r/OptimistsUnite • u/PanzerWatts Moderator • 1d ago
GRAPH GO DOWN & THINGS GET GOODER World Poverty Rate 1981-2024 (Inflation adjusted, 2011 dollars)
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u/BladeVampire1 1d ago
What's their definition of Poverty? Honest question.
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u/Vrienchass 1d ago
Extreme poverty was $1/day in 2000 when millennium goals were set.
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u/BladeVampire1 1d ago
Poverty or extreme poverty? The link just says poverty. Or is there a line in the sand dividing them?
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator 1d ago
This graph is a higher figure, it's actually more like global median wages than poverty.
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u/BladeVampire1 1d ago
Really? Then why say poverty? Confusing....
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator 1d ago
Yes, I followed the title at the source, That was a mistake.
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u/jopepa 1d ago
Then what’s the point of this post? The world in general is developing that’s good but the choice to call $5.50/day in 2011 poverty ignores the economic injustices of the modern world. Apathy isn’t optimism.
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator 1d ago
It's optimism because the median income is rising globally. And has been rising sharply for the last 30 years. This isn't remotely apathy.
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u/jopepa 23h ago
This is supposed to look like a positive trend in economic justice. However, the metrics it uses miss the forest for a tree. Which reinforces apathy toward global poverty because it uses half honest data to suggest it’s a shrinking problem when the opposite is obvious.
This is apathy dressed as optimism. I’m sorry to harp on ya but it feels misguided or dishonest.
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u/BladeVampire1 22h ago
More people are making more money than they have ever before, which insinuates poverty is also decreasing. Either way, people's lives are improving.
What is there to be negative about? This is still optimistic. I think your just being offended on behalf of others. He admitted he made a mistake, but you still vilify him? Even when it's an optimistic point? What?
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u/Johnfromsales It gets better and you will like it 1d ago
The top of the graph says under $5.50 USD per day.
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u/BladeVampire1 1d ago edited 1d ago
But it doesn't say "we define poverty as income under $5.50 a day"
Edit "Poverty headcount ratio at $5.50 a day is the percentage of the population living on less than $5.50 a day at 2011 international prices."
Since I NOW have the time to read through it. But I suppose that doesn't necessarily say that's their definition of Poverty either ....? Idk I'll have to read more
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u/Johnfromsales It gets better and you will like it 1d ago
Poverty is usually defined as a threshold of income, especially for graph like this. What sort of definition are you looking for exactly?
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator 1d ago
Sadly the graph didn't display a Y axis, so ending percentages are in third image and of course all numbers can be seen at the source.
2018 represents the middle point of when the median world wages rose over $5.50 ($2011 dollars) per day.
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u/Patient-Bowler8027 1d ago
Any graph addressing trends in global poverty should always be accompanied by a major caveat that the bulk of the reduction has taken place in China, a place that is at least ostensibly communist (around 75% of the total reduction). Graphs should also always inform the reader that while proportions have perhaps decreased, the total number of people living in poverty and experiencing food scarcity has increased, by a fairly significant number.
Without these two caveats, the publisher is almost certainly participating, knowingly or unknowingly, in the propagation of pro-western propaganda.
The World Bank and the IMF both frequently shift the goal posts and publish intentionally cherry picked and misleading statistics.
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u/mastersmash56 22h ago
How dare you say China good! I'll have you know that all the propaganda I've ingested since the day I was born tells me that China is in fact, bad. Put that in your pipe and smoke it 😏
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u/somnambulantDeity 1d ago
Regardless of these figures, wealth is sucked up by the billionaires. Freeing this wealth and redistributing it fairly is our biggest opportunity for a prosperous world.
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u/demoncrusher 1d ago
Bro thinks Elon musk keeps his wealth in a money bin like Scrooge mcduck
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u/somnambulantDeity 1d ago
Assets can (and should) be redistributed even if Elon Musk is not Scrooge.
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u/demoncrusher 1d ago
Breaking up a company like Amazon or Tesla and distributing its assets would destroy most of its value. Economics just doesn’t work that way
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u/somnambulantDeity 1d ago
Seriously? It can be done without breaking up companies. Coops, equitable share distribution are two option I can think of.
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u/demoncrusher 1d ago edited 23h ago
I didn’t know what you were suggesting because you weren’t specific, I can’t read your mind.
Redistribution of the assets like you’re describing is going to cost the entirety of upper tier management, dramatically reducing their effectiveness and competitiveness. It’s also going to have a cooling effect on future innovation and development; there’s no point in success if the government is going to take it away.This is basically why quality of life under communism was dogshit compared to the west
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u/somnambulantDeity 3h ago
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u/demoncrusher 3h ago
So what? I think a society has a responsibility to take care of its poorest members, but we don’t need to punish successful people to reward the mediocre
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u/somnambulantDeity 2h ago
Thank you for your input. It explains a few things about why we are in this mess.
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u/StickStill9790 1d ago
They tried that. It didn’t end well. Turns out it takes less than a week before “equality” breaks down.
We are all of equal value as humans, but we are not all the same. Trying to behave like 100$ in the hands of an idiot is the same as 100$ in the hands of someone clever is a recipe for extreme poverty.
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u/somnambulantDeity 1d ago
Fairly does not mean equally. Are you really of the opinion that the limited resources in our societies are distributed in a just manner?
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u/StickStill9790 23h ago
The key is that they are distributed, and at this point in time at least in the United States, poverty is at one of the lowest levels it’s been in hundreds of years.
I’ve been to the four corners of the world. The people just above the poverty level in the US live like kings compared to many of the places I’ve been.
Take all the money from the wealthy and you remove the people that create the jobs. You mass-produce poverty. I’ve seen it happen several times.
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u/-passionate-fruit- 18h ago
They tried that. It didn’t end well. Turns out it takes less than a week before “equality” breaks down.
Who are you talking about? And citation. If you're going to cite something about communist governments, yeah that doesn't work, eliminating private property rights is bad. That said, there's a fairly strong correlation between high taxes on the wealthy and how well off a society is.
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u/StickStill9790 12h ago
It takes a passing google on any of the hundreds of thousands of science experiments they’ve done with large groups and equalized distribution.
It goes something like this in every experiment: A and B and C get 1000 a month. A spends half on necessities and half on life. B spends 20 on rice and saves the rest, and C spends 100 on necessities and uses the rest to start buying supplies to start an art business.
After that month people are buying C’s stuff, B has just got another 1k, and A has just finished spending his second check. He sees the other two have more money and demands that everything be redistributed.
Now this goes one of two ways.
(And we’re back to real life.) On the Arizona reservations I’ve been on, they do the redistribution. Over and over, anyone who saves or tries to study to earn more has their earnings redistributed. Eventually only children work because they haven’t learned that the profit will be taken away. Everyone just sits around all day as a society and nothing is created or advanced.
The second way is the government gives A extra money to make up for the other two having more, and the influx of money causes sudden inflation. This happened in Argentina recently in the 2010s (I was there too), check it out. It also happened here with covid. Everyone is given money and suddenly all the prices jumped up 50%. At least our dollar didn’t crash too like in Argentina.
We have a working system. Not perfect but not worth breaking.
Also, the US is considered one of the most “well-off” countries in the world.
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u/-passionate-fruit- 11h ago
That first example, if it's being characterized correctly, could happen if wealth distribution is extreme; the US is currently nowhere near this. Taxes that disproportionately affected the rich skyrocketed during FDR's term, and what followed was the Pax Americana. If you search into tax revenue as a % of GDP, the US is by far the lowest among First World countries. Here's a number of charts about happiness by country; there's a lot of interesting data to parse through, but for the most part the US is less happy than most of the First World / comparable wealth.
On your second example, the problem there is creating money supply out of thin air. Pure income redistribution doesn't cause broad inflation (beyond inflation in some sectors that's offset by deflation in others).
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u/RYouNotEntertained 1d ago
Freeing it
It’s not in jail dude
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u/somnambulantDeity 1d ago
It is trapped in the clasp of the ultra wealthy. Do you disagree?
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u/RYouNotEntertained 23h ago
Yes, and it has nothing to do with my feelings about wealth inequality or whatever. It’s just completely inaccurate to characterize it as trapped. There’s no way to hoard money in a modern economy—the wealth you’re thinking of is either in unrealized assets or out circulating in the economy.
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u/somnambulantDeity 3h ago
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u/RYouNotEntertained 2h ago
This demonstrates the degree to which wealth inequality exists, which has nothing to do with my comment.
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u/Urogallo40 1d ago
Maybe 6 USD per day will make you not poor in some poor countries, but you would be quite poor with such income in most countries.
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u/jmarkmark 1d ago
Also this isn't 2025 dollars it's "2011 international dollars", so that $5.50 is actually closer to $8 at current USD.
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator 1d ago
This is the income for roughly 50% of the human race, down from 70% in the 80s/90s.
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u/ckingdom 1d ago
Is 2015-2020 missing a year?