pulled out from under them: Manufacturing Education to get a better job [I don't mean college. I mean something like a trade school to become a plumber or the like]. The kind of blue collar manufacturing jobs they could get is largely done in other countries and imported to the US. There simply aren't enough of these in the US to employ a larger percentage of the population. Education has gotten too expensive and given these are likely people who could never graduate college...it is very high risk for them as well, even at a trade school. I think we really need to get people to go from High School to a Trade School to a Job. Because otherwise, I don't see a way to really shrink the poverty level without raising the minimum wage which is politically unreliable [e.g. We might raise it for 2-3 years, but in 6-8 we will ignore it for a decade again]
- kbenson 12y ago
  given these are likely people who could never graduate college I don't think that's a given at all. IMO, whether a large portion of the populace thinks they could graduate, would want to go to college, or feels they have the option to go to college does not imply whether they actually could finish if they desired.
  - opendais 12y ago
    Do you honestly want to argue 51% of the people in poverty can pass a college level Math or English class? As well as afford the time away from working to gradate? I don't think that is true. http://www.duck9.com/College-Student-Drop-Out-Rates.htm http://www.duck9.com/College-Student-Drop-Out-Rates.htm Over 50% are from financial or academic disqualification reasons... http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 We are talking about 50-60% graduation rates in 6 years for the people colleges already accept. I think poverty would make it hard enough that rate would drop significantly.
    - kbenson 12y ago
      I'm arguing that very many of them have the potential to, and that it's outside factors (such as finances, motivations, and determination) that make the difference in a lot of cases. It's possible I misread the intent of your original comment and we aren't in disagreement on this.
fragsworth 12y ago
We are building incredible new technologies at an astounding rate, resulting in less demand for work that can be automated. So people who do "automatable" work can't make much money anymore. Growth appears to be good, but all the profits are going to the owners and employees of these relatively small technology companies. This is also probably a major part of the reason why the wealth disparity is increasing.
- lucb1e 12y ago
  > people who do "automatable" work can't make much money anymore. I tend to think of it "don't have to do that work anymore". They can focus on other things, but basically the work is done for us. So the machines are creating wealth and in the end people will have to work less and less. I'm not sure this is the right example, but wasn't it revolutionary of the Ford motors factory to introduce 8-hour work days in the early 1900s? Didn't people work much longer before then, if I remember correctly? And isn't Sweden implementing a 6-hour work day right now? I think we are making great progress with taking work out of people's hands. The people who used to make cars, which is now largely automated, could do other things that are in greater demand, while on the whole humanity has to expend less work for the same wealth. This is just the way I look at things, but of course I may be too young and naive to really understand it.
  - malyk 12y ago
    The machines are creating wealth for the owners of the machines which isn't being (re)distributed to the former workers at all. That's the crux of the problem. Maybe there will be another revolution in jobs that need to be done that these people will be able to take up, but until that time we are sentencing a huge number of people to live in poverty. We need to find a way to help those people until this new class of jobs people imagine will appear actually become reality.
    - lucb1e 12y ago
      > The machines are creating wealth for the owners of the machines which isn't being (re)distributed to the former workers at all. Isn't it? You're right in that I have yet to hear someone laying off staff and then paying them because machines do all the work, but on the whole I do think everyone profits. At least in the Netherlands you get money during the time that you are looking for employment. > we are sentencing a huge number of people to live in poverty Last I heard we are still free to start our own farms and live off of those, but it seems people rather like having things like cars, power, the Internet and other luxuries of the past few decades. And most people living in "poverty", as you say, have all of the above. Those won't be the best cars or the fastest connections to the Internet, but I never heard about a "huge" number of people being laid off and then having to go without all of that. You'd think they'd be in the streets rioting against the machines if it was that bad.
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paul_f 12y ago
Unless one defines poverty clearly, then I cannot accept this premise. For example, the US census bureau uses 48 different poverty thresholds and does not explain clearly where they came from. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/measure.html http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/measur... Here are some other interesting comments that should throw the entire conversation into doubt: - They are intended for use as a statistical yardstick, not as a complete description of what people and families need to live. - Many government aid programs use a different poverty measure - Poverty thresholds were originally derived in 1963-1964, using: U.S. Department of Agriculture food budgets designed for families under economic stress. and Data about what portion of their income families spent on food. BTW, they also admit that they do not take geography into account. Anybody see a problem with that?
- jal278 12y ago
  While the particular measure of poverty may be in question, and in general poverty may be a tricky intuitive concept to nail down, the entire conversation is not thrown into doubt: We can quibble all day about the meaning and quantification of terms, but the underlying intuitive concept is what is important. I think we can agree that poverty in the US has not been eradicated -- although theoretically it seems possible given increases in productivity. Has increased productivity and economic growth really 'trickled' down as some would argue? It would seem not, as wages have not increased proportionally with productivity [1]. It is at least worth thinking about the author's conclusion: "You also have to devise strategies that make the benefits of a stronger economy show up in the wages of the people on the edge of poverty, who need it most desperately." [1] http://economics.stanford.edu/files/Theses/Theses_2007/Sachdev2007.pdf http://economics.stanford.edu/files/Theses/Theses_2007/Sachd...
  - oldspiceman 12y ago
    True but a single measurable criteria is essential. It won't completely capture 'poverty' but it's a step in the right direction. Once the first poverty measure is completely reduced, we could examine the next. I'm amazed that this doesn't exist.
zwieback 12y ago
Like many commenters I have the same question about what "poverty" really means. I asked an economist doing social policy, and the response was basically that the definition of poverty is not an economic question but a political one. Which would explain why we are talking about this issue so much without any real progress. Without a doubt, today's definition of poverty would be very different from the one used in the 1950s but the fundamental question is whether we should have an absolute metric or a relative one.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  I think the fundamental question is whether or not people in poverty can afford to buy food to eat. Not 'nice food' but 'food', period. The answer is usually - and increasingly - a very simple 'no.' Here are stats from one food bank org: http://www.trusselltrust.org/stats http://www.trusselltrust.org/stats Or how about being too poor to heat your home? At least 15% of households are in fuel poverty: http://www.opportunitystudies.org/repository/File/fuel%20poverty.pdf http://www.opportunitystudies.org/repository/File/fuel%20pov... Aside from the humanitarian questions, which should be self-evident, the reality is that poverty is a criminal waste of potential. At least some of those worrying about food and heat have - had - the potential to be inventors and entrepreneurs. That's not going to be possible while the culture they live in keeps them poor.
nilkn 12y ago
Isn't it simply possible that what constitutes poverty has changed over time? If poverty is defined as, say, the bottom tenth of the population income-wise, then poverty will never decrease, by definition.
- Symmetry 12y ago
  It's not just possible, that's how the US government statistics work. Poverty is defined in relation to the distribution of pre-tax, pre-benefits income. So barring a radical change in the distribution of income, neither government anti-poverty programs or general economic growth can reduce poverty by definition. Why was this definition pushed by the same people pushing anti-poverty programs? I really have no idea.
malchow 12y ago
"Growth has been good for decades, so why do we still have 10% of people who are poorer than the remaining 90% of the people? Debating policy based on a chart showing one clean* variable -- growth -- and one that a faceless bureaucracy sets by fiat every year is not a brilliant idea. As ever, Adam Smith, writing in 1776, had the right idea. Here is how he defined poverty: “By [poverty] I understand, not only the [lack of] commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. . .But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt. . .Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. . .Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend, not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people.” * The growth variable isn't clean, either. Much of the alleged growth is in transfers, government, and credit.
wnevets 12y ago
Just have to wait longer for the trickle down to reach everyone else.
NoPiece 12y ago
Growth is only one of hundreds of factors that affect poverty. Looking at only one factor without considering others is misleading. Poverty rates have been steady in the face of the disintegration of the family unit - perhaps growth is what is keeping it from skyrocketing? Unless you know what poverty would have been with no growth or negative growth, you can't measure and make the assumption that growth isn't positively impacting poverty.
lifeofanalysis 12y ago
This analysis is an opinion without proper analysis. There could be many other structural reasons. For instance, my gut says that the poverty is increasing even though the growth is good because the balance of trade for the USA has worsened significantly ever since the global trade took off [1] right around 1975, just at the beginning of the "decline" that this article talks about. So if someone in China is willing to do your job for $2/day, your wages are going to go down even as the investors benefit from increases in profits of the businesses manufacturing more in China. I wish the author had done at least a tiny bit of analysis, rather than spouting opinions based on inanities like "the tide lifts all boats". In this case, the boats of the poor are slowly sinking to the level of global wages for any given job. [1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/united-states-balance-of-trade.png?s=ustbtot&d1=19500101&d2=20141231 http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/united-states-balance...
JohnDoe365 12y ago
Simple answer: Growth was primarily for the already rich, leaving those in poverty behind. It's not necessarily that the underprivileged got poorer, it's more that they didn't grow, which results in a virtual gap still widening.
sharemywin 12y ago
This article is comparing apples to orgies(it was in my spell check so I went with it). Since most of the growth in the US economy over the last few decades has been from globalization you would need to look a poverty levels for the areas we outsourced most of the manufacturing jobs to.

67 points by sinned 12y ago

Growth describes the size of the economy. Poverty describes distribution. While size and distribution may correlate long enough that people start to believe they causally relate, they don't have to. "A rising tide lifts all boats" is a nice belief and accurate for many boats and tides, but there's no reason to believe that what holds for boats holds for economies, any more than the behavior of dominoes held for Southeast Asian countries. For that matter, it doesn't hold for all boats. A big enough tide could completely submerge a boat firmly enough anchored to the sea floor, for example.

squozzer 12y ago
I think you're on to something with the anchor-chain analogy. It's also possible that the government lies about economic growth.
happyscrappy 12y ago
If you can't stipulate that the poor are better off today than decades ago I don't know what to tell you. For some reason people insist on the "things are getting worse" narrative reality be damned.
- Retric 12y ago
  Poor people in the US are getting shorter so at least when it comes to nutrition they are worse off. Now, if you assume cellphones make up for that it's possible but rather subjective. Afterall poor people in the developing world also have cellphones.
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    Do you have a source for that? I would imagine it has more to do with immigration.
- jdlshore 12y ago
  The article makes a fairly compelling case that they're not better off. Do you have anything better than an argument from incredulity?
  - zacharytelschow 12y ago
    The article simply makes the case that they aren't making more money, but it doesn't make the case that they're not better off.
    - CodeMage 12y ago
      "Better off" than what? That should be the key question. A lot of people in these comments seem to think that just because poor people's conditions are better now than X years ago, that means that they're less at a disadvantage compared to the rest. That kind of logic reminds me of this: http://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/66889970151/seananmcguire-cumbersome-cucumber http://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/66889970151/s...
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    I don't find the author's contortions compelling in the slightest. I mean he doesn't even define poverty because it would poke giant holes in his story.
    - jdlshore 12y ago
      It's fairly clear from the article, and from the report it's quoting [1], that the discussion is about wages, with "poverty" used as a shorthand. The source report also says that "the poverty level wage in 2013 was $11.45." I was able to find that definition with a casual skim of the source report. (It's possible that they go into more depth about their methods; I didn't care to look.) Your inability to find it, combined with your hyperbolic language, says more about your biases than it does about the argument they're making. I'll let this be my last comment. [1] http://www.epi.org/publication/raising-americas-pay/ http://www.epi.org/publication/raising-americas-pay/
- gadders 12y ago
  Yeah, but if you use weasel words and change poverty to "relative poverty" you can massage the figures to make it appear that nothing ever improves.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Yes, because if people live better than dustbowl era farmers, we should all be satisfied and not check if they got a relative improvement compared to society's riches as well. With this logic, anybody living better than a caveman should be grateful, even if he has to sleep in the streets and can't afford health care, because, hey, cavement couldn't afford those things either.
    - gadders 12y ago
      So I think if people are living a better lifestyle in absolute terms, then yes they should be grateful. And yes, we should always try and improve this. Whether their personal wealth is a larger or smaller proportion of global riches is irrelevant.
      - coldtea 12y ago
        >Whether their personal wealth is a larger or smaller proportion of global riches is irrelevant. That's what the guys that get the larger proportion of global riches say -- people who play life in "easy" mode.
        gadders 12y ago
        Is this where I need to check my privilige? Apart from being born white in a first world country, I wouldn't claim any advantages for myself. I grew up poor (poorer than today's standard of poverty) and the only advantage I had was a modicum of intelligence.
- zachrose 12y ago
  A true socialist would say that inequalities are themselves unjust.
  - smacktoward 12y ago
    You misspelled "communist." A socialist can live with inequalities, as long as they're not glaring and the floor is high enough to allow a decent living.
- baldfat 12y ago
  Yes the poor are better off. The question is do you want your parents or children living in America poor? I sure don't and I keep trying everything I can to get them equipped to succeed. It is a natural human way of thinking that the present is worse. Couldn't find a better article in the 5 seconds I looked. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201212/why-does-the-past-seem-happy http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201212/... Having worked with Urban Children since 1990 it is a million times better! I rarely see a hungry child. Neglect hasn't really changed.

api 12y ago

It's interesting to me that the stagnating or declining middle class is largely a first world issue, while in the developing world the middle class is exploding. The best explanation I've encountered is Peter Thiel's commentary on horizontal vs. vertical development. We've taken an energy and industrial system that absolutely cannot scale to seven billion people and now we're trying to make it scale to seven billion people. The result is a kind of low-grade, very slow malthusian event in which people in the developed world are (relatively speaking) impoverished by exploding energy and resource costs. What we need is vertical development -- technological development -- to create systems that actually will scale. Everybody can't drive a hydrocarbon powered car. It can't be done. I think this also explains why first world poverty rates are not shrinking. The poorer you are the more price sensitive you are to things like energy prices, so the poor are impacted by scarcity exponentially more than the wealthy. Note that if this is true then wealth redistribution might not help. It might just trigger price inflation in scarce resources. Redistribute more and they'll inflate more, and more, and more. ... But then again maybe it would help by causing lots of investment money to chase that demand and develop alternatives. It would cause hockey stick price signals across all the rate limiting inputs for the economy. Hmm... well now... maybe we should drop money from helicopters...

JetSpiegel 12y ago
Rich guy says "wealth redistribution" doesn't work. Suure, let's take that at face value.
- api 12y ago
  Actually Thiel didn't say that, but I assume given his right-libertarian views he's against it. Peter Thiel is a mixed bag for me. He sometimes has profoundly interesting things to say, but then he says things that strike me as either deeply naive or disingenuous. I'm still not sure which, and no I do not think naive and billionaire are mutually exclusive. I spent enough time in the ivy league orbit to know that "elite naiveté" is a thing. I'm personally both for it and against it. I'm against it in perfect world post-violence volitional society land, but I'm for it in pragmatic real Earth that we live on right now land. The problem is that we absolutely do not live in a volitional society, and pretending we do often results in worse injustices than the pragmatic approach. Our world is run by gangsters and armies with fraud and guns. It's not that far removed from the ancient tribalism we clawed our way out of. Wealth redistribution is an acceptable band aid that moves us in the right fundamentally humanistic direction. It empowers the great unwashed masses to improve their bodies and minds. Abolishing wealth redistribution amounts to a kind of unilateral disarmament unless you can also convince all global elites to stop using violence and deception to advance their own economic goals.

jlarocco 12y ago

Looks like they're moving the goal posts a little bit here. "Poverty" today is not the same as "poverty" decades ago. The standard of living for people in poverty today is (a lot) higher than the standard of living for people in poverty decades ago.

munificent 12y ago
This is interesting. Do you have any details?
- AnimalMuppet 12y ago
  In 1950, middle class was a small house, one car, probably not a dishwasher, only one television in the house (if that), no computers (duh), no cell phones (also duh), no designer jeans, no fancy sneakers, much less snack food, much less eating out. You could live exactly that life today (maybe even on one income), but people would think that you were in poverty, or close. (Note well: I am not claiming that official statistics would say that you are in poverty. But I think this thought exercise does show that the goalposts have moved over the last 60 years.)
  - hershel 12y ago
    Today poverty comes with some extra baggage - lower access to the healthcare system and much worse healthcare results, increased crime rate, low social status , higher stress, etc. Not everything in life is about possessions.
    - jlarocco 12y ago
      Actually, healthcare access has improved for everybody in the last 60 years, enough so that life expectancy has increased by 10 years. Homicide (and presumably other violent crime) is about the same as 1950. Further, "poor" people have always had lower social status and higher stress, so there's no change there. In 1950 it wasn't uncommon for people to still use outhouses and not have electricity. Life expectancy reference: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_indicators.htm http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_indicators.htm homicide rate reference: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873729.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873729.html

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AnimalMuppet 12y ago

Somewhere around a billion people have been lifted out of poverty in the past 30 years or so. (Citing from memory, don't have a source handy, but it's about that number). It's amazing how good that is. But they weren't in the US. So why hasn't US poverty declined? The same reason it has declined other places: globalization.

dragonwriter 12y ago
Actually, "globalization" isn't the reason, the reason is "two different definitions of poverty".

outside1234 12y ago

A rising boat in the economy also raises the bar in terms of costs. Just think of what has happened in San Francisco - huge increase in wealth also has lead to a huge increase in costs.

zacharytelschow 12y ago
A policy of essentially not allowing new construction in SF has led to a huge increase in costs. This topic has been hammered on repeatedly.

opendais 12y ago

I think the underlying problem is the bottom end of the US labor market only has two ladders up and they pulled out from under them: Manufacturing Education to get a better job [I don't mean college. I mean something like a trade school to become a plumber or the like]. The kind of blue collar manufacturing jobs they could get is largely done in other countries and imported to the US. There simply aren't enough of these in the US to employ a larger percentage of the population. Education has gotten too expensive and given these are likely people who could never graduate college...it is very high risk for them as well, even at a trade school. I think we really need to get people to go from High School to a Trade School to a Job. Because otherwise, I don't see a way to really shrink the poverty level without raising the minimum wage which is politically unreliable [e.g. We might raise it for 2-3 years, but in 6-8 we will ignore it for a decade again]

kbenson 12y ago
given these are likely people who could never graduate college I don't think that's a given at all. IMO, whether a large portion of the populace thinks they could graduate, would want to go to college, or feels they have the option to go to college does not imply whether they actually could finish if they desired.
- opendais 12y ago
  Do you honestly want to argue 51% of the people in poverty can pass a college level Math or English class? As well as afford the time away from working to gradate? I don't think that is true. http://www.duck9.com/College-Student-Drop-Out-Rates.htm http://www.duck9.com/College-Student-Drop-Out-Rates.htm Over 50% are from financial or academic disqualification reasons... http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 We are talking about 50-60% graduation rates in 6 years for the people colleges already accept. I think poverty would make it hard enough that rate would drop significantly.
  - kbenson 12y ago
    I'm arguing that very many of them have the potential to, and that it's outside factors (such as finances, motivations, and determination) that make the difference in a lot of cases. It's possible I misread the intent of your original comment and we aren't in disagreement on this.

fragsworth 12y ago

We are building incredible new technologies at an astounding rate, resulting in less demand for work that can be automated. So people who do "automatable" work can't make much money anymore. Growth appears to be good, but all the profits are going to the owners and employees of these relatively small technology companies. This is also probably a major part of the reason why the wealth disparity is increasing.

lucb1e 12y ago
> people who do "automatable" work can't make much money anymore. I tend to think of it "don't have to do that work anymore". They can focus on other things, but basically the work is done for us. So the machines are creating wealth and in the end people will have to work less and less. I'm not sure this is the right example, but wasn't it revolutionary of the Ford motors factory to introduce 8-hour work days in the early 1900s? Didn't people work much longer before then, if I remember correctly? And isn't Sweden implementing a 6-hour work day right now? I think we are making great progress with taking work out of people's hands. The people who used to make cars, which is now largely automated, could do other things that are in greater demand, while on the whole humanity has to expend less work for the same wealth. This is just the way I look at things, but of course I may be too young and naive to really understand it.
- malyk 12y ago
  The machines are creating wealth for the owners of the machines which isn't being (re)distributed to the former workers at all. That's the crux of the problem. Maybe there will be another revolution in jobs that need to be done that these people will be able to take up, but until that time we are sentencing a huge number of people to live in poverty. We need to find a way to help those people until this new class of jobs people imagine will appear actually become reality.
  - lucb1e 12y ago
    > The machines are creating wealth for the owners of the machines which isn't being (re)distributed to the former workers at all. Isn't it? You're right in that I have yet to hear someone laying off staff and then paying them because machines do all the work, but on the whole I do think everyone profits. At least in the Netherlands you get money during the time that you are looking for employment. > we are sentencing a huge number of people to live in poverty Last I heard we are still free to start our own farms and live off of those, but it seems people rather like having things like cars, power, the Internet and other luxuries of the past few decades. And most people living in "poverty", as you say, have all of the above. Those won't be the best cars or the fastest connections to the Internet, but I never heard about a "huge" number of people being laid off and then having to go without all of that. You'd think they'd be in the streets rioting against the machines if it was that bad.

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paul_f 12y ago

Unless one defines poverty clearly, then I cannot accept this premise. For example, the US census bureau uses 48 different poverty thresholds and does not explain clearly where they came from. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/measure.html http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/measur... Here are some other interesting comments that should throw the entire conversation into doubt: - They are intended for use as a statistical yardstick, not as a complete description of what people and families need to live. - Many government aid programs use a different poverty measure - Poverty thresholds were originally derived in 1963-1964, using: U.S. Department of Agriculture food budgets designed for families under economic stress. and Data about what portion of their income families spent on food. BTW, they also admit that they do not take geography into account. Anybody see a problem with that?

jal278 12y ago
While the particular measure of poverty may be in question, and in general poverty may be a tricky intuitive concept to nail down, the entire conversation is not thrown into doubt: We can quibble all day about the meaning and quantification of terms, but the underlying intuitive concept is what is important. I think we can agree that poverty in the US has not been eradicated -- although theoretically it seems possible given increases in productivity. Has increased productivity and economic growth really 'trickled' down as some would argue? It would seem not, as wages have not increased proportionally with productivity [1]. It is at least worth thinking about the author's conclusion: "You also have to devise strategies that make the benefits of a stronger economy show up in the wages of the people on the edge of poverty, who need it most desperately." [1] http://economics.stanford.edu/files/Theses/Theses_2007/Sachdev2007.pdf http://economics.stanford.edu/files/Theses/Theses_2007/Sachd...
- oldspiceman 12y ago
  True but a single measurable criteria is essential. It won't completely capture 'poverty' but it's a step in the right direction. Once the first poverty measure is completely reduced, we could examine the next. I'm amazed that this doesn't exist.

zwieback 12y ago

Like many commenters I have the same question about what "poverty" really means. I asked an economist doing social policy, and the response was basically that the definition of poverty is not an economic question but a political one. Which would explain why we are talking about this issue so much without any real progress. Without a doubt, today's definition of poverty would be very different from the one used in the 1950s but the fundamental question is whether we should have an absolute metric or a relative one.

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
I think the fundamental question is whether or not people in poverty can afford to buy food to eat. Not 'nice food' but 'food', period. The answer is usually - and increasingly - a very simple 'no.' Here are stats from one food bank org: http://www.trusselltrust.org/stats http://www.trusselltrust.org/stats Or how about being too poor to heat your home? At least 15% of households are in fuel poverty: http://www.opportunitystudies.org/repository/File/fuel%20poverty.pdf http://www.opportunitystudies.org/repository/File/fuel%20pov... Aside from the humanitarian questions, which should be self-evident, the reality is that poverty is a criminal waste of potential. At least some of those worrying about food and heat have - had - the potential to be inventors and entrepreneurs. That's not going to be possible while the culture they live in keeps them poor.

nilkn 12y ago

Isn't it simply possible that what constitutes poverty has changed over time? If poverty is defined as, say, the bottom tenth of the population income-wise, then poverty will never decrease, by definition.

Symmetry 12y ago
It's not just possible, that's how the US government statistics work. Poverty is defined in relation to the distribution of pre-tax, pre-benefits income. So barring a radical change in the distribution of income, neither government anti-poverty programs or general economic growth can reduce poverty by definition. Why was this definition pushed by the same people pushing anti-poverty programs? I really have no idea.

malchow 12y ago

"Growth has been good for decades, so why do we still have 10% of people who are poorer than the remaining 90% of the people? Debating policy based on a chart showing one clean* variable -- growth -- and one that a faceless bureaucracy sets by fiat every year is not a brilliant idea. As ever, Adam Smith, writing in 1776, had the right idea. Here is how he defined poverty: “By [poverty] I understand, not only the [lack of] commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. . .But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt. . .Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. . .Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend, not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people.” * The growth variable isn't clean, either. Much of the alleged growth is in transfers, government, and credit.

wnevets 12y ago

Just have to wait longer for the trickle down to reach everyone else.

NoPiece 12y ago

Growth is only one of hundreds of factors that affect poverty. Looking at only one factor without considering others is misleading. Poverty rates have been steady in the face of the disintegration of the family unit - perhaps growth is what is keeping it from skyrocketing? Unless you know what poverty would have been with no growth or negative growth, you can't measure and make the assumption that growth isn't positively impacting poverty.

lifeofanalysis 12y ago

This analysis is an opinion without proper analysis. There could be many other structural reasons. For instance, my gut says that the poverty is increasing even though the growth is good because the balance of trade for the USA has worsened significantly ever since the global trade took off [1] right around 1975, just at the beginning of the "decline" that this article talks about. So if someone in China is willing to do your job for $2/day, your wages are going to go down even as the investors benefit from increases in profits of the businesses manufacturing more in China. I wish the author had done at least a tiny bit of analysis, rather than spouting opinions based on inanities like "the tide lifts all boats". In this case, the boats of the poor are slowly sinking to the level of global wages for any given job. [1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/united-states-balance-of-trade.png?s=ustbtot&d1=19500101&d2=20141231 http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/united-states-balance...

JohnDoe365 12y ago

Simple answer: Growth was primarily for the already rich, leaving those in poverty behind. It's not necessarily that the underprivileged got poorer, it's more that they didn't grow, which results in a virtual gap still widening.

sharemywin 12y ago

This article is comparing apples to orgies(it was in my spell check so I went with it). Since most of the growth in the US economy over the last few decades has been from globalization you would need to look a poverty levels for the areas we outsourced most of the manufacturing jobs to.