Ugh... this is literally a comment to an other article (deGrasse Tyson interview of Musk) that was already posted on HackerNews yesterday, did we really need a

Ugh... this is literally a comment to an other article (deGrasse Tyson interview of Musk) that was already posted on HackerNews yesterday, did we really need a new thread for this? In other news I find the $1 a day phrase really disingenuous. It's a phrase very commonly used in international development (economics) to describe the 1 billion people on this planet who live on $1 a day. Why is it disingenuous? Because there is a difference. These 1 billion people actually live on $1 a day. Their food, rent, insurance, water, electricity, education, or lack thereof, is all paid for with $1 per day. 1 billion people actually live on a total budget of $300-400 per year. Elon Musk lived on $1 of food per day as a college student. His ten thousand dollars of annual school tuition for example, was not part of that budget (regardless of whether he or someone else paid for it.) His insurance or rent or clothing or computer or books, etc etc, were not part of that budget. Now obviously Elon didn't go out of his way to compare himself to the poorest 1 billion people on the planet, don't get me wrong, he never implied that nor intends to convince people of that. Perhaps disingenuous isn't quite the right word. Mistaken at least. But I think it's important not to use such phrases lightly when 999/1000 times they're used in an entirely different manner. Just like saying "I was the victim of discrimination" when your parents gave your brother a new bicycle but not you, is not technically incorrect speech, but definitely not the right way to describe the situation, as the word 'discrimination' carries a huge load that can't just be injected into every casual conversation (safe for a few exceptions like academic speech) In short I hope he and others stop using the phrase 'lived on $1 a day' unless they actually did.