
Decline of Global Extreme Poverty Continues but Has Slowed - dcgudeman
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/09/19/decline-of-global-extreme-poverty-continues-but-has-slowed-world-bank
======
blocked_again
A lot of people seems to be skeptical about this. There is a wonderful book
called Factfullness which is written exactly for this kind of audience. In his
book, Rosling suggests the vast majority of human beings are wrong about the
state of the world. He believes his test subjects think the world is poorer,
less healthy, and more dangerous than it is. Bill gates sponsored this book
for all the students graduating from college and I can exactly see why by
going through this thread.

~~~
grecy
I've been driving around Africa for over 2 years now. 25 countries in West and
Southern Africa.

There is _a lot_ more development, infrastructure, happiness and success here
than the majority of "First Worlders" have any notion of. Even when I tell my
family directly they don't really believe me.

4G Internet, chip n pin (or contactless) Credit card payments, multi lane
freeways, high rise buildings and of course electricity and drinking water.
That's not just South Africa either, all of those exist in Rep. Congo,
Nigeria, Cameroon, Mali, Zambia just to name a few examples of where people
think of "poverty".

I have come to the conclusion that anyone who hasn't actually set food on this
continent (and ventured outside a guided "safari") has no way to discover the
truth about this place. There is no media outlet that actual portrays an
accurate picture, I have never even seen one that gets close.

~~~
GreeniFi
I’m an African, I’ve lived all over the continent (until very recently). What
you say is correct. By many metrics life has improved, and that is to be
celebrated. But internally, I’m a bit conflicted because for sure this
development has also come at a cost: (1) some of us now have electricity, but
we’ve poisoned our city air, (ii) some of us have running water, but we’ve
destroyed our watersheds and the severity of droughts is increasing, (iii) we
have better roads (thanks China!), but we’re extensifying our farm land into
forest because we’ve been caning our soils, (iv) we’ve got 4g and mobile
money, but man, our leaders still brutalize us if we step out of line.

In conclusion, I don’t dispute what you say, there is a great deal of
wonderful progress on the continent, but the narrative should not be
either/or, and of course varies by country, but it’s neither dystopian famine,
or development utopia.

~~~
cultus
It seems as if the onset of development is always coupled with horrible
environmental problems. Another 20 years in the future, Africa will have more
money to mitigate them.

~~~
GreeniFi
The gyst of Grantham’s essay which I posted below (also at the bottom of this
comment), throws into question that optimism. With evidence, Grantham
demonstrates the possibility that a nexus of climate change, soil degradation
and population growth threatens Africa’s development trajectory. My view is
that this will happen within 20 years as banks pull credit lines from farmers
at risk of weather shock. Indeed this is already happening and farmer’s
production goes off a cliff when they can’t get loans for good seed and
fertiliser.

I don’t write this because I’m a doom and gloom merchant. It’s because we need
to get real about investing sufficiently to course correct.

Edit: here’s Grantham’s essay:

[https://www.gmo.com/docs/default-source/research-and-
comment...](https://www.gmo.com/docs/default-source/research-and-
commentary/strategies/asset-allocation/the-race-of-our-lives-
revisited.pdf?sfvrsn=2)

------
kya_isro
That article should come out of Delhi or Beijing, not Washington. Thanks to
the western world, for stopping their evil doing in Asia (excluding Near
East). When US/France/UK get their ass out of Africa and Middle East, expect
further decline of global poverty.
[https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-
brought-271-mi...](https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-
brought-271-million-out-of-poverty-between-2005-16-similar-to-china-undp-
oxford-report-5368980/) Expecting a lot of downvotes in the HN crowd.

------
kya_isro
Well who was to blame for the poverty, the hard working men and women got out
off, in the first place. When can we get a report on that?

------
evilturnip
Does anyone know exactly why? I conjecture to say it's broadly the result of
capitalism. I really feel like it's a shame that word is almost toxic in
intellectual circles.

~~~
FranzFerdiNaN
Capitalism was the cause of extreme poverty, from enclosure movements to
slavery to industrialization to colonialism. To say that capitalism is to
thank for lifting people out of the tragedy is hilarious. Especially as
capitalism causes 8 individuals to be richer than half the world.

~~~
_louisr_
It's not hilarious to thank Capitalism for lifting people out of tragedy -
It's what has happened. Coal power plants in low income countries; iPhone
factories creating an economic explosion in China; T-Shirt factories in
Bangladesh. All of these things are the result of Capitalism and the free
market, and participating countries are doing well. They are accepting some
environmental damage, though. Consider that the company making the most
progress in sustainable energy is, well, a capitalist company.

Alternate systems have not worked out so well, as you know. Communist planned
economies led to the starvation of tens of millions, and that number increases
to hundreds of millions when you add the persecution, jailing, and sometimes
immediate execution of citizens of Communists states that had a history of
political activity of the wrong sort. Recall that in Soviet Russia it was
beneficial for each individual to "inform" on their neighbours to the KGB, so
that they could claim their apartment. And it's suspected that Vladmir Putin
is actually the richest person in the world.

Colonialism and slavery are pretty rough, but they are not a product of
capitalism as much as a product of human malevolence and brutality. I'm sure
you would find evidence of colonialism and slavery in pre-civilization times
and in non-capitalist societies, so that argument falls flat.

Also, regarding the 8 richest individuals - If the rest of the world is
getting on OK, why should we not have a couple of super rich people around?
Why is that inherently bad? Why do _you_ think you should have a say of where
that money belongs, exactly?

~~~
4lejandrito
"...and that number increases to hundreds of millions when you add the
persecution, jailing, and sometimes immediate execution of citizens of
Communists states that had a history of political activity of the wrong
sort..."

Why is that not a product of human malevolence and brutality?

I'm sure you would find evidence of persecution, jailing and sometimes
execution of citizens in pre-civilization.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Communism is about centralized control of a population. The central authority
determines what you get, what you pay, what you do, and so on. Capitalism, by
contrast, is a decentralized system. What you pay for something is little more
than a product of the market. And you're free to do anything you want, so long
as there is a demand for it.

Imagine I want to send a rocket to Mars. And then I go and check the prices
and see these companies want hundreds of millions of dollars to launch one.
That makes me confused. The materials to make that rocket cost at most on the
order of tens of millions of dollars, and labor certainly doesn't explain the
rest. I bet I could make one for less. And it turns out I can. Then a couple
of decades later, I'm the biggest rocket supplier on the planet. In a
communist system your only option there would be to try to appeal to the
bureaucracy, and if you're lucky you _might_ eventually, some years later, get
a reply to your filing of form FNE-34821.43-z: _' We disagree. Thanks for your
input, comrade.'_ Of course this probably isn't a fair comparison. In a
communist system nobody would ever have the resources to even dream of being
able to do something like launch rockets to Mars. Instead you'd have to beg
old entrenched government bureaucrats to do it. I'm wouldn't hold my breath.

This notion of an economic system being driven by the people instead of being
driven by the government is why in a capitalist system you're generally free
to argue for a communist system - with some unfortunate exceptions, yet in a
communist system arguing for capitalism is often enough to get you
'disappeared' \- with some fortunate exceptions. Maybe even more visibly in a
capitalist system you could even _start_ a communistic system. Want to buy
5000 acres of land and start communitopia? Feel free to! Want to buy 5,000
acres of land and start capitalitopia in a communist nation? It's simply not
possible.

~~~
emiliobumachar
Good points, but bad example. The Soviets invented spaceflight.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
You bring up a good point, but I think this actually really nails the issue.
The point is not that government bureaucracy _cannot_ achieve great things.
Our achievement of putting a man on the moon was supposed to be a product of
the capitalist system. In reality it was mostly socialist in execution as a
heavily publicly funded affair directed by a state level organization
primarily with state employees to achieve a bureaucratically directed goal.
The point is what happens when what the government thinks is good and what the
people think is good differ?

And we also saw this exact scenario play out in space. We never really managed
to bring space to into the capitalist system. And once the government 'won'
the space race, their interests shifted from space. Not only did progress halt
but we technologically regressed. We put a man on the moon in 1969. Today,
half a century later, we're struggling just to try to send a man _around_ the
moon - let alone land on it. No human has left low earth orbit since 1972! But
at the same time space has now been _genuinely_ introduced into the capitalist
system and so long as the people have a desire for more, the odds of us
entering into another 50 year regression are rapidly approaching 0.

------
shakehar
[https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-
release/2018/09/19/d...](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-
release/2018/09/19/decline-of-global-extreme-poverty-continues-but-has-slowed-
world-bank)

Non pay wall link with the same info

~~~
IloveHN84
Thanks..I don't understand why people continue linking WSJ even due the fact
that not everybody has a subscription with them

~~~
cimmanom
Probably be cause they found an interesting article there and didn’t realize
it was available elsewhere (and sometimes it actually isn’t).

------
known
I think credit should go to Globalization;

~~~
thecopy
Yes, globalisation plus free trade and capitalism.

~~~
m_mueller
IMO that only works when it's coupled with progress in governance. Compare
Venezuela to India over the last 30 years, and extrapolate into the near
future what will happen there.

Edit: Just to anticipate the obligatory "Venezuala communist -> bad outcome"
comment: Yes, but _why_ are they communist?

~~~
thecopy
>Compare Venezuela to India over the last 30 years, and extrapolate into the
near future what will happen there.

Compare how? What do you mean will happen?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _What do you mean will happen?_

Even in its deepest crises, India's army did not play kingmaker. Furthermore,
India's federated structure–while annoying to reformers–checks the power of
aspiring dictators. Every uneducated population, it seems, elects populists
from time to time. The damage they can do in India appears to be more limited
than the damage done to Venezuela by Chavez and Maduro. Venezuela will
probably be an impoverished nation for decades; India has a chance of becoming
a middle-income or even developed country by 2050.

------
ape4
Still seems like quite a lot

~~~
dlp211
Consider that we started with nearly everyone in extreme poverty 200 years
ago.

~~~
kevmo
What about 500 years ago?

~~~
07d046
Almost everyone was extremely poor then too.

You can tell from the percentage of the labour force who worked on farms that
most people couldn't have been wealthy, and the industrial revolution changed
everything.

[https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-
agriculture](https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture)

~~~
singularity2001
Interesting charts, thanks.

[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/agriculture-value-
added-p...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/agriculture-value-added-per-
worker-wdi)

Shocking that corn and cow producers in India are 90% less productive than in
the US.

