[HN Gopher] Global economic inequality: what matters most is whe...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Global economic inequality: what matters most is where you are
        
       Author : raviparikh
       Score  : 44 points
       Date   : 2021-12-10 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ourworldindata.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ourworldindata.org)
        
       | pydry wrote:
       | If I was going to write some propaganda to try and whitewash the
       | staggering amount of wealth and power is held by American
       | oligarchs this is what I would do:
       | 
       | 1) Write an article about income inequality. Wealth inequality is
       | 100x worse than income inequality - http://metrocosm.com/wealth-
       | vs-income-inequality/ but if you just smoothly transition from
       | talking about _economic_ inequality to income inequality, not
       | only is it not as bad, the _reader_ becomes a much bigger part of
       | it and hence you become less of a part of it.
       | 
       | 2) Ignore PPP entirely. If a Slovakian gets paid 5x less than you
       | do in New York and also has 5x cheaper haircuts, you should
       | probably feel a bit guilty about that.
       | 
       | 3) _Focus on personal responsibility_. This is an effective
       | technique. It was used to turn jaywalking into a crime in the
       | early 20th century. It was used to make the litter epidemic of
       | the mid 20th century Not McDonalds Or Coke 's Fault. It was used
       | to shift responsibility from Oil supermajor CEOs on to suburban
       | white middle class soccer moms and voila - reduced pressure.
       | 
       | Just remember, as the article says: "If you want to reduce global
       | inequality and support poorer people, you do have this
       | opportunity. You can donate some of your money."
        
         | ahelwer wrote:
         | I've been thinking - continually I hear the way to help with a
         | problem is to donate money to a charity. But is there a single
         | social ill that has actually been solved (not ameliorated -
         | permanently solved) through a bunch of individuals donating
         | money to a charity to solve it? Is there any track record of
         | success whatsoever?
        
           | mdorazio wrote:
           | This is a good question, but it's also kind of tricky because
           | many (maybe most) social charities aren't really setup to
           | tackle issues that can be _solved_ without continuing money
           | input. Let 's take education in poor countries as an example
           | - unless everyone stops having children or the underlying
           | socioeconomic fabric changes significantly, you're going to
           | have an effectively infinite number of children that need to
           | be educated, and the only way to do that is to continue
           | paying for facilities, teachers, materials, etc.
           | 
           | Other charities, like those that are setup to cure specific
           | illnesses, can accomplish their mission on reasonable
           | timeframes.
        
           | shashwat_udit wrote:
           | Yes. The March of Dimes fundraising campaign provided the
           | funding to Salk and Sabin to create the polio vaccine.
        
           | commandlinefan wrote:
           | > a single social ill that has actually been solved ...
           | through a bunch of individuals donating money to a charity
           | 
           | If not, then one of two things are true:
           | 
           | 1) Money can't solve social ills
           | 
           | 2) Not enough people who have the means to do so are willing
           | to voluntarily sacrifice to solve a social ill
           | 
           | Either way, that suggests that taxation/wealth redistribution
           | solutions is similarly doomed (unless you're willing to do it
           | by force).
        
         | s1artibartfast wrote:
         | Why ignore ppp? Why feel bad if two lives are equal in all
         | respects? Non PPP only matters if someone moves countries.
        
           | notahacker wrote:
           | The dataset doesn't ignore PPP, it's expressed in
           | "international dollars" which is a standard PPP adjustment to
           | US levels.
           | 
           | That's not really discussed because it's an utterly standard
           | thing to do in cross-country comparisons, but the article
           | might have been better if it talked about the fact the data
           | is PPP adjusted so the actual dollar amounts earned in the
           | poorer countries are even lower, and the fact that PPP
           | adjustments aren't perfect so people on $6.70 of imputed US
           | purchasing power can still pay rent
        
             | s1artibartfast wrote:
             | The parent post argued that the article would have been
             | _more_ impactful if it ignored PPP. It also said people
             | should feel guilty if they have the same PPP, but higher
             | salary without adjusting. This makes no sense to me.
             | 
             | This is the point I am pushing back on.
        
           | bee_rider wrote:
           | They are describing what they'd do to write a paper to
           | "whitewash the staggering amount of wealth and power is held
           | by American oligarchs," so, a list of things that should
           | appear plausible to the reader, but which are fundamentally
           | misleading. Ignoring PPP is a great way to get numerical
           | differences without QOL differences, as you point out.
           | 
           | I haven't gotten to the article yet, but I'm pretty sure this
           | is intended as a criticism or the article.
        
             | s1artibartfast wrote:
             | But ignoring PPP does the opposite of whitewash the
             | accumulated wealth. Ignoring PPP makes the disparity
             | greater, not less
        
               | bee_rider wrote:
               | Increasing the disparity between countries reinforces the
               | argument "conditions in your country are so great, stop
               | talking about your internal income inequality" which is,
               | I think, what the original comment was implying to be the
               | point here.
               | 
               | Looking at the article, it uses the term "international
               | dollars" instead of "PPP adjusted dollars," so I think
               | the original comment just missed that the dollars are
               | actually adjusted.
               | 
               | It makes sense if you read the original comment as a
               | criticism of the article ("whitewash the staggering
               | amount of wealth and power is held by American oligarchs"
               | is, I think, pretty clearly a bad thing to do) which just
               | missed that the dollars in the article were adjusted.
        
               | s1artibartfast wrote:
               | yeah, it sounds like we interpreted "whitewash the
               | staggering amount of wealth and power is held by American
               | oligarchs" in different ways.
               | 
               | I took it as minimizing the disparity between rich and
               | poor countries.
               | 
               | I don't know how to reconcile your interpretation with
               | the idea that someone should feel guilty for having a
               | higher dollar income but the same PPP income as someone
               | else.
        
           | commandlinefan wrote:
           | What does PPP stand for in this context? I was confused by
           | his example, too - it seems like he's suggesting that if
           | somebody is paid less but has a proportionally smaller cost
           | of living, I should _still_ feel bad about that? Am I being
           | insensitive for not? I feel sorry for people who are living
           | in squalor, not people who have similar lives to my own.
        
             | s1artibartfast wrote:
             | PPP = Purchasing Power Parity. It is exactly as you
             | described. We have the same purchasing power if in my city
             | I make $10/day and a beer costs me $10, while in your city,
             | you make $5/day and a beer costs $5.
        
       | atemerev wrote:
       | This is an obvious driver for migration: why settle for living in
       | a poor country, if you can migrate to a country with orders of
       | magnitude richer opportunities? I really wonder why the global
       | migration rate is only 3%.
        
         | umanwizard wrote:
         | Because migration is difficult, unpleasant, and usually
         | illegal.
        
           | netizen-936824 wrote:
           | Since when is moving to different countries illegal?
        
         | beebeepka wrote:
         | People with guns and boots make sure it stays low.
        
         | VWWHFSfQ wrote:
         | My guess is the richer countries make it hard to migrate to
         | them. USA is relatively easy to migrate to compared to
         | basically anywhere in western Europe, UK, Canada, Japan, or
         | South Korea.
        
           | gassiss wrote:
           | I don't know about the others, but Canada is probably the
           | easiest developed country to immigrate to. You can basically
           | get a green card before you even land
        
           | cblconfederate wrote:
           | Usa is harder
        
           | rowanajmarshall wrote:
           | > USA is relatively easy to migrate to compared to basically
           | anywhere in western Europe, UK, Canada, Japan, or South Korea
           | 
           | I dunno about that, as a professional developer in the UK
           | it's _way_ easier to immigrate to Canada or Australia than
           | the US.
        
             | lambic wrote:
             | They're commonwealth countries so that has an impact, but
             | yes USA is hard to get into.
        
             | 908B64B197 wrote:
             | What's interesting with Canada and Australia is that they
             | use a point system... that never actually checks for
             | employability.
             | 
             | So you end up with "senior engineers" in Canada/Australia
             | driving taxis and not ever being able to land a job as
             | engineers, even though they got enough points to immigrate
             | by being one, at least on paper.
             | 
             | In the US, someone has to be able to get a job above market
             | rates (so convince an employer and the government that his
             | skills are required) before even being considered for
             | immigration. So I wouldn't say it's harder, at least for
             | someone really qualified.
        
               | rowanajmarshall wrote:
               | > they use a point system... that never actually checks
               | for employability
               | 
               | Well, they both give major points if you've got a job
               | offer so I wouldn't say that. But right now (COVID aside)
               | I could apply to Australia, get my visa and be living in
               | Melbourne inside 6 months, then citizenship in about 4
               | years. For the US, I'd have to:
               | 
               | - Get a job with a US company here
               | 
               | - Work there for a year and hope they're willing to
               | transfer me on an L1 visa
               | 
               | - Hope the US Immigration RNG comes up with my name
               | 
               | - After working for a while, transfer onto an employment-
               | based visa while hoping I get sponsored for that too.
        
           | atemerev wrote:
           | USA is one of the hardest countries in the world to immigrate
           | (and still one of the most attractive).
        
             | Jensson wrote:
             | If you include illegal immigration then USA is probably
             | easier than most other western nations. USA is very
             | accepting of illegal immigrants for some reason.
        
               | kevinventullo wrote:
               | You know it never really occurred to me before this, but
               | is there anything more American than working hard to
               | skirt poorly implemented rules in order to enrich
               | yourself and those around you?
               | 
               | Am I talking about illegal immigrants or Uber?
        
               | Jensson wrote:
               | That is a good point. California is top both on tech
               | start-ups and illegal immigrants.
        
         | reidjs wrote:
         | It's hard to get up and move away from everyone you know just
         | to chase wealth and financial stability. Your relationships
         | with people are more important than money. It's not easy to
         | learn a new language, gain citizenship, get a job, and
         | successfully do the thousand other things required to migrate
         | to a new country.
        
           | notahacker wrote:
           | To add to which, the people who are most likely to get visas
           | to move to much richer countries tend to be the ones that
           | start off in their own country's upper middle class (allowing
           | them to tick all the right educational boxes to become
           | software developers or nurses, or at least have savings to
           | pay people smugglers).
           | 
           | They can _still_ be materially a lot richer and often enjoy
           | many other lifestyle benefits from moving overseas even if
           | they have to drop down the status ladder and forget about
           | owning land and having servants, but it does make the
           | decision a bit more of a tradeoff than a salary comparison
           | might suggest. The option of moving isn 't really there for
           | the people who are so poor there's no upside to staying in
           | their own country.
        
             | golemiprague wrote:
             | That really depends on geography, if you border with a rich
             | country also the poor people can migrate illegally just by
             | crossing the border, that's what happening with Mexico and
             | the US or Africa and Europe. But indeed those people don't
             | always do so well in their new country, it just creates
             | more problems. In general migration is not such a great
             | solution because once too many people migrates from the
             | same place it just creates a nation within a nation and you
             | are setting the country for the next civil war, whether
             | proper war or low key between all the different groups. The
             | best way to solve the issue is within each country, China
             | did much more to alleviate poverty for a huge number of
             | people comparing to what migration achieved.
        
           | bobthechef wrote:
           | Exactly. This is one of the (many) problems with the vulgar
           | "homo economicus" view of human beings. Culture and
           | nationality are likewise factors. Moving to another country
           | is difficult. You are moving to an alien culture with an
           | alien language where you will be unfamiliar with a whole host
           | of social realities, some of which may contradict what you
           | believe. That's why immigrants usually create ethnic
           | neighborhoods[0] and it is only their grandchildren onward
           | who are fully assimilated into the adopted nation, usually
           | facilitated through intermarriage which tends to water down
           | ethnic ties.
           | 
           | [0] Tangentially, it is an interesting question how long the
           | ethnic European neighborhoods, nostalgically portrayed in
           | movies like "The Godfather", that began to dissolve around
           | WWII could have lasted. According to one view of what is
           | commonly called "white flight", a major factor was the WASP
           | ruling class' social engineering and ethnic cleansing of them
           | out of existence by dispersing them across the suburbs which
           | hastened their assimilation ("into what?" is itself a
           | question worth pursuing; a WASP-constructed "identity"?). The
           | reason this migration out of the cities coincided with the
           | civil rights movement, according to this view, is that the
           | Great Migration of black sharecroppers from the South was
           | effectively an instrument of mass migration into ethnic
           | neighborhoods. Mass migration always fragments the peoples
           | into which the migration flows. So, given this
           | interpretation, this was not some manifestation of racism,
           | but of disintegrating neighborhoods (the "white guys"
           | throwing rocks in Marquette Park were apparently Lithuanians
           | who felt that their community was threatened by this
           | migration). Many of these neighborhoods were also Catholic,
           | and with falling birth rates among Protestants following the
           | 1930 Lambeth Conference, the idea of Catholics outbreeding
           | them was not something they cared to endure.
        
           | saiya-jin wrote:
           | By moving to far better country you gain much more than just
           | money. Its tons of things usually, that completely redefine
           | overall level of quality of life. Health care, social care,
           | low crime rate, better schools for children and generally
           | much better environment for them to grow up and have better
           | lives (again, not in monetary sense, this comes just as
           | consequence of the rest). It can be very stimulating.
           | 
           | Its a huge step, too big for way too many people, but
           | definitely worth it for many others. It looks much worse from
           | far than actually doing the steps though, you break them down
           | into atomic parts just like any other problem solving.
           | 
           | I've done it twice and when looking back to those 10/15
           | years, it was the right choice, probably the best in my life.
           | But its best done before starting family.
        
           | atemerev wrote:
           | I have lived in 5 different countries, with residence permits
           | and all (Russia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Denmark -- and
           | also a few months in the US). While it was certainly not
           | easy, I gained a lot from this experience (new relationships
           | and networking opportunities in particular).
        
         | vietthan wrote:
         | 0.03 * 7,900,000,000 = 237,000,000 . Btw, that's not a rate,
         | just a hard count by the world Economic Forum.
         | 
         | That's a lot of people. There's so many variables when it comes
         | to migration that an individual has to face, a percentage that
         | high is actually quite significant. Rising quality of life also
         | means immigration pressure isn't as high.
        
       | dv_dt wrote:
       | I would love to see data on happiness and leisure time mixed into
       | this comparison too.
        
       | WannaFly wrote:
       | A person who wrote this is so stupid. "People live in poverty not
       | because of who they are, but because of where they are.". No
       | exactly because of who they are. Because the majority of people
       | in poor countries lazy, not skillful etc. One another person, i
       | guess with only academic education, that thinks that economy is
       | the horn of plenty, and not collective effort and hard work,
       | blood, and sweat of millions of people. P.S. Yes he is.
        
       | rufus_foreman wrote:
       | >>The huge majority of the world is very poor. The poorer half of
       | the world, almost 4 billion people, live on less than $6.70 a
       | day.
       | 
       | $6.70 a day is 3 and a half times what is considered extreme
       | poverty. I guess the site is focusing on the negative side here,
       | maybe in order to get more donations, and that's fine, but the
       | world wide reduction in extreme poverty in recent decades is
       | worth commenting on. From the NY Times:
       | 
       | "In 1990, about 36 percent of the global population -- and nearly
       | half of people in developing countries -- lived on less than
       | $1.25 a day, the World Bank's definition of extreme poverty at
       | the time. (It's now $1.90 a day.) In 2000, United Nations member
       | states pledged to cut extreme poverty worldwide -- specifically
       | to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, from
       | 1990 levels, by 2015.
       | 
       | Bottom line: The U.N. goal was met. By 2015, the share of the
       | world's population living in extreme poverty fell to 12 percent
       | from 36 percent in 1990, a steep decline in just two and a half
       | decades. During a single generation, more than a billion people
       | around the world climbed out of extreme poverty, surpassing the
       | goal."
        
         | notahacker wrote:
         | > $6.70 a day is 3 and a half times what is considered extreme
         | poverty.
         | 
         | The question then is, do you think $6.70 a day (US ppp equiv)
         | is actually quite a decent income, or do you think the extreme
         | poverty threshold might be a pretty low bar to have set?
         | 
         | (FWIW I think the UN's targets were more closely tied to the
         | need to be low enough to stand a chance of being hit - which is
         | fine - than Max's editorial is linked to what the donors to his
         | data website may or may not already think about poverty.
        
           | rufus_foreman wrote:
           | >> do you think $6.70 a day (US ppp equiv) is actually quite
           | a decent income, or do you think the extreme poverty
           | threshold might be a pretty low bar to have set?
           | 
           | Well first of all, the point I was making was that enormous
           | progress has been made, and the article has a very negative
           | tone in spite of that. I'm just too old for that type of
           | pessimism. Things do get better.
           | 
           | And as far as the bar goes, I don't know that there is a bar.
           | There's a quote by a labor union leader named Samuel Gompers
           | from over a century ago, "We do want more, and when it
           | becomes more we shall still want more". I think that about
           | covers it.
           | 
           | The only argument is over how we get there.
        
             | OnlineGladiator wrote:
             | > I'm just too old for that type of pessimism. Things do
             | get better.
             | 
             | I realize this is a huge tangent, but why do you feel this
             | way? Between wealth disparity (admittedly what we're
             | arguing here so obviously it's debatable), global warming,
             | dwindling finite resources, unsustainable debts (I am aware
             | of MMT) - I feel quite the opposite. It feels like we're
             | robbing the future to benefit the now.
             | 
             | I realize we could easily go back and forth with lists of
             | "this is why things are worse" and "this is why things are
             | better" but my question is why do you think, as a whole,
             | things are improving?
        
               | rufus_foreman wrote:
               | >> why do you think, as a whole, things are improving
               | 
               | I was born in 1970. I know how I grew up. I know what my
               | parents living standard was and I know what my
               | grandparents living standard was. I have my admittedly
               | failing memory, but I still remember.
               | 
               | If you want to believe things aren't improving, I'm not
               | going to stand in your way. It's your world now. You own
               | it. But god damn, there are reasons I would go back and
               | live in 1976 again, but living standard isn't one of
               | them.
        
               | netizen-936824 wrote:
               | Has the living standard of everyone increased equally?
        
               | rufus_foreman wrote:
               | Probably not. Going from a net worth of $1 million to $2
               | million is probably not as life changing as going from a
               | living standard of $1.90 a day to $3.80 a day. Wasn't for
               | me.
               | 
               | So probably no.
        
           | Jensson wrote:
           | The bar is set so you can eat healthy food and have a dry
           | place to rest. You wont get prepared meals or expensive
           | wares, but you can afford to eat meat, you can't afford
           | western housing but you can afford a hut.
           | 
           | Those two fixes most issues humanity have struggled with
           | throughout history. Of course you can add so much more
           | quality of life things on top of that, but at least then
           | people don't starve or get diseases from sleeping in poor
           | places or being malnourished. That is a poor life, but not
           | necessarily a bad life, if you can eat and sleep well then
           | you can live a good life.
           | 
           | Of course in the western world a hut isn't considered proper
           | housing so you can't rent that out, instead people have to
           | pay for expensive housing or become homeless. Same with food
           | etc. That increases the quality of life, sure, but is also
           | the reason you can't live on a few dollars per day here.
        
             | notahacker wrote:
             | But it's a pretty imperfect approximation of minimal needs,
             | both because it doesn't guarantee a roof and adequate food
             | supply everywhere people live on $2 PPP per day, never mind
             | clean drinking water and education for the kids, and
             | because lots of people at that income definitely do get
             | diseases from poor living conditions and diet (and if they
             | do, even basic generic drugs are at least a couple of days'
             | income). And let's be honest, for the most part we had huts
             | and meat in the Neolithic era - expecting unprecedented
             | accelerations in economic growth to get people _back_ to
             | that level isn 't asking very much!
             | 
             | And my original point wasn't to say that the threshold was
             | necessarily _wrong_ so much as to contest the idea that
             | there was something unusual about describing people above
             | that very low standard as  "very poor". Now, sure, the same
             | PPP-adjustment imperfections creep in and some people on $6
             | a day actually live recognisably lower middle class
             | lifestyles (albeit without any foreign travel or car) but
             | the whole point of the comparison is _lots of the stuff
             | fast food workers in the West can afford - at least if not
             | being hammered by student debts or SF rent - is out of
             | reach for nearly half the world_.
        
               | Jensson wrote:
               | > and because lots of people at that income definitely do
               | get diseases from poor living conditions and diet
               | 
               | Many of the poorest countries today have life expectancy
               | as USA in the 1960's, and every country in the world
               | today have much higher life expectancy than USA in 1900.
               | That isn't perfect, but they aren't dying in droves.
               | 
               | I think most in the west really underestimate how far you
               | can get on very little.
               | 
               | Edit: I think that western labour puts the poverty line
               | way too high. They put it so high that you basically need
               | a population to work full time to maintain it, or rely on
               | other countries poorer population to work even harder and
               | not get paid for it to maintain it. I very much prefer to
               | have a slightly lower standard and work way less than
               | what modern western labour says we should.
               | 
               | Of course it ought to be higher than hut and food, but
               | I'm not sure why it can't be on the same level as modern
               | China for example. Poor people in China get educated,
               | live long etc.
        
         | aszen wrote:
         | A figure like that is meaningless unless u know how many people
         | are supported on a pay like that and what is their purchasing
         | power and whether they own any land.
         | 
         | I know that many people in my home place earn less than 10USD a
         | day and are able to support their families. This is largely
         | because they own land and despite the roughest of times are
         | able to have shelter and food.
         | 
         | So it's not extreme poverty.
        
       | cblconfederate wrote:
       | That should be expected after having decades of free movement of
       | capital, free movement of goods, but restricted movement of
       | people. That maintains labour arbitrage which leads to wealthy
       | countries becoming wealthier
        
         | ChrisLomont wrote:
         | Hasn't the global trend been for decades now that poor
         | countries are becoming wealthier? The rich countries have had
         | very little comparative growth.
         | 
         | https://databank.worldbank.org/reports.aspx?source=2&series=...
        
           | andrewmutz wrote:
           | Both are growing and getting wealthier. IIRC on a percentage
           | basis the poorer countries are benefitting more, but in
           | absolute terms the wealth countries are benefitting more (the
           | wealthier countries have a lower percentage because they are
           | already so wealthy)
           | 
           | From what I've read, most economists say that allowing more
           | immigration between countries would improve both the lives of
           | the people who move, and those of the destination country. I
           | think it is worse for the country that they leave, but on net
           | increased immigration would significantly increase global
           | economic conditions
        
           | danans wrote:
           | https://www.lse.ac.uk/International-
           | Inequalities/Assets/Docu...
           | 
           | The rate of growth is indeed faster in developing countries
           | than developed countries. This is to be expected given that
           | they recently started at a lower level of development.
           | 
           | In rich countries, however, inequality has trended up, while
           | in many developing countries it has trended downwards. But
           | even that is a mixed bag.
           | 
           | In the largest developing economies (China and India),
           | inequality is increasing, so the rich are getting richer
           | there faster than the poor are getting richer. Of course, the
           | jump for many people from utter poverty to having even the
           | basics is a massive one.
           | 
           | It gets more complicated though. In Latin America, inequality
           | is generally decreasing despite relatively high growth.
           | 
           | In the developed world, inequality has grown as those with
           | investments and/or skills tied to global growth have seen
           | their wealth rise, while people lacking either of those have
           | seen wealth decline. This phenomenon and the disinvestment in
           | public infrastructure that has accompanied it, has been
           | credited with the recent populist swing in politics in the
           | developed world.
        
             | thow-58d4e8b wrote:
             | To underscore how ridiculously rich the rich are in
             | developing countries, one can take a look at country sheets
             | in World Inequality Report 2022 (1)
             | 
             | Adjusted for price level, excluding the top 1%, and
             | focusing on the 90-99% percentile: income in the UK is
             | $117k. That's _less_ than in Chile ($130k), Turkey ($149k),
             | and comparable to Mexico ($99k) or South Africa ($82k).
             | Meanwhile, the bottom 50% in the UK earn 3-10x of what
             | their peers in the aforementioned countries do. And UK is
             | hardly a paragon of equality to begin with
             | 
             | Another sobering fact from the linked report - of the
             | countries where the 90-99th percentile earns surprisingly
             | good bucks - all have a large impoverished underclass:
             | Israel, Chile, South Africa, Mexico, USA, Korea, Russia,
             | Brazil
             | 
             | (1) https://wir2022.wid.world/download/
        
         | csomar wrote:
         | You got it backward buddy. If Western countries imported
         | workers, they would not need to externalize their industry. As
         | a result, third-world countries will remain as poor and
         | undeveloped as 30 years ago.
         | 
         | Offshoring basically transferred some of the wealth from the
         | bottom middle-class/lower-class to the developing/poor world.
         | The arbitrage value went to some lucky dudes who knew how to
         | play these international games.
         | 
         | But these days are over. And it's hitting poor countries hard
         | and making illegal immigration a more apparent problem.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | droopyEyelids wrote:
       | This is overall a comparison of "Purchasing Power Parity" which
       | suffers from a few gotchas.
       | 
       | One thing that complicates this is the value of services provided
       | 'for free' by a person's government. The average citizen of the
       | USA lives on $75 per day, but might use another $10 per day of
       | interstate highways paid for by the government - something the
       | citizen of Burundi doesn't get.
       | 
       | Likewise, the Danish citizen lives on $50 a day, but may be
       | receiving a free college education and healthcare while the US
       | citizen spends a substantial fraction of their income on those
       | two.
       | 
       | If you're interested, here is a succinct write-up of the
       | phenomenon https://mattbruenig.com/2021/12/08/how-to-compare-
       | incomes-ac...
        
         | dahfizz wrote:
         | This is only a problem when comparing _disposable_ income PPP,
         | because disposable income has taxes deducted.
         | 
         | Disposable income data is harder to collect, and is therefore
         | less common. This article uses average income (GDP per capita),
         | which compares pre-tax money. The $10/day value that a US
         | citizen gains from the roads was paid for out of that average
         | income.
        
       | omegaworks wrote:
       | I think what this kind of dollar-centered analysis obscures is
       | the accessibility of the basic goods that enable life: food,
       | water and housing. Sure in a country classified as "poor" by this
       | analysis you might not be able to import the finest cheeses from
       | France or latest and greatest electronics from the US, but
       | perhaps it is easier to feed, cloth and house a family.
       | 
       | > To achieve a more equal world without poverty the world needs
       | very large economic growth.
       | 
       | I don't understand how this follows. Our global economic system
       | is structured to concentrate wealth, so there is no guarantee
       | that growth benefits the poorest.
        
         | dllthomas wrote:
         | > > To achieve a more equal world without poverty the world
         | needs very large economic growth.
         | 
         | > I don't understand how this follows. Our global economic
         | system is structured to concentrate wealth, so there is no
         | guarantee that growth benefits the poorest.
         | 
         | The post says growth is necessary; you point out that it is not
         | sufficient. Both can be true.
        
       | lcall wrote:
       | Maybe also with it is mostly affected by with whom one chooses to
       | associate, and the habits and influences one chooses. For
       | example, my church has tremendous programs and opportunities for:
       | 
       | * economic status and stability: training at budgeting, job
       | hunting, overcoming addictions -- some of the classes have been
       | shared in joint programs with the NAACP in the US)
       | 
       | * aids for refugees, families, volunteering, food aid, service
       | projects, etc (worldwide)
       | 
       | * higher-educational opportunities for almost anyone globally
       | with internet access, including groups who are traditionally
       | excluded due to tuition cost or academic experience, knowledge of
       | English, etc, and teachings that really help with family
       | stability, peace/hope, and generall going forward in life.
       | 
       | * being a personal mentor and being mentored
       | 
       | * etc. It goes on and on.
        
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