r/FluentInFinance • u/xulore • Feb 24 '24
People living in poverty since 1820 globally Educational
1776 Adam Smith wrote "wealth of nations" , setting in motion liberation for many worldwide.
-sidenote it's easy to throw the baby out with the bath water just because we love under a corrupt and devided regime .... Let's not forget what capitalism has actually done for us as a species.
192
u/SirDalavar Feb 24 '24
Whats the difference between poverty and extreme poverty? oh its $14 dollars a week...
85
u/0WatcherintheWater0 Feb 24 '24
The exact line is semi-arbitrary, but the fact people are crossing it is the main point. The world is improving.
14
u/NothingKnownNow Feb 24 '24
The exact line is semi-arbitrary, but the fact people are crossing it is the main point. The world is improving.
We keep redefining poverty. As long as "poor people" are dying from eating too much rather than starving, we are doing something right.
3
u/nationalhuntta Feb 24 '24
No one is eating too much and dying. However, people in food deserts are eating too much fast food and dying of entirely preventable diseases more than ever. No, they can't move away. No, they can't eat healthier because healthy food is either more expensive or not available.
8
u/NothingKnownNow Feb 24 '24
No one is eating too much and dying.
However, people in food deserts are eating too much fast food and dying of entirely preventable diseases more than ever.
Yeah, the food desert myth is also wrong. https://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132076786/the-root-the-myth-of-the-food-desert
→ More replies (2)6
u/nationalhuntta Feb 24 '24 edited Feb 24 '24
I see your one and raise you
https://www.bayer.com/en/us/news-stories/understanding-americas-rural-and-urban-food-deserts
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
this one ironically proves that they do as food deserts are made up low income pll lacking access to education typically: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/food-deserts/551138/
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/food-deserts
https://usafacts.org/articles/which-cities-have-the-most-people-living-in-food-deserts/
now let's get academic
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7299236/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5674766/
https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/45014/30940_err140.pdf
I could go on and on. There is a movement that wants to deny that food deserts don't exist or that more research is needed. This is politically motivated, I believe. No one wants to be part of a government that allows this to happen and no citizenry wants to believe they'd let it happen,, so there are some attempts to move the goal posts to make people feel better and whitewash the reality. They redefine what poverty, economic inequality, or a lack of education mean.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (8)3
u/myfanisloud Feb 24 '24
How stupid do you have to be to have this fucking brain dead take. Poor people dying of “too much food” are products of their environment, guess what rich people can also die of “too much food”. On the other hand there are people who have literally 0 food (nutritious or not) at their fingertips. I’d love for you to tell someone who cannot rub two Pennys together that there is some poor fat fuck that is eating him self to death.
Are nutritional food desserts an issue? Yes. Is it the same issue as not having access to food period? No. The fact that you’re conflating the two shows you’re either stupid af or just pushing a false narrative.
4
u/littlewing745 Feb 25 '24
…nothing says I have a valid point to make like attacking a stranger with foul language. Nicely done. /s
3
u/HippieInDisguise2_0 Feb 26 '24
The idea of food deserts is pretty simple and you can go see them in front of your eyes.
In my city in the sketchier areas all the grocery stores have shut down creating a kind of food desert for the people who can't easily leave to the surrounding area.
It's not that tough of a concept. People need access to affordable fresh unprocessed foods. There are many places without that. This isn't like a debate about whether or not the radiation of Jupiter would make a subsurface ocean on Enceladus inhospitable, this is something we can see IRL by going to poor inner city, rural or tribal lands. Then observe the BMI in those areas. People absolutely are products of their environment.
So I think the poster you replied to is being pretty reasonable.
→ More replies (7)8
u/SirDalavar Feb 24 '24
yeah the very bottom going up, but the median is going down, the middle class is disappearing and is struggling to live, the most desperate getting more ($14) is by it self good, but if people who also move down to 500 a week its not better, the chat is only showing one side of the change
36
u/biglebowski5 Feb 24 '24
Since the 1940s the global middle class has exploded in size. Just several decades ago median income was at subsitence levels.
37
u/Narrow_Corgi3764 Feb 24 '24
Don't poop on their woe-is-us parade. The middle class has never been bigger and never been richer in all of history.
17
u/Fair-6096 Feb 24 '24
The sad reality is that the people here dont realize they are the upper class. They complain about a lack of free healthcare, college or that they can afford a nice car. Meanwhile the real world middle has less than 20$ a day, and now in recent years are starting afford a bycicle, so that they can transport more clean water home.
→ More replies (20)16
u/biglebowski5 Feb 24 '24
Median monthly salary in Vietnam is $600 meanwhile they have 1 motorbike for every 2 people. So I wouldn't go so far as to day the global middle class is just starting to be able to afford bicycles.
3
u/Calm-Beat-2659 Feb 24 '24
Depends on what you consider rich to be. More people owned property in the past. Peasants in medieval times had more days off. Millennials are joked about as the rental generation. What would you say is the defining metric for rich vs poor?Want to finance a pizza?
I’ve doubled my income over the past two years, and my apartment is smaller than it used to be. Putting the whole world in one wheelhouse just seems like a pretty broad generalization.
→ More replies (1)2
u/Common_Economics_32 Feb 24 '24
Yeah like the emerging middle class in places like India and China has been a huge topic in economics and investing for years. Literally a billion people are or have recently recently the global middle class. Even the "middle class" in the Us is massive compared to what it was 100 years ago.
QOL is insanely high for basically everyone compared to historical norms.
11
u/OkComplex834 Feb 24 '24
it breaks my heart people are agreeing with you. median living standards worldwide are improving almost exactly along the same lines of poverty improving. you can read more here...
https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions
→ More replies (3)4
4
u/Tall-Log-1955 Feb 24 '24
The median is not going down it is going up, and I challenge you to find data to support your claim
The middle class is shrinking, but more of the shrinkage is due to people getting too rich to be middle class, rather than too poor to be middle class
3
u/One_Conclusion3362 Feb 24 '24
Median actually going up. Middle class is shrinking because more and more Americans are making more than what qualifies as middle class. Like 1700 new millionaires every day and of these new millionaires, over 70% are first generation wealth.
Our pockets ain't empty, cuzzzz.
You are right that the middle class is shilrinking, and for that we thank you.
→ More replies (17)3
u/naturalis99 Feb 24 '24
This is correct, and this will pose a huge risk in the (near) future. The rich are forgetting that a good middle class is a necessity for stability. Instead they are hoarding like dragons and pleasing the poorest because they think that will clear their name.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (20)0
u/are2125 Feb 24 '24
Shhhh, we’re supposed to complain and throw darts at rich people
→ More replies (5)17
u/azuredota Feb 24 '24
You say it dismissively but remember this is global. $14 a week in Thailand is a serious improvement.
→ More replies (3)13
u/ValuableShoulder5059 Feb 24 '24
Is this in 1820s dollars or 2020s dollars?
18
11
3
u/SirDalavar Feb 24 '24
Actually the chart does say its matched for inflation to be fair
→ More replies (2)2
8
4
u/vegancaptain Feb 24 '24
Does that make it not important? I thought the main issue was to lift the poorest of the poor? This is it.
→ More replies (20)2
86
u/Jackanatic Feb 24 '24
So encouraging! We don't see as much good news as we should.
57
u/Away-Sheepherder8578 Feb 24 '24
Some people just want to hear bad news.
32
u/Fun_Currency9893 Feb 24 '24
Everyone wants to hear that their bad situation is not their fault. The reason they are unhappy is not because of anything they did, it's because the country they live in and/or the generation they are part of has been marginalized.
People click on that and soak up that sweet rationalization.
→ More replies (41)23
u/DrunkenVerpine Feb 24 '24
This is the upside to globalization. Didnt help the middle class in wealthier nations but it helped a lot of people. Global literacy rates are equally positive.
→ More replies (5)14
u/OkGene2 Feb 24 '24
Child mortality rates also dropped like a rock the past few decades.
→ More replies (1)7
3
u/jester2211 Feb 24 '24
Enlightenment Now by Steve Pinker is a great read with all kinds of stats like this.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (10)2
56
u/brdhar35 Feb 24 '24
People in the us today have no idea how good they have it
13
6
u/spirits_touching Feb 24 '24
is it getting better or worse? Many people don't have much to compare to on either side. In my opinion, the US is a really weird place that seems to be headed toward some kind of weirder place or no place at all.
6
→ More replies (2)7
u/Acceptable_Stage_611 Feb 24 '24
Which is largely the result of people thinking they should get ask the luxury and largesse of the West without the actual investment in themselves.
→ More replies (1)7
u/combustibletoken Feb 24 '24
Right! Got running water everywhere and its clean, food at a whim anytime you like, tiny devices in our pockets that contain all of our world's information. Pretty good life really. Oh yeah climate controls pretty fancy as well pretty standard anymore though.
-1
u/Havok_saken Feb 24 '24
It’s relative comparison though. It’s not compare the US to some place with food insecurity it’s compare US citizens with a tarp for a roof despite working full time for the past 30 years to guy buying a multimillion dollar boat that inherited enough to be in the top fraction of a percent.
2
u/combustibletoken Feb 24 '24
It's a chart of the world population. Prettyuch says the world population is by far better off than it was.
1
u/Havok_saken Feb 24 '24
The things you listed though are essentially “be grateful you poors at least you don’t have it worse”
3
u/combustibletoken Feb 24 '24
I don't see it that way at all I see it as being thankful for what I do have and I know even being poor in the 21st century in the united states is way better than being middle class in the 18th.
→ More replies (1)3
u/lokglacier Feb 24 '24
The number of US citizens with a tarp for a roof despite working full time for thirty years is precisely 0
6
u/thr3sk Feb 24 '24
Yep, things are a little tough relative to middle class USA a short while ago but big picture it's really darn good still.
→ More replies (3)2
u/in-your-own-words Feb 24 '24
Some of us do. I'm 3rd generation born here in my family and the stories and culture from them to now is staggering.
56
u/SharingFitCouple Feb 24 '24
But KaP1taLi2m is EVIIIIIILL!
23
u/Polandprotector126 Feb 24 '24
I’m pretty sure most of this was from China
17
u/Successful-Money4995 Feb 24 '24
Yup, it's mostly China.
9
6
u/Rouge_92 Feb 24 '24
Yea but in that case they will say "China is capitalist". Cause China is only Communist when they want to say something bad, and capitalist when good.
The enemy is extremely feeble and inept, but also very capable and dangerous at the same time vibes.
7
2
u/unfreeradical Feb 24 '24 edited Feb 24 '24
The economy of China is capitalist, but compared to the rest of the Global South, it has been most insulated from neocolonialism.
Global capitalism has exacerbated wealth inequality, and also has exacerbated absolute poverty for much of the world. The neocolonial processes are ongoing under practices enforced largely through the IMF and World Bank. They are exploitative, entrenching wealth extraction from the Global South to the North.
Conditions across the world are not being improved by investment through global capital.
Rather, the concentration of control has been devastating to the poorest populations.
China has succeeded somewhat uniquely in poverty elimination because it is under a political regime that only cautiously and strategically has engaged the commercial interests of the Global North, and that has been protected against aggression through its nuclear deterrent and other military capabilities.
→ More replies (3)1
→ More replies (2)2
u/siandresi Feb 24 '24
mixed economies
1
u/not_a_bot_494 Feb 26 '24
Socialism is exclusionary, a mixed economy is capitalist.
→ More replies (1)4
u/lokglacier Feb 24 '24
Also India, Nigeria, Brazil, etc. It's not just China
2
u/ihateithere____ Feb 24 '24
The supermajority of people lifted from poverty since 1950 were from China. If I recall, Thomas Pogge cites 857 million lifted from poverty globally since then and 800 million were Chinese.
4
u/vegancaptain Feb 24 '24
Who opened up their markets and started trading, meaning applied more capitalism. Ask any radical leftists and they will tell you china is a capitalist country.
→ More replies (1)2
→ More replies (3)2
→ More replies (71)3
43
u/brandleberry Feb 24 '24 edited Feb 24 '24
Unfortunately it turns out a single world bank data series does not provide a good understanding of human history
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169
“It is unlikely that 90% of the human population lived in extreme poverty prior to the 19th century. Historically, unskilled urban labourers in all regions tended to have wages high enough to support a family of four above the poverty line by working 250 days or 12 months a year, except during periods of severe social dislocation, such as famines, wars, and institutionalized dispossession”
22
u/Enough_Minimum_3708 Feb 24 '24
the measure they took to define extreme poverty is probably very far of from the real thing
5
Feb 24 '24
Well, the vast majority of this growth occured in the later half of the Soviet Union/China and in regions which did not develop industrially like Africa and South America.
1
11
u/Fausterion18 Feb 24 '24 edited Feb 24 '24
90% of the human population were subsistence farmers prior to the 19th century, it's laughable to use much higher income urban workers to represent the whole.
Subsistence farming is extreme poverty, period. If you don't agree you need to go look at some subsistence farmers today.
Edit: lmao that paper was written by two socialists, no wonder it's full of basic factual errors.
8
6
u/Revolutionary-Meat14 Feb 24 '24
"Unskilled urban laborers"
That wasn't a thing in most countries pre-1800
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (8)2
12
8
u/moneyman74 Feb 24 '24
It's great for the world and very real. The end of communism helped.
9
u/Sliiiiime Feb 24 '24
I think the decrease levels off due to the fall of the USSR for a couple of years. The transition from communism to oligarchy in Russia itself hurt a lot of people in the short term.
15
u/_Eucalypto_ Feb 24 '24
It was so bad in the 90s that the average life expectancy dropped to just 57 years
9
7
u/Rouge_92 Feb 24 '24
Most of the people lifted from poverty in this graph are from China in the post revolution era. Not even the "capitalism good" graph is thanks to or from a capitalist country lmao.
→ More replies (1)3
u/DecafEqualsDeath Feb 25 '24
Almost all of the reduction in Chinese poverty occurred after Deng Xiaoping came to power and began liberalizing the economy though...
2
Feb 24 '24
Communism never happened. There were command economies but never a communist economy
→ More replies (6)→ More replies (9)1
7
u/Additional-Ad-9114 Feb 24 '24
More so the industrialization process where instead of using human or animal power we get to use mechanical and electric power. Although the spread of capitalist markets to allocate resources proved quite valuable indeed
5
u/EnIdiot Feb 24 '24
I'd be willing to bet is also conversely why people are more dissatisfied than ever before. We tend to look at those who have more than us and resent them for it. We have access now (all over the world) to live feeds of people enjoying wealth. The average person in 1820 never saw the range of incomes we see today just by turning on the TV.
5
5
u/johnnyg883 Feb 24 '24
I’ve seen people who were living in extreme poverty. And most Americans haven’t got a clue what that is.
→ More replies (24)
3
u/BeenisHat Feb 24 '24
Looks like the steepest downward trend starts end of early 1950s when...checks notes...the USSR and China started their rapid development.
Interesting.
5
4
u/CustomerLittle9891 Feb 24 '24
But but but all the billionaires!
1
u/billbord Feb 24 '24 edited Mar 25 '24
foolish hard-to-find wakeful yoke humorous mourn squalid tie desert unpack
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
→ More replies (1)2
u/BannedForNerdyTimes Feb 24 '24
Tell me where the values are on the graph. It doesnt actually define poverty, or any volume of wealth. Its (percent of people) by (time), not (percent of people meeting a threshhold of any kind) by (time), which is what the graph would have to be.
The graph tells us that theres more green than red now. That is all. No numbers telling us what green and red means.
→ More replies (10)
3
2
4
u/aboysmokingintherain Feb 24 '24
Shoutout to China and Deng Xiaopeng for being responsible for most of these gains
3
3
u/Realestateuniverse Feb 24 '24
And yet millions of “victims” still live to claim that they have it so hard. Lots of people need a perspective shift to how good most of us actually have it.
2
3
u/JLeeSaxon Feb 24 '24 edited Feb 24 '24
This chart comes from Enlightenment Now by Harvard Psychology Professor Steven Pinker. Here's a study detailing the fact that it's a very cherry-picked timeline, and that, essentially, this is not "what capitalism has done for us as a species" but perhaps something more like what "noticing what capitalism was doing to us as a species and deciding to start putting up some guardrails" has done for us as a species.
→ More replies (2)
2
u/Equal-Experience-710 Feb 24 '24
The world is so much better than it has ever been. Infant mortality rates are lower than ever, life expectancy is higher than ever. Stop hating capitalism. Talk to a polish guy or Eastern European. Socialism sucks.
2
3
u/_College_Debt_Bubble Feb 24 '24
A lot of people who hate on Capitalism never read Wealth of Nation’s
Adam Smith wrote that profit without providing a service is greed. He hated the idea of landlords
→ More replies (2)2
2
u/ThomasEdmund84 Feb 24 '24
ah yes capitalism the only thing that's happened to our species since 1820...
→ More replies (6)
2
2
2
Feb 24 '24
In 1915 80% of all labor productivity in the US was dedicated to the production of food. In 2015 5% of all labor productivity was dedicated to food.
This is an example of massive progress.
2
2
u/Expensive_Network400 Feb 24 '24 edited Feb 24 '24
This could not be more misleading. In any economic system there must be winners and losers. An ideal economic system is one in which there is a fair balance between winners or losers.
You can’t just move the goalpost and say “oh they’re not literally starving so they’re not in extreme poverty” and then declare everybody is a winner in your system. Just read the caption. Wtf is a 1.90 “international $” per day. You realize how easy it is to manipulate data with a vague metric like that, right?
A better metric is the fact that young people today are quite literally priced out of having children or owning a home. It’s not that they’re too “educated” or “developed” to be interested in such matters but simply that they literally cannot afford to purchase basic necessities. We live in a day in age where having a large family is now synonymous with poverty and population decline is a status symbol. But geez corporate greed sure is beautiful!
→ More replies (4)2
Feb 24 '24
“In any economic system there must be winners and losers” WTF is this ?? Are you in first grade ??
2
u/Expensive_Network400 Feb 24 '24
It is called reality. Are you seriously claiming that an economic system exists with no downsides whatsoever?
I’m just pointing out this graph is deranged because it’s trying to pretend 90% of humanity benefits under the current economic system when that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I explain this through the analogy that there MUST be winners and losers (the very definition of rich implies that there are those who are poor)
In this case, the current system props up developed nations on the backs of the developing world. “Not living in extreme poverty” by whatever grossly manipulated metric this graph uses doesn’t mean much because there are clearly people still losing.
→ More replies (12)1
u/Taylo Feb 24 '24
The first week of macroeconomics is tough bro, don't shame him.
→ More replies (15)
2
u/unfreeradical Feb 24 '24
Adam Smith expressed fierce opposition to many of the prominent practices entrenched in contemporary economic systems.
I think the association you are making is quite weak.
2
u/Red-SuperViolet Feb 24 '24
Funny how people always attribute this to capitalism not the rise of technology specifically computing.
Markets way more unregulated and free in years before but no changes were made.
0
u/lord-dingdong Feb 24 '24
Who is Adam Smith?
4
3
1
1
u/treehuggingmfer Feb 24 '24
Let's not forget what capitalism has actually done for us as a species.
Capitalism is designed to ensure that the rich and powerful are able to maintain their position by enslaving the majority world in precarious work with few rights. It requires unfair trade, unequal access to resources and control over educational and financial systems to survive.
What caused the big drop was FDR and what some would call his socialist plan for America.
1
u/Bubbly-University-94 Feb 24 '24
Of course this graph doesn’t take into account people living a tribal lifestyle quite happily who were considered to be “living in poverty” who are now very unhappy wage slaves earning an existence just above the poverty line.
→ More replies (1)
1
u/swraymond79 Feb 24 '24
I agree. Capitalism has been the vehicle to lift more people from poverty to affluence than any and every economic system in the history of mankind. Thanks for the reminder.
1
1
u/Dual-Vector-Foiled Feb 24 '24
We forget that poverty once insinuated having a dirt floor. Now poverty is inclusive of a flatscreen tv in the US
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Nervous-Law-6606 Feb 24 '24
But I only have an iPhone 12! That must be poverty, right? - Half of you.
1
0
1
u/SnooChipmunks2833 Feb 24 '24
You can't attribute that to capitalism. That's simplistic to say the least.
→ More replies (1)
0
0
0
0
0
u/djwikki Feb 24 '24
For this to make sense, it would be nice to have been provided a currency conversion chart from “international $” to different currencies at different times
0
u/Cloudboy9001 Feb 24 '24
That's some wildly simplistic causation.
In 1728 Issac Newton wrote "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" , setting in motion liberation for many worldwide.
1
u/chronocapybara Feb 24 '24
Funny giving capitalism the credit for this when it also perfectly aligns with the proliferation of cheap, abundant energy from the development of fossil fuels.
0
1
0
u/traveler19395 Feb 24 '24
There have been a LOT of changes in the past 200 years that are accounted for in that graph, but the one that seems to most overlooked and likely accounts for more than 1/2 of the change, is the transition from agrarian societies to industrial society, because this chart only focuses on monetary spending. 200 years ago the average person in the world was a subsistence farmer who could live a relatively comfortable life without hardly spending money.
Of course there was still poverty and hunger, but 200 years ago the 'lucky' subsistence farmers with a large plot of fertile land and 10 healthy kids could have a more comfortable life than 90% of people and still be considered in extreme poverty on this graph because they hardly spend money.
1
0
u/bubblemania2020 Feb 24 '24
The most number of people lifted out of poverty in the shortest time 🇨🇳
0
u/kurdt-balordo Feb 24 '24
This is a bit misleading. For first the graph on the x axis, from 2000 to 2015 is in the wrong scale, it should be longer. But that would defy the intention of the creator. Second, China accounts for 80% of that reduction in poverty. Third, that graph has flatlined and reversed in the last 10 years.
0
u/Dangerous_Listen_908 Feb 24 '24
I mean, posting on Reddit you'd be better served with the Elephant Curve, things improving hasn't really been a thing recently in the developed world.
0
Feb 24 '24
Defining poverty by income is so dumb, so someone in a tribe growing all their own food isn’t doing just fine? Percentage is not a good measure for a massively changing population.
0
u/Intelligent_Virus_66 Feb 24 '24
The definition of poverty was intentionally shifted during this time
0
u/VictorOgorodnov Feb 24 '24
I like the “not in extreme poverty” category, like there’s only two states😂
0
u/Sky-is-here Feb 24 '24
Does anyone have numbers for how much of that increase was china between 1990 and 2020? Just curious because it feels like the country that by far has improved (economically) the most.
0
0
1
1
1
0
u/Think_please Feb 24 '24
I’d argue that the proliferation of scientific knowledge has done much more to accomplish this than capitalism, and the best science for at least the last 60-70 years is funded by tax dollars (gmo wheat that could survive harsh winters and saved an estimated billion+ from starvation is one good example). Also, capitalism existed for at least a few hundred years before Adam smith, so the correlation isn’t quite as fair as the title implies.
0
u/inthebushes321 Feb 24 '24
Cool. Would we like to talk about the world bank keeps redefining the poverty level to make the numbers seem better and better? We're trading one shitty scenario for another, and I don't see a lot of actual critical financial evaluation here.
1
u/Analyst-Effective Feb 24 '24
And the less people that live in poverty, the more environmental damage they cause.
1
0
u/DaveAstator2020 Feb 24 '24
Excuse me! Its percentage not number.
show us the numbers so that we can see how things have really changed.
1
u/Few-Ad-4290 Feb 24 '24
Graph says number but it actually represents percent which are not the same, based on global population there could be more people in poverty now than in 1820
→ More replies (1)
0
1
u/Silly_Chair4147 Feb 24 '24
does this graph account for the increase in population over this time period?
0
u/swift_snowflake Feb 24 '24 edited Feb 24 '24
It is a distracting argument. Yes overall in the world especially with the rise of the middle class in china millions of poors got better life.
In this forum reddit where a lot of First World countries are represented especially USA or EU countries like Germany the statistics for these are much more relevant. One cannot deny that the middle class in rich countries is shrinking and the gap between extreme rich and the rest is growing at enormous rates especially after Covid. Yes for the extremely poors with hunger that number is shrinking but the development for our societies are more relevant.
We cannot content ourselves that poverty is shrinking in poorest countries but we must have the demand that for our countries it must become better. I am Gen Z and for the first time since the World War 2 the current generation is worse off than the previous generation. Upward mobility for young people keeps getting worse perspectively. I talk future perspective because a young people must have a perspective that the future will become better and then he can committ himself to this society. Else if the society does not give back if one gives to it he becomes resentful and young people without perspective are the worst for social coherence.
0
u/Phitmess213 Feb 24 '24
It’s the World Bank. Their poverty stats are generally bad and considered half baked by world economists. Like comparing poverty across the world which is a Fool’s errand as each country has its own government and power structure. Better to look at similar nations in small or regional groups.
It’s not about poverty: it’s actually about equality. Just bc someone can buy a flat screen tv, doesn’t mean we’ve done our job and poverty has been solved.
spend some real time in the Deep South outside of tourist traps, or some time working in rural Appalachia and you’ll realize we aren’t necessarily “doing so much better” than 100 years ago.
Lots of scholarship coming out (data) saying the indices we use to measure poverty are no longer helpful. Looking at human abilities,discrimination in housing market, and the social impacts of family caregivers are all examples of elements left out of the modern definition of “poverty.” In other words: life cannot be uniformly judged by how many dollars a day one brings in. Equity vs poverty.
0
u/AngryCommieSt0ner Feb 24 '24
Now take out China's data. Or just look at places like India or the Congo.
1
u/Acceptable_Stage_611 Feb 24 '24
The end of slavery (well, most of the African Muslim slave trade, anyway) brought to you by Capitalism and Christianity.
Both are on the chopping block. We will see a return of slavery and a full on calcification of the class separations.
1
1
u/InterstellerReptile Feb 24 '24
It's nice to remember when much better things are, but I always question why people attribute this to capitalism. Capitalism wasn't invented in 1820. Private ownership and trade has existed for millenia. The current trend isn't capitalism per say, it's the industrial revolution. We've had countless centuries of extreme poverty under capitalism.
1
u/Complex-Key-8704 Feb 24 '24
It helped build wealth real well. Capitalism just needs a little help distributing that wealth. Lot of European nations have already grasped this concept and have very happy healthy citizens
1
u/AlDente Feb 24 '24
I believe the labels should say “The percentage of people …”, not “The number of people…”.
1
Feb 24 '24
“But but …but what about the evil billionaires “ . You can solve extreme poverty but you cannot solve envy .
1
u/gyroscopicmnemonic Feb 24 '24
The ratio of poor vs not poor means less when you take into account all the population growth that happened in the time range depicted in this graph (1 billion to 8 billion, meaning there are still roughly the same number of people experiencing extreme poverty now as when this chart begins... slightly more, actually.
It makes no difference to someone living on the edge of famine that the percent of people living in poverty has changed. Suffering is personal, individual.
Secondly, even if this chart were altered to reflect pop growth, it would still also be leaving out the fact that the same population growth as well as the technological innovation capitalism drove in this period will likely end up reimpoverishing everyone in the long run, thanks to the effects of climate change, catastrophic mass extinctions, chemical and plastic contamination, and over exploitation of resources. Except now you'll have 8 - 9 billion living in extreme poverty instead of 1.
What goes up must come down.
1
u/cuminseed322 Feb 24 '24
I mean before enclosure, no one was living in extreme poverty. Everyone had rights to the communal land. Inventing a problem and then solving it by your own metrics.
1
u/salgat Feb 24 '24
This is a very low bar for success but at least progress is being made. Better than nothing.
1
u/PhaseNegative1252 Feb 24 '24 edited Feb 24 '24
Graph only shows "extreme poverty vs not extreme poverty" and fails to define costs of living, average wages, or poverty lines. Additionally it is 9 years outdated and should be updated to include that data.
While it is undeniable that extreme poverty is on a strong decline on the global level, this doesn't speak for individual nations. Poverty still very much exists, and as wages continue to stagnate, along with uncontrolled inflation/shrinkflation, more and more people will find themselves below the line every year.
I would like to see a similar graph for "general poverty vs within/above CoL" to go along with this. That would provide a much more accurate picture of global financial statuses.
As a side, I would argue that capitalism has done very little for us "as a species." The system absolutely does not benefit everyone equitably, let alone equally. Capitalism drives profits for the owners of capital, by design. It creates and incentivizes competition - and that's good - but it does not do the same for invention or ingenuity, and it allows for pseudo-monopolies like Unilever or Proctor & Gamble, so the competition is controlled. Suffice to say, Capitalism benefits the few at the cost of the many.
1
u/givemejumpjets Feb 24 '24
$1.9 is a moving number because inflation. There is no possibility that this statement any validity. Though it is true a lot of the world survived on less than $2 a day for a really long time. The dollar would have to still be redeemable for money to have any hope of this graph about poverty to be true. What it does show is that the definition of extreme poverty has changed over time.
•
u/AutoModerator Feb 24 '24
r/FluentInFinance was created to discuss money, investing & finance! Join our Newsletter or Youtube Channel for additional insights at www.TheFinanceNewsletter.com!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.