

Towards the end of poverty - denzil_correa
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion-people-have-been-taken-out-extreme-poverty-20-years-world-should-aim?fsrc=scn/gp/wl/pe/towardsendofpoverty

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trg2
Loved this article. There's so much doom and gloom out there, and yeah,
there's plenty more we could be doing and need to fix. That said, it's nice to
stop every now and then and realize what's really going on here: we're living
in the god damn golden age.

~~~
digitalengineer
The HN crowd is. Most Americans? Not exactly moving forward:

The United States now ranks lowest or close to lowest among advanced
“affluent” nations in connection with inequality (21st out of 21), poverty
(21st out of 21), life expectancy (21st out of 21), infant mortality (21st out
of 21), mental health (18th out of 20), obesity (18th out of 18), public
spending on social programs as a percentage of GDP (19th out of 21), maternity
leave (21st out of 21), paid annual leave (20th out of 20), the “material
well-being of children” (19th out of 21), and overall environmental
performance (21st out of 21).

Add in low scores for student performance in math (17th out of 21), one of the
highest school dropout rates (14th out of 16), the second-highest per capita
carbon dioxide emissions (2nd out of 21), and the third-highest ecological
footprint (3rd out of 20).

[http://www.nationalmemo.com/weekend-reader-what-then-must-
we...](http://www.nationalmemo.com/weekend-reader-what-then-must-we-do-
straight-talk-about-the-next-american-revolution/#.UatMuNzMQHI.reddit)

Not US bashing, EU is taking a different but essentially equal direction.

~~~
icebraining
Comparing the US with other countries doesn't tell you if you're moving
forward or not. You need to compare it to its own past. How do those metrics
compare with the US of the 1950s? Or of the 1980s?

~~~
digitalengineer
Agreed. But I think it is rather obvious the US did not always rank so low.
Here is some more data on poverty in the US (dating back 50 years):

WASHINGTON — The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels
unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the
1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net. The _official
poverty rate_ will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7
percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point
increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/22/us-poverty-
level-19...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/22/us-poverty-
level-1960s_n_1692744.html)

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dreadsword
Is the "poverty" line not a moving target? i.e.: isn't $1.25 and abitrary
snapshot in time? As any nation starts up the curve of development, people
will make more, as the line simultaneously moves up. To put it another way -
more people may make more than $x.x dollars per d/m/y --- but are they
individually any better off? And is the society any better off for all of its
"development?"

~~~
hencq
The line is of course somewhat arbitrary, but it's meant to be at a level
where people can barely feed themselves. While this varies from country to
country, it's striking that it doesn't vary that much. It's also easier to
market one (if arbitrary) poverty line than individual ones for each country.

You might find this article [1] interesting. It mentions your point as well:

"But even in quite poor countries, a different concept of poverty also seems
to creep in, the authors argue. It begins to matter whether a person is poor
relative to his countrymen; whether he can appear in public without shame, as
Adam Smith put it."

[1] <http://www.economist.com/node/11409401>

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tnuc
As rural/developing country poverty decreases, urban economically split
poverty increases.

The amount of poverty in the US (and many other "developed" countries) is
quite astonishing.

From: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States>

> 16% of Americans lived in poverty in 2011

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unclebucknasty
No mystery here. Of course most of the "progress" came from China.

Meanwhile middle class wages in the U.S have been stagnant for decades,
structural unemployment has taken hold in the U.S. and other Western nations,
social program and welfare dependency is on the rise, and corporate profits
are at an all time high.

We have simply unplugged the middle class in the U.S. and plugged in people
who can be paid relative dirt wages, yet still see it as progress because they
were so utterly poor before. This is no great economic mystery or capitalist
achievement.

It is good that there are fewer people in extreme poverty, but there has also
been a heavy cost. The western world and America in particular have long been
addicted to free or cheap labor and this is now simply coming at the expense
of those whose forebears built this country right up until the last decades.

True democratic capitalism is long overdue.

~~~
hencq
You make it out like this is a zero-sum game. As if lifting people out of
poverty means other people (Americans and Europeans) will necessarily be worse
off. I don't believe this is the case. More people with money also means a
bigger market for western products.

I'm frankly a little bit put off by the scare quotes you put around
"progress". As if giving a billion people a better life is somehow not
something to aspire to.

~~~
rbanffy
Most of the time, capitalism works as a zero-sum game - profits can be
extracted more easily from moving resources than from creating them and
therefore moving will be prefered to making.

We must admit there is something wrong when unemployment is rising together
with corporate profits and economic inequality. It's not only the average
rising - standard deviation is also increasing. The social tissue can only
stretch that much before it ruptures and nobody likes to be near the rupture.

~~~
CompelTechnic
>Most of the time, capitalism works as a zero-sum game - profits can be
extracted more easily from moving resources than from creating them and
therefore moving will be prefered to making.

This isn't true. At the heart of capitalism is any economic exchange- trading
sheep for wheat, trading dollars for an xbox, etc. For any trade to occur,
each party in the trade has to believe that they will gain from the exchange,
i.e. get increased utility/value from it. By that means, any economic exchange
where both parties are acting freely is most likely to be positive-sum, in
terms of value received. Where jobs have moved to poorer countries, real wages
have increased- this is indicative of the fact that they are now able to
produce goods and services that their trading counter-parties perceive to be
more valuable. This doesn't make rich countries as much worse off as you think
it does- the majority of the increased production of poorer countries goes to
meet local needs, overall having a relatively small effect on the price of
global labor.

On your other point, I will agree with ya that our current income inequality
is pretty bad.

~~~
flyinRyan
> trading sheep for wheat

Amusing example, since it is zero sum even if the two parties don't perceive
it as such.

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kristianp
This article is about the US $1.25 a day poverty line. This [1] article
indicates that diminishing returns will make it much harder to move the
remaining billion over that line.

1\. [http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-
as...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-astonishing-
chance-take-billion-people-out-extreme-poverty-2030-not)

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FD3SA
An excellent sentiment, but it must be noted that this is a very transient
time, both technologically and socioeconomically. The current situation in
Europe is a canary in the coal mine for the developed world, as technology
fiercely marches on and makes plebs of the middle class and rulers of the
lucky few who can capitalize on this technological upheaval.

I'm far more interested in conversations regarding where we are headed, rather
than from whence we've came [1].

1\. [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-
robo...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robots/)

~~~
thebear
_I'm far more interested in conversations regarding where we are headed,
rather than from whence we've came_

Can you have the former without the latter?

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EternalFury
The end of idiotic journalism is not in sight, obviously.

~~~
rbanffy
If you have criticism, please, be more detailed. Point the flaws you found in
the article and share with us.

