The Disappearing Poor

https://towardsdatascience.com/the-disappearing-poor-6c68789e5a53

by RickJWagner • 8 years ago

16 9 8 years ago

towardsdatascience.com

petermcneeley2• 8 years ago

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...

bryanlarsen• 8 years ago

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.

petermcneeley2• 8 years ago

Depends on how you express those graphs. From a western perspective it means the rich taking most of the gains of the last 30 years and sprinkling the remaining gains across the developing world. Go to millennials, who are the first western generation to be poorer than their parents, and explain to them how great this deal is!

pariahHN• 8 years ago

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.

sliken• 8 years ago

Reminds me of:

https://momsguidetotravel.com/bill-gates-and-the-global-poor...

RickJWagner• 8 years ago

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!

esaysimyan• 8 years ago

Is this only applicable to the western countries, or are you using data from the east?

cpr• 8 years ago

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.

plmu• 8 years ago

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

The Disappearing Poor

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