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glass_superman t1_itpugc6 wrote

Reply to comment by TuvixWasMurderedR1P in Peter Singer Is the Philosopher of the Status Quo by TuvixWasMurderedR1P

Even more ridiculous: Charity has existed for literally thousands of years and has yet to solve poverty. Yet people hold on to the notion that this will eventually work.

When? Are we half way done with the project of eradicating poverty? Or is it just another 2000 years perhaps?

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EdgyZigzagoon t1_itpxfnn wrote

We’re well over halfway there. The number of people living in extreme poverty today is lower than it has been in hundreds of years (when it represented the majority of the worlds population). In terms of percentages, it has fallen from 80% in 1820 to 20% in 2015 thanks to large scale globalization and international relief organizations.

Unfortunately, research has consistently found that most Americans (and likely other first world inhabitants) are ignorant of the vast progress made in reducing world poverty, many even believing that it has increased. Better communication is necessary so that people who live in a first world bubble remain connected to the progress that has happened and continue to be motivated to finish the job by contributing (individually and via their government) to NGOs on the ground actually working to improve lives around the world.

https://www.humanprogress.org/what-19-in-20-americans-dont-know-about-world-poverty/

https://books.google.com/books?id=j-4yDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/ending-poverty

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/world/global-poverty-united-nations.html

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glass_superman t1_itq65as wrote

It's not surprising that people would guess wrong because their basis for what counts as extreme poverty is probably inflated.

Ask those same people if they would consider themselves impoverished on $1000/year and they'd probably almost all say yes. And they'd be wrong there, too, according to the "experts".

Edit: BTW, your link is funded by the libertarian Koch brothers, for whom the current system has been wildly beneficial. How convenient for them that so much progress has been made under the system that has also made them billionaires! The countenance of your sources is dubious, dude!

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VitriolicViolet t1_itsk3b0 wrote

also forgetting the vast majority of that poverty reduction was the Chinese government lifting over 1 billion out of poverty.

remove the Chinese and suddenly the world has made minimal progress, funny how the 1 nation the West couldnt bully into submission is also the one that managed to become rich off of globalization (India went the route of allowing Western corporations to control their political parties, as did most of the 3rd world)

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EdgyZigzagoon t1_itq6i2x wrote

As long as the measurement is consistent, it’s still a good measurement. If you think the threshold is too low, that makes it even more of an issue that 10% of the worlds population still falls below it, and our efforts should be focused on helping those who need help most first.

By the way, making $1000/year would put you in the top 20% in the world in income, further highlighting the need for increasing investment in global economic development. Development of strong market economies is the single biggest predictor of reducing poverty in a nation.

If you’d like to learn more about how the line is chosen and what we need to do to continue the fight against world poverty, I would encourage you to read this article: https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief

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glass_superman t1_itqb7tl wrote

>, further highlighting the need for increasing investment in global economic development. Development of strong market economies is the single biggest predictor of reducing poverty in a nation.

That's true in the neoliberal order but why must we have the neoliberal order?

Isn't that the point of this article? To search for solutions to poverty beyond the neoliberal order and not within it? Because within it we are claim success at having only 80% of the world earning less than $1000/day or whatever. That doesn't sound very successful to me at all!

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EdgyZigzagoon t1_itq842d wrote

Did you mean provenance?

I have added sources from the United Nations and New York Times which expand upon the issue, you’re right that it’s good to examine the data from multiple sources. In this case, the data is reliable and you will be able to find it yourself from many more sources if you’re still in doubt.

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glass_superman t1_itq95zk wrote

(Oops, it's still very early in my time zone. My bad!)

I still wonder if the people who had the wrong impression of the number of people in poverty also had the wrong definition of poverty. We should use measures more universal, like, "How many people per years will experience hunger as pain?" Saying that someone earning $3/day isn't in poverty doesn't speak to me at all!

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EdgyZigzagoon t1_itq9xc6 wrote

I agree with you in principle, but it’s also a massive success that the number of people with even less than that has fallen so dramatically. And obviously, $3/day means different things in different places. Ultimately, the number of people starving, the number of people who are absolutely destitute, and rates of child mortality have all dropped sharply, and that should be celebrated and the work should be continued.

I think it makes the most sense to contextualize poverty in terms of the quality of life and security that comes with alleviating it, which is what organizations who study it attempt to do far better than either of us ever could, which is why they deserve huge amounts of funding and support.

We probably agree on 80% of things at the end of the day, I just like to encourage people to be a little more optimistic because we have done great things and if we continue to work hard we can continue to make the world a better place. I have to go actually do my job now lmao, peace out.

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TuvixWasMurderedR1P OP t1_itq03nw wrote

Will it be any real consolation for people to hear that they’re better off than we’re the medieval peasants?

Also, many studies have shown that this pandemic reduced a lot of these gains that had taken a century or so to accumulate. And with the current monetary policies of the US and European central banks, we’re going to see in-debt developing countries fall into a chasm of debt so deep that it’ll look pretty much impossible to overcome.

The system is not resilient.

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EdgyZigzagoon t1_itq0tyb wrote

Extreme poverty has halved in the last 20 years, 2000 is hardly medieval, in fact the dismissal of those in extreme poverty around the world like that is a major obstacle in continuing to improve global conditions for the most poor. Source on global extreme poverty increasing to 20th century levels during the pandemic?

Edit:

You are right that there was an increase, my mistake, of about 1.5 percentage points from 8.4 percent of the world population to 9.9 percent living in extreme poverty.

This is a massive tragedy to those 140 million people, and I don’t want to minimize that. That being said, you hugely overstated the matter, and the increase in poverty regressed us to 2016, not 1922.

With the global resurgence and reopening of international free trade following the pandemic progress will be able to resume and continue towards the goal of 5% by 2030. Over 1/2 of those living in extreme poverty live in just a handful of nations, so focusing aid and development projects on those nations should allow the efforts of organizations working in this field to continue to save lives and reduce human suffering.

I would encourage you to learn anything at all about actual policies that can be supported to reduce world poverty. While simple ideological dogma can be tempting and comforting, doing real work to help real people is complicated and difficult, and requires complicated solutions. Champagne Socialists can rail against institutions for being imperfect all they want, they are imperfect, but I am more impressed by the people who work hard to improve lives as effectively as they can regardless of imperfect circumstances, who don’t let ideals become the enemy of progress.

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SalmonApplecream t1_itrrv68 wrote

lol what? If everyone was charitable it would get rid of these problems

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glass_superman t1_itrx5y0 wrote

Big if! How are you going to get everyone to be charitable?

Jesus, super famous, with the Bible, super famous, has a an entire religion, said that we should help the poor, his ideas have been around 2000 years. Still, we have poverty.

You're telling me that Peter Singer is going to do a better job of getting everyone on board? He's going to be more influential than Jesus?

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SalmonApplecream t1_itrxhrx wrote

I don’t know, but it’s probably easier than setting up a socialist utopia. Poverty, disease, war etc is decreasing year on year.

I just find it silly to criticise someone who has actually massively changed the world, because they didn’t make it perfect overnight

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