Good News About Poverty

[charrison]

hate to be the bearer of good news, because only pessimists are regarded as intellectually serious, but we're in the 11th month of the most prosperous year in human history. Last week, the World Bank released a report showing that global growth "accelerated sharply" this year to a rate of about 4 percent.

Best of all, the poorer nations are leading the way. Some rich countries, like the U.S. and Japan, are doing well, but the developing world is leading this economic surge. Developing countries are seeing their economies expand by 6.1 percent this year - an unprecedented rate - and, even if you take China, India and Russia out of the equation, developing world growth is still around 5 percent. As even the cautious folks at the World Bank note, all developing regions are growing faster this decade than they did in the 1980's and 90's.

This is having a wonderful effect on world poverty, because when regions grow, that growth is shared up and down the income ladder. In its report, the World Bank notes that economic growth is producing a "spectacular" decline in poverty in East and South Asia. In 1990, there were roughly 472 million people in the East Asia and Pacific region living on less than $1 a day. By 2001, there were 271 million living in extreme poverty, and by 2015, at current projections, there will only be 19 million people living under those conditions.

Less dramatic declines in extreme poverty have been noted around the developing world, with the vital exception of sub-Saharan Africa. It now seems quite possible that we will meet the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, which were set a few years ago: the number of people living in extreme poverty will be cut in half by the year 2015. As Martin Wolf of The Financial Times wrote in his recent book, "Why Globalization Works": "Never before have so many people - or so large a proportion of the world's population - enjoyed such large rises in their standard of living."

linkage

 

[Stunt]

:thumbsup:

I hope the trend continues. I would like to see the world at the point where no matter where you are born you are entitled to the same opportunities, lifestyle, and rights as anyone else.

This will not happen in my lifetime and is a lofty goal...but i do at times feel guilty about all i have been given where i just as easily could have been born in any number of much poorer countries.

 

[glenn1]

"Never before have so many people - or so large a proportion of the world's population - enjoyed such large rises in their standard of living."

That won't matter to those of the political POV that like to whine about poverty all the time. They're too busy complaining about outsourcing, as if it's more noble that Americans keep doing $7/hr textile manufacturing jobs that are going to Bangaladesh even though they can done by someone with an IQ of 12. Instead of encouraging everyone up and down the value chain to contribute to the maximum of their abilities, they pine for the glory days of the early 1900s when the average American was an elementary school dropout and could join the local union making a living putting acid in car batteries instead of someone in Sierra Leone.

 

[Kibbo]

Originally posted by: glenn1

"Never before have so many people - or so large a proportion of the world's population - enjoyed such large rises in their standard of living."

That won't matter to those of the political POV that like to whine about poverty all the time.

I whine about poverty and like trade. I love the news in this report. We've gotta do something about Sub-Saharan Africa.

Also, remember that we have people with low human capital here in the developped world. And many of them will not appreciably improve their skills, either because of mental illness, low IQ, being too old to retrain (a very important group), or other factors.

What are we going to do about them?

In the past 30 years or so, they have seen their real incomes decline consistently.

Not saying that cutting off trade is the answer (in fact I would argue the opposite), but we can't leave them in the cold. We chose an economic model that would predictably give them the shaft, for the greater good. Maybe the greater good should throw them a bone.

 

[Kibbo]

DP.

 

[glenn1]

I whine about poverty and like trade. I love the news in this report. We've gotta do something about Sub-Saharan Africa.

Also, remember that we have people with low human capital here in the developped world. And many of them will not appreciably improve their skills, either because of mental illness, low IQ, being too old to retrain (a very important group), or other factors.

What are we going to do about them?

In the past 30 years or so, they have seen their real incomes decline consistently.

Not saying that cutting off trade is the answer (in fact I would argue the opposite), but we can't leave them in the cold. We chose an economic model that would predictably give them the shaft, for the greater good. Maybe the greater good should throw them a bone.

While rising standards of living brought about by higher worldwide economic development is in itself a tangible benefit to the people you mention with low human capital, I have no problem with direct aid. I saw an article once which proposed sort of a new new deal, with businesses and governments benefiting from outsourcing and technology using some of the proceeds to pay into a sort of social benefit program to more broadly spread the wealth creation. Sort of a "progress dividend" to the people rather than an entitlement for simply getting older. Far better as the dividend aspect of such a system means it doesn't discourage economic rationality and the pursuit of maximum economic benefit, while still capturing some of the benefits of it and spreading it around the greater public. Instead of discouraging the boogeyman of "outsourcing," we encourage sending it to where economic return is maximized and simply account for some of the social costs of displacement and other factors.

 

[Kibbo]

Hmm. . . we agree.

That's boring!😉

 

[Dissipate]

Somalia is actually going to become a developed anarcho-capitalist country faster than the U.S.

 

[Stunt]

Originally posted by: Dissipate
Somalia is actually going to become a developed anarcho-capitalist country faster than the U.S.

When are you planning to move there?...it is your ideal polotical system, you should be anxious to finally be close to your dream. The US will not be anarcho-capitalist in the next century.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Stunt

Originally posted by: Dissipate
Somalia is actually going to become a developed anarcho-capitalist country faster than the U.S.

When are you planning to move there?...it is your ideal polotical system, you should be anxious to finally be close to your dream. The US will not be anarcho-capitalist in the next century.

I will move there when it becomes a superior place to live. Unfortunately, these things take time.

The U.S. could become anarcho-capitalist, and the process will begin as soon as the government loses control of the common currency.

 

[Dissipate]

An article on Somalia's budding anarchy: Text

Of course, even after admitting that the free market has developed solutions in a lot of areas the authors try to come up with some excuse for a state in Somalia.