
The Disappearing Poor - RickJWagner
https://towardsdatascience.com/the-disappearing-poor-6c68789e5a53
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esaysimyan
Is this only applicable to the western countries, or are you using data from
the east?

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sliken
Reminds me of:

[https://momsguidetotravel.com/bill-gates-and-the-global-
poor...](https://momsguidetotravel.com/bill-gates-and-the-global-poor/)

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RickJWagner
Wow, that's got an amazing line:

Bill Gates predicts that by 2035, “there will be almost no poor countries left
in the world.”

I'd never heard that. Great news!

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plmu
Ireland richer than Switzerland?!? In terms of GDP maybe, but not in terms of
wealth amongst the population. I.e. this article is incorrect.

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petermcneeley
Could have been titled "The disappearing Middle class" but hey who wants to
talk about late stage capitalism.

[https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/2/2/16868838/el...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/2/2/16868838/elephant-graph-chart-global-inequality-economic-
growth)

~~~
bryanlarsen
That article leads with a graph that shows massive gains for ~80% of the
world's population and then tries to claim that this is a bad thing.

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pariahHN
The thing is, it depends on your perspective. Local to America, yes there is a
vanishing middle class.

Globally, yes there is a lift out of poverty.

Ideally we would see a global lift out of poverty without any local negative
impacts re middle/upper classes - everybody rising to the same level instead
of some rising and some falling. It's also a lot easier to rise out of poverty
when it takes relatively little advancement, and easier to fall into poverty
when it takes relatively little loss.

I think that aspect of things is often overlooked - poverty doesn't mean the
same thing everywhere, and middle class doesn't mean the same thing
everywhere. Some areas are rising, but some are falling - as a sum, things are
rising.

It's the same thing as global warming - yeah, some areas are getting colder
instead of warmer and this is pointed to as being evidence of global warming
== false, but global warming refers to on _average_ across the whole globe not
just a single region.

People tend to conflate their local with the global, sometimes because they
just miss it and sometimes deliberately.

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cpr
The "exploiting xenophobia" explanation rings hollow.

The mainstream media has long been the lapdog and mouthpiece of the elite
(deep state)--see Operation Mockingbird, which continues to this day.

It serves the purposes of our masters to keep us divided and fearful (as well
as only "bad news" making the buck), but it's not xenophobia they're pushing,
it's a generally negative view of reality to keep us discouraged and turning
to them for leadership.

