
Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong (2019) - pizza
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal
======
SamPatt
Folks like Stephen Pinker (Enlightenment Now), Matt Ridley (The Rational
Optimist), and Max Roser (Our World in Data) have done a compelling job of
presenting data that shows poverty has decreased substantially in recent
generations.

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nine_zeros
Wow, amazing propaganda.

$1 will actually feed you well even in a city in India. It's cheaper in other
Asian and African cities.

While paltry in developed countries, getting to $1 a day was a big problem and
developing countries in Asia are rapidly pioneering the change.

~~~
ridewinter
The article really does glamorize the pre-industrial past. Since the author
doesn't use facts to back up the claim that industrialization has made
people's lives worse, how about looking at caloric intake over the past 800
years: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-
supply-o...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-supply-of-
calories?time=..2013&country=FRA~GBR~USA)

~~~
Barrin92
that's actually a terrible metric. During the height of the early industrial
revolution the life expectancy in Liverpool fell to 25(!) years, despite
higher caloric intake as people were basically put through a manual labour
meatgrinder.

This is actually the glamorized superficial narrative that you're accusing the
author of. More calories = progress, graphs go up = everyone happy.

For most of industrialisation life was actually extremely harsh, monotonous,
life expectancy fell, communal ties were destroyed and that's the case in much
of the developing world today. Yuval Noah Harari gives a good overview in
_Sapiens_ as well.

[https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/13/did-
livin...](https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/13/did-living-
standards-improve-during-the-industrial-revolution)

~~~
ridewinter
How has life expectancy gone since the height of the early industrial
revolution? How has life expectancy gone in the developing world of our day?

I believe Yuval Noah writes mostly about pre-agricultural life, not pre-
industrial life.

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ridewinter
Like many liberals, I thought it was a fact that US wages had stagnated in the
past 40 years. And rich were the only beneficiaries. But in fact the median
income has steadily risen:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_Unite...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States)

So I ask HN, why has this narrative become so widespread?

~~~
rbecker
The graphs at
[https://econographics.wordpress.com/tag/wages/](https://econographics.wordpress.com/tag/wages/)
paint a less rosy picture. [1] is I think what is sometimes cited. Which does
show growth, but slower than productivity growth. A quick glance at the graph
on top of the wiki page you linked suggests it's consistent with it. But [2]
is I think most often cited, and shows hardly any growth at all post 1972 or
so. I'd also be interested to know why it looks so different from your graph
and [1]. Perhaps how 'real income' is defined differs from the adjustments [2]
made.

[1]
[https://econographics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/productivi...](https://econographics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/productivity-
vs-compensation.jpg)

[2] [https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-
gap/](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/)

~~~
ridewinter
Perhaps the difference is hourly pay vs. median income. The lowest tier of
workers hasn't risen as much as the median income.

