
Africans are mainly rich or poor, but not middle class - luu
http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21676774-africans-are-mainly-rich-or-poor-not-middle-class-should-worry
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tertius
I'd add that rich is relative.

I'm South African and I generally agree with this assertion but poor is
defined as something that is really non-existant in the U.S.

And minimum wage here, is really the bottom end of what would be considered
middle class.

So the title is not very informative to someone not used to the context.

* I'm South African living in Houston, TX.

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eveningcoffee
* I'm South African living in Houston, TX. *

I am sorry, what is "here" then here?

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tertius
I see that it was confusing.

> And minimum wage here, is really the bottom end of what would be considered
> middle class.

Should be:

> And minimum wage here, is really the bottom end of what would be considered
> middle class there.

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BorisMelnik
Isn't this kind of exactly the same sentiment as "the middle class is
disappearing in the USA?"

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RyanZAG
It's kind of the opposite. Scroll down to the chart showing 2004 vs 2014. The
middle class is actually growing very rapidly - far more rapidly than the
growth of the middle class during industrial revolution Europe, and in
contrast to the shrinking middle class of USA today.

Anybody complaining it is 'too slow' is living in a dream world without
realizing that moving classes takes generations of effort and enormous culture
shifts. Something as simple from using a hole in the ground as a toilet to the
huge infrastructure of piped plumbing from dams is an enormous change in
culture. Take the monthly costs of such infrastructure which must be paid and
enforced across a population that previously did not have those kinds of
burdens for a quick spot check on culture.

~~~
astazangasta
>moving classes takes generations of effort and enormous culture shifts.

This is wrong. I recommend reading Ha-Joon Chang,a wonderful heterodox
economist who is fond of pointing out that his native South Korea went from
the development status of Madagascar to one of the largest economies in the
world in a scant 50 years. This doesn't take forever.

~~~
sokoloff
I'll also observe that 50 years is multiple generations (~2).

I think that people are prone to being frustrated and complaining about not
seeing enough progress in a short subset of their own working life, which I
assume was RyanZAG's point.

~~~
bane
My father-in-law was a pre-teen during the devastating Korean War - orphaned
during the war and grew up in poverty. Got into vegetable wholesaling during
the beginning of the boom years and made enough money to get into real estate
speculation which then boomed even bigger -- making him a nice bit of money
along the way. He's now semi-retired, plays golf, lives in a luxury house his
son built for him and my mother-in-law, drives a nice foreign car and splits
his "work time" between maintaining undeveloped property his U.S. friends have
purchased for investment and buying and selling small apartment buildings.

He once took me to a small museum where they had on display various
"traditional" cooking and houseware items. Wood, stone, woven rice straw rope,
a bit of metal here and there for blades and things that needed weight. I
thought these were relics from maybe the 17th or 18th century (or earlier)
since they were "traditional" \-- and in truth lots of it looked like late
Iron Age level technology. He said that he grew up with that stuff, cooking in
handmade pots, wearing woven hay sandals and rough woven fabric clothes.

By the time my wife's generation was born, Korea's industrialization was well
underway. It wasn't maybe "first world", but 20 years after a war which
completely flattened the country, my wife was born into a world with running
water, electricity, cars, schools, colleges, coffee shops, restaurants,
telephones, high-rise apartment buildings, cheap and secure food...as a young
girl she grew up on American schlock-80s imported TV like MacGuyver, A-Team
and so on, they had regular video game arcades, home computers, boutique
coffee shops, designer clothing, malls, department stores, a robust
television, film and entertainment industry and so on. Her 80s childhood would
have been not much different than a kid growing up in New York City. That's 30
years after the war.

Korea had joined the "developed" world when that first generation was young
and had ascended to first-world before that generation was out of working
years.

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joe_the_user
The problem is that the dominant model of development today seems to involve
increased wealth inequality rather than the creation of a stable middle class.

For example, China's development has involved considerable wealth inequality.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_China)

~~~
jvm
Most income inequality (taken on a worldwide basis) is between country, not
within country. Overall global income inequality is dropping considerably,
with China playing a large part.

>
> [https://twitter.com/bill_easterly/status/621684418558734337](https://twitter.com/bill_easterly/status/621684418558734337)

>
> [https://twitter.com/bill_easterly/status/654709684985688064](https://twitter.com/bill_easterly/status/654709684985688064)

~~~
joe_the_user
World scale inequality seems like a bit of a canard.

If inequality between nations drops, a measure of inequality on a world scale
could drop while inequality within each particular nation increases. China or
Africa's development means the average very poor person is closer to the
average Westerner, dropping total inequality. But that doesn't stop recent
models of development from involving considerable inequality and indeed a
model of inequality (just as inequality has increased within the US).
Moreover, it's the inequality within each area that one would expect to have
the harmful or beneficial effects on democracy, civil society and so-forth.

Edit: Of course it is hard to reply to a link to a tweet of a bit map of a
graph with resolution too poor to read the references of, hence my general
comment.

~~~
jvm
I think you are right that there are still disadvantages to within-country
inequality, but I strongly disagree with the dismissal you seem to be making
of the massive reduction in country-level inequality and accompanying massive
reduction of extreme poverty, which has plunged from ~40% of the world
population in the 1980's to <20% now.

> it's the inequality within each area that one would expect to have the
> harmful or beneficial effects on democracy, civil society and so-forth.

You seem to be implying that extreme poverty does not also cause adverse
effects on democracy, civil society, and so forth. My guess is that having
massive populations of people living at or below subsistence is also harmful
to democracy and civil society. If you look at the kind of problems they have
in relatively equal [1] Sudan (mass malnutrition, militias literally raping
and pillaging) to relatively unequal [1] United States (police violence, poor
health care provision), I hope we can acknowledge the problems in the US
without denying that they are orders of magnitude less severe. The difference
is in the amount of absolute extreme poverty, not the inequality.

BTW if you click on the images in the links you can access the high res
versions.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality)

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tim333
Africa's coming along but from a low base. See Hans Rosling's 2015
visualisation. Asia in red, Africa blue, Europe yellow:

[https://youtu.be/_JhD37gSNVU?t=55s](https://youtu.be/_JhD37gSNVU?t=55s)

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Geekette
The only reliable factoid mentioned is that good data on demographics of
African are hard to come by. Thus, info like economic projections for the
continent as released by various organizations are equally shifty.

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cup
"On a continent once synonymous with war, famine and poverty,"

I always find it interesting how the west so easily glosses over colonization,
which is integral to all three of those other things.

The interesting thing though that they miss completely, is that in the last 10
years the percentage of people living middle class lives have nearly doubled
in a lot of African countries, which is a huge achievement.

~~~
Retric
"Gloss over colonization"

Don't whitewash history, the wars where generally smaller scale, but pre
colonization there was plenty of war, famine, and poverty.

~~~
cup
Sure, just like there was plenty of war, famine and poverty around the world
but lets not "whitewash" history by suggesting what we see in Africa and other
countries aren't a direct effect of European colonization.

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a3voices
So you're saying Africa would've been better off without colonization? I bet
life would be much worse in Africa if it was never colonized. Did you know the
homicide rate was 10-20% in prehistoric societies, and the life expectancy was
only 30-40 years or so?

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cup
Are you suggesting without colonisation that Africans would still be living in
a per-historic society?

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a3voices
Yes, much closer to one. Somewhere on a scale between what it currently is and
a prehistoric society. Why do you think it wouldn't be? Africans wouldn't just
magically absorb Western culture without exposure. I'm not sure if 1% were
even aware of Western civilization, trade, and such until colonization
happened. Do you think Africans would learn how to read and write if the
Europeans didn't alter things?

~~~
cup
I don't really know what to say to that. The depth of your ignorance is new to
me, regarding the history of African societies.

Can I suggest a few books for you to read?

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dang
> _The depth of your ignorance is new to me_

Please don't be personally rude, even when someone else is ignorant.

