
Evidence for Abundance - Alexey_Nigin
http://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-better-than-you-think-in-10-powerful-charts/
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bazzargh
One of the graphs struck me as odd - percent of per capita disposable income
spent on food, falling. The problem with that is inequality - it's been widely
discussed that most of the gains of the last decade have been made by the
richest, while wages for the poorest have stagnated. But that means the
percent of disposable income spent on food by the poorest might not be falling
at all?

It turns out USADA do have that graph as well (in fact it's the one right
below the one in the article, taken from [http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-
products/ag-and-food-statistics...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-
and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending.aspx))
[http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-
gallery/detail.a...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-
gallery/detail.aspx?chartId=40096&ref=collection&embed=True&widgetId=39734) \-
for the lowest quintile of the US population, the % of disposable income spent
on food has gone _up_ from 32% to 34% from 2006 to 2014.

The abundant future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed?

~~~
smac8
> while wages for the poorest have stagnated. But that means the percent of
> disposable income spent on food by the poorest might not be falling at all

No, that's not true at all. If wages are stagnant and goods are getting
cheaper, then you are getting richer. I see this "stagnant wages" meme brought
up all the time, but I don't see why nobody ever talks about cost of goods.
Ex: Even the poorest today in the US can afford amazingly complex cellphones
and computers, which was unthinkable 25 years ago (if we were to somehow make
one of the same capacity)

~~~
dragonwriter
> If wages are stagnant and goods are getting cheaper, then you are getting
> richer. I see this "stagnant wages" meme brought up all the time, but I
> don't see why nobody ever talks about cost of goods.

Because the wages are stagnant in real (that is, inflation-adjusted) terms,
which means that the cost of goods is _already considered_.

~~~
ianai
Considered for the most part. You will expectedly still be able to find goods
and services that cost considerably more or less than in past, real terms.

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Isamu
> NOTE: This is not to say that there aren't major issues we still face, like
> climate crisis, religious radicalism, terrorism, and so on.

The author felt compelled to include this disclaimer because people are afraid
that by pointing out the good trends, that we are taking our eye off the ball
in eradicating problems. As if by pointing out any promising trends in
poverty, that this is equivalent to saying that we should stop trying to
eradicate poverty. As if we declared mission accomplished!

I think this explains the aversion to good-news reporting, not that we over-
emphasize the negative because of evolutionary bias. We always feel we need to
add a disclaimer: but there is more work to do!

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Aelinsaar
If I've learned one thing from this, it's that the worst places on Earth are
in Sub-Saharan Africa. That's some staggering poverty which has really
resisted major change after what appears to be a major shift in the early
80's.

Guinea worm is a great victory, but like Smallpox it's not emblematic of a
general trend. You should not look at a chart of guinea worm infections and
draw conclusions about rates of Malaria, VHF's, HIV, etc.

What has clearly and drastically improved is the standard of living in the US
and Western Europe, which should shock no one at all.

~~~
Isamu
The Bottom Billion is a good book about the factors that make the poorest
regions in the world, of which Sub-Saharan Africa is the largest block.

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

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rosalinekarr
Does the first chart account for inflation seeing as it's defined in terms of
US dollars?

~~~
maxerickson
Yes. The source is a bit clearer on the point, mentioning that the chart is in
terms of 2011PPP. So it accounts for differences in cost of living too,
attempting to measure consumption in vaguely absolute terms. (a bit down the
page: [https://ourworldindata.org/world-
poverty/](https://ourworldindata.org/world-poverty/) )

As a meta point, financial statistics that don't account for inflation are so
utterly meaningless and bankrupt the thing to do if you have this concern is
to go check and report back if they are crap. The default assumption should be
that they do account for inflation.

