Helping Americans understand just how rich we are

@OCCOM BILL,

OCCOM BILL wrote:

I think you've caught Deist and Cyclo on shaky ground, and they're simply in denial and trying to cover it in deliberately obtuse fashion.

I think they like arguing (like I do) and are taking contrary positions to my abrasiveness, which they view as overstatement. Taking disagreement with my style to my substance in other words.

Cyclo went on to say that he doesn't "give a ****" about the world's poor but I refuse to believe that. He's not even a Republican and even most of them care on some level.

Quote:

The guy eating the several hours old food out of the fast-food dumpster is infinitely better off than the North Korean trying to feed his starving family tree bark. The guy begging at the intersection with literally millions of dollars worth of automobiles passing by it is infinitely better off than the vast majority of people in the Congo. Cyclo talks about "security" as if losing a job or being a paycheck away from being homeless is even in the same category of living where you'll likely never have a job in an American sense, let alone a decent roof over your head. It's easy to think living on a meager $1500 a month is poverty, if you can pretend you don't know there are dozens of nations where the average citizen wishes he could earn that in a year. "Poverty is poverty" is an absurd position to take when you consider just how low that scale can go.

Exactly, poverty without hope is a wretched kind of poverty. And in many places poverty like American poverty is a Cinderella story.

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What really irks me about their reactions; is they don't seem to be getting it that you're advocating nothing more than a level playing field. A chance to compete. As if the Indian hoping to bring $6,000 a year home to his family doesn't need a job a whole lot more than the guy who can make triple that on unemployment.

Yep. I want Americans to stop bitching when they hear an Indian accent in a call center and think that that job might be the difference between that guy eating sewage to survive and eeking out his existence (still below US poverty line). I want Americans to think twice before passing laws punishing companies for doing this.

Let them compete, and if they are willing to work for less it's because they need it more.

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I think it's tragic that guys as clearly intelligent as Cyclo and Deist choose not to learn the truth, because they are precisely the type of men who would support and spread your lesson if they took the time to understand it.

That's the only reason I partly regret being abrasive with them, their politics are such that they should be making my argument for me. So despite not being able to be dispassionate about this I hope they don't take their disagreement with my style too far.

Listen to Thomas more guys, if you want the dispassionate part!

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For what it's worth, I think your position is completely reasonable to say the least, if a bit too conservative for my taste. I advocated a more direct approach a few years back and was met with similar resistance. On this thread, I suggested 10% of whatever we deem necessary for Military Spending be allocated to feeding, watering, and providing the most basic education and healthcare to everyone on earth (after learning that such a sum would actually cover these expenses). Two of the first 3 responses actually suggested that would be worse because of over-population issues. Disgusting.

Well I am pretty conservative about self-reliance and picking one's self up by your bootstraps. So while I like charity I don't like enforced charity and would settle for us just not throwing rocks at the guy trying to pull himself up by his bootstraps.

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I find it pathetic and cowardly that so many Americans are afraid to compete with their fellow man on a level playing field. And the level of apathy towards millions of starving children is well beyond disgusting.

Cyclo had a point when it called it a very human thing, but it doesn't make it right. Humans very often like to write off their dregs. An experiment whose result you can replicate in almost any country is to take a man dressed well and have him ask for money to help get home (lost wallet) and take a destitute man asking for help to eat, and often times folks will be more willing to help the well-off man, in their own economic class, than the desolate man whose wretched existence they deem beyond hope.

Even if caring means it just hurts you and you can't fix the problem it's fundamentally cruel to respond to this uncomfortable emotion by writing off the wretched existence of others as being beyond hope. There's no existence worse than a hopeless existence, the least we owe them is hope and a fighting chance.

3 Replies

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

It is at least mildly interesting that the United States, alone among the nations of the world, has long had a holiday dedicated to giving thanks to God (or whatever makes it for you these days) , for the blessings we enjoy. I think that does indicate some degree of national awareness.

It's only interesting in that even this holiday became a self-indulgent holiday to overindulge. It's a pretty empty and meaningless "thanks" in my opinion.

Quote:

Implicit in much of the commentary is the unstated notion that wealth or plenty in this nation - or any other advanced nation, from Germany to Singapore - must necessarily be based on the forced poverty of others.

Nonsense. That is implicit in the protectionism and trade barriers. I do not blame the poverty of others on our wealth. I blame short-sighted protectionism for making it more difficult for them to emerge from poverty.

We don't need to solve the origins of poverty to address it more fairly. I am only advocating a fairer shake. Less nationalistic protectionism of our fortune.

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Stated another way this is the presumption that the production of goods is a zero sum gain, that added production in one place must be the result of reduced production in another.

How does this not describe the protectionism I rail against? I understand economics better than that, and part of why I am so angry about these attitudes is because it's economically (in the long-term) and morally wrong to me.

Helping others emerge from poverty helps us. The good fortune of others doesn't have to come at our expense and we can all improve our lot in life (in the long term) by bringing more of the world out of poverty.

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The absurdity of these notions is evident the moment they are stated clearly. Without addressing this question the pages of prose here are rather meaningless.

It's only absurd when you ascribe the notions of the opposition to my position to mine. Which is itself absurd.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

msolga, Don´t be too happy, because I´m posting from Lima, Peru.

That sucks, I was hoping you'd gotten the networking resolved at home. But interestingly we must have just been in Lima together (was there on my way here to Rio).

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

On the issue of free trade the fact is that few developed countries equal the United States in advancing and supporting free trade. We certainly do retain well known agricultural protections and subsidies, that are both unnecessary for our own wealth and harmful to third world countries.

We promote "free" trade when it's advantageous to us, and use tariffs and other protectionism to ensure that we get a good deal.

How many "free" trade agreements do you know of where we get the raw end of the deal?

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However, ours are puny compared to those of the EU, Japan and other rich countries where the barriers to free trade are far higher and even more punishing to third world suppliers.

Two wrongs don't make a right. All of the first-world can and should do a hell of a lot better.

Quote:

Your commentary above would have rung more true had you acknowledged this and our initiatives for free trade, such as NAFTA.

Anti-NAFTA was just a campaign plank, and NAFTA itself was one of those "free" with special protectionism agreements where we'll keep out Mexican trucks with new vehicle regulation or slap tarrifs on Canadian lumber.

America is for "free" trade when it's in our favor, it's part of what pisses me off about all of this (the duplicity of preaching it but practicing it selectively).

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

I believe you are being excessively categorical in your comparisons; are grossly distorting the behavior of the United States compared to other rich nations; and ignoring important facts in recent history.

Well, George, you believe a lot of crazy things. You even believe in an invisible man in the sky who said "do unto others as they would have them do unto you" but you believe my call for doing unto others as we would have them do unto you is misplaced. There's no accounting for taste in beliefs. ;-)

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While it may be argued that we have greater potential than others to "throw our economic weight around", the facts most certainly do not support your contention that we use it. Like our EU friends we impose economically useless (to us) and harmful (to potential third world exporters) protections for some agriculatural products.

Unlike them we are constantly trying to sell the whole damn world on our "free" (with strategic exceptions to protect politically important industries) trade agreements. While their protectionism may be lesser so is their efforts to open up the developing markets with the promise of free trade.

I don't think you can reasonably dispute that the US has been the most aggressive in negotiating trade agreements. You see this as us leading the way on free trade, which I agree with with the caveat that we don't really make it free and are willing to engage in protectionism at the drop of a hat. I'd be happy if we practiced what we preach and while I agree that we preach it the loudest I see it as a lot more duplicitous and self-serving than do you.

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However their absolute and relative values are vastly less than those of EU nations and, in some cases Canada as well. Indeed the EU threatens African nations with the complete loss of their agricultural trade if they adopt any of the GM seeds, mostl;y developed here, that promise to significantly improve their food output.

So? We threaten trade about everything we want. Even the marijuana policies of other countries. It's true that others engage in ugly protectionism (we don't need more examples, three wrongs don't make a right either) but few are as aggressive at throwing their full economic weight around and this goes well beyond trade into geopolitics and war.

I'm not restricting my comparison to tariffs as that is certainly not the only way to be an economic bully.

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Have you noticed how the Canadian government howls if we apply ANY restrictions to their lumber or commodity exports to our market?

So they should! We negotiated "free trade" with them and if they are going to open up their markets to us then they should damn well cry foul when we are duplicitous about it.

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In all this you simply have your facts dead wrong.

Ok, name one single fact (fact not your opinion vs mine but actual fact) that I have wrong. I think we agree on the facts and disagree on the interpretation, for example we both agree that the US has most aggressively promoted free trade but you seem to see this as noble while I see it as duplicitous.

Quote:

Compared to other rich countries from Germany to Singapore and Australia, the United States is and has long been a prominent advocate of free trade.

So? This is part of throwing the economic weight around, open up their markets with the promise of "free" trade with our market but engage in strategic protectionism despite the promise when it suits us.

I didn't say we didn't promote free trade, I said we throw our economic weight around the most. Part of doing so is selling countries on a promise of free trade we are perfectly willing to break. Opening up their markets for our goods while regulating away their competition with our agriculture, or steel, or whatever industry we see fit whenever an American politician is making promises to their selfish constituencies.

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We aren't perfect in this regard, and our Labor Unions and the current Administration are talking about further restrictions to NAFTA (in the name of environmental protection, but in fact motivated by self interest). However, there are few (if any) precedents in history of nations with our relative economic power exhibiting this level of support for free trade and competition.

Who does it help the most George? Saying we preach free trade doesn't indict what I said at all. I said: "No other country is able to throw their economic weight around like we do. No other country is as aggressive about negotiating favorable trade agreements for themselves."

We certainly do preach free trade, and we'll even practice it while it suits us. But that doesn't indict what I just said:

No other country is as aggressive about negotiating favorable trade agreements for themselves.

It just adds to my point, we sell the world on free trade but renege on our promises when we see fit. This isn't free trade if you are willing to put up a barrier when it isn't going your way.

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With respect to our military and the Cold War we simply have opposing views. However, it is worth noting that the fall of the Soviet Empire itself brought about very significant improvements in the standard of living - not to mention freedom - of the countries that finally escaped that awful system.

Sure, but I don't credit America for that. America's heroic narrative about itself is delusional. America helped make them what they were and that they collapsed says more about their system being wrong than America's arms race being right.

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We do indeed intervene to protect our "geopolitical" interests. However, so did the British, French, Spanish, Russian, and Ottoman Empires; so do Iran, China, Venezuela and other nations with respect to their neighbors; and so did Brasil and Argentina in Paraguay in 1830. What is your standard for such things?

My standards are that just as two wrongs don't make a right 10 wrongs don't either.

But to get the scale of American warmongering you'll really have to compare the US to the whole world, as I'm in Brazil now let's use that example. Other than ganging up on Paraguay (which I've never heard a Brazilian say anything other than that it was shameful about, unlike how we spin narratives to glorify our self-interested warmongering) what has Brazil done? Brazil's one wrong doesn't begin to compare to the warmongering machine that is the United States. What other nation can't seem to get by without endless war?

Their wrongs don't make our wrongs right, and their wrongs don't begin to add up to ours in the last century. No nation on earth is willing to be such a ******* bully and sell itself a bill of lies and soldier worship to keep the machine well-oiled. The warmongering comparison only makes America look even worse and that others do it too at times is just no justification for it.

Edit: Here, compare them

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Brazil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States

Incidentally, the example of the War of the Triple Alliance is apropos because Brazil now has an open border crossing with Paraguay with a "Bridge of Friendship" (allowing Paraguay to export to Brazil without tariffs) that handles most of Paraguay's exports and cheap imports from Paraguay are so common in Brazil that "made in Paraguay" is what "made in Japan" used to mean in America. I've crossed the bridge myself, and walked back and forth between the countries amid all the imports and it's a sight to see. I wish there were more such national friendships.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Occom Bill wrote:
While I would agree that Cyclo's contention is short-sighted, I think you're counter-argument is way over the top. It does indeed matter where a dollar is spent. Take a drive through Anytown, U.S.A. where a lot of jobs have been shipped out of the country and you'll see the dramatic result, and the fact that it's felt throughout the community and the surrounding communities.

Actually, manufacturing jobs haven't so much been shipped abroad as they have been obsoleted by technical progress. If America was to seal off its economy against manufacturing imports, American workers would get only few of them back. For the most part, they would merely continue losing them to industrial robots instead of foreign manufacturing workers.

You might be surprised how many manufacturing jobs have indeed been shipped, but I didn’t use the word manufacturing anyway. The result to the community is the same whether the job becomes obsolete, moves across state lines, or the nation’s borders. The last does occur and is indeed a net loss in the short term. (I fear none of the above because I do not fear change.)

Thomas wrote:

Occom Bill wrote:
Exporting jobs can never be good for America; as an equal economic boost will never be returned on a dollar for dollar basis... in the short term.

Not true. Given the same excess of spending over earning, free trade does not constitute a net export of jobs. It may cause America to export manufacturing job to import computer programming jobs. But free trade does not cause a net loss of jobs, other things being equal.

The problem is, other things are not equal. Privately and publically, for the last 20-30 years, America has been consuming more than she produced, and spent more than she earned. Given these American consumption choices, it was inevitable, indeed an accounting identity, that the rest of the world would lend America the money she had not earned, and supply her with the goods she had not produced. But that's not a free trade issue, that's an America-living-beyond-her-means issue.

(Yes, I said that before, but it bears repeating.)

Agreed; other things are not equal, so that still doesn't change the facts on the ground. We've had a trade deficit for my entire adult life, and regardless of where you pin the blame; sending jobs overseas does indeed increase it. I'll grant you our habit of artificially boosting our economy in times of economic whoa is a major contributing factor and would even defer to your knowledge of the subject if you say it's the biggest factor... but rather than play chicken and egg; why not simply recognize the fact that it is what it is? For as long as this deficit exists; it will continue to be a net loss for the U.S. to send jobs overseas, no matter what shade of lipstick you put on it. Hence, your statement that "it doesn't matter where the money is spent is, at least for the time being, false.

That being said, I remain in agreement with you on a fundamental level (as well as a moral level.) Over the long term, there's little doubt in my mind that broadening the marketing horizon will result in a net positive for the United States, as more global citizens with money should inevitably lead to more consumers of U.S. products. Henry Ford proved not to be crazy when he raised his wages to a level where his employees could afford to buy his products. Albeit slower; allowing poorer peoples access to real jobs will inevitably have a similar result.

And throwing down the most basic of safety nets; clean water, immunizations, birth control, basic sustenance; could only serve to jumpstart this process. Pretty tough for a family whose day is mostly consumed gathering enough unsanitary water to live, to even think about advanced citizenship. We spent way more on Iraq since it began than this would cost. Collectively; American’s charitable donations already far exceed the cost of all of these measures, if they were so directed. Our hearts are big enough, I suspect; we just collectively don’t really know what we really are capable of. A billion hungry mouths… and billions of future consumers await.

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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

Cyclo went on to say that he doesn't "give a ****" about the world's poor but I refuse to believe that. He's not even a Republican and even most of them care on some level.

I don't believe this either... and having witnessed his about face on the immigration issue; I believe he will likely come around on this too. Pretending you don't give a **** about starving babies cannot be tolerable for long.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Listen to Thomas more guys, if you want the dispassionate part!

For sure! That's certainly my weakest suit.

Robert Gentel wrote:

There's no existence worse than a hopeless existence, the least we owe them is hope and a fighting chance.

This should have been put in bold. Hope is perhaps the most important thing a human can have (beyond food, oxygen and water.) And it is the one thing the vast majority of American's should all have in abundance, regardless of circumstance.

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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

Nonsense. That is implicit in the protectionism and trade barriers. I do not blame the poverty of others on our wealth. I blame short-sighted protectionism for making it more difficult for them to emerge from poverty.

American protectionism is not the reason that Haiti, Nicaragua, and Zimbabwe are poor. It's not the reason that Venezuela is becoming poor. We are not to blame for the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. the affluent citizens of Ipanema and all the Paulista merchants and bankers just a few hundred miles away may share in that responsibility, but we don't.

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Robert Gentel wrote:

Nonsense. That is implicit in the protectionism and trade barriers. I do not blame the poverty of others on our wealth. I blame short-sighted protectionism for making it more difficult for them to emerge from poverty.

American protectionism is not the reason that Haiti, Nicaragua, and Zimbabwe are poor. It's not the reason that Venezuela is becoming poor. We are not to blame for the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. the affluent citizens of Ipanema and all the Paulista merchants and bankers just a few hundred miles away may share in that responsibility, but we don't.

If there were textbooks on rhetorical strawmen, this exchange would be a textbook example of one. Robert said explicitly that he was not stating point A, proceeded to state point B instead, and then George "rebuts" him by saying point A is false. Classic!

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Strictly speaking you are correct.

However, no acknowledgment has yet been made for any other cause of poverty, or any other externally imposed challenge to eliminating it, other than American protectionism. Even there it has taken some effort to establish that, contrary to Robert's explicit assertions, America is far from the most protectionist of the wealthy nations and has indeed worked to expand free trade even in areas where such actions confounded our short term economic interest.

Moreover, it seems very clear (to me at least) that restrictions on free trade have very little to do with the poverty in precisely the areas he cited including the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Nicaragua and others. While Robert is certainly free to select from the myriad factors involved as he wishes, the consistent tome and content of this thread and the absence of any other aspects of this complex issue in his posts strongly suggest that my response goes directly to the central elements in the specious argument he has put forward

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

However, no acknowledgment has yet been made for any other cause of poverty, or any other externally imposed challenge to eliminating it, other than American protectionism.

There don't need to be any other causes of poverty, because all our ancestors started out poor. Five hundred years ago, average people around the globe lived in the same misery, on about half as much real income as Ethopians are living on today. It's just that in some countries, incomes have grown twofold since then, while in other other countries they have grown fifty-fold. There are reasons for America being rich, but not for Ethopia being poor.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

[There are reasons for America being rich, but not for Ethopia being poor.

That statement is not generally true as you suggest. It depends entirely on just what the reasons for becoming rich might be. The absence of some material advantage or behavior that may have contributed to the accumulation of relative wealth is itself a reason for poverty.

Moreover, even among hunter gatherers there are the well-fed and the hungry, the rich and the poor.

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Moreover, even among hunter gatherers there are the well-fed and the hungry, the rich and the poor.

On the individual level, sure. But not on level of whole societies. Until a few centuries ago, societies were in a Malthusian equilibrium. If they got "too" rich as a whole, population would increase, and limited resources would push them down to the edge of starvation again. True, some societies then were more technologically advanced than others, but that only meant they had more people living in the same misery. If you don't want to take it from me, read Carlo Cippola: Before the Industrial Revolution: 1000-1700.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

It is that the first to become rich prevents others.

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@Thomas,

If just a few centuries ago the bankers of Genoa and Antwerp were indeed in "Malthusian equilibrium" with their neighbors (a nonsensical notion) then (1) How and by what force was that equlibrium broken, what changed? (2) How do you account for the more or less continuous and easily tracable in history rise of organized economic activity since the late Middle Ages in Europe? True life expectancy was short then and many lived in what we would now call poverty. Despite this they too had their rich and poor and they wrote about it in the same way we do now, occasionally wringing their hands at the persistent problem of poverty.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
Then you'll kindly keep your keyboard off of my life in the future. Your comments were far out of bounds.

Get over yourself. You brought up your experience in this thread about real misery and if you don't like being told that is laughable then don't bring it up. Don't act like I made a private intrusion in your life just because your debate is all over the place and you decided to bring it up.

P.S. you also tried to make it about me with your questions about my life, so it's particularly silly to try to act like I intruded on yours.

You introduced personal anecdotes in this thread RG, I simply said, I'm not willing to take it there and that I don't want a pissing contest. That declaration alone was enough for you to slam my experience as "laughable."

Get over yourself? That's kind of the point of not introducing individual stories into this thread and making this topic about us (people who are wealthy). This is something you did not shy away from. Perhaps, you should get over yourself.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
You've no qualification to speak on what I understand and what I am able to contribute here.

I don't need any "qualification" to disagree with you and to opine that you lack understanding of a matter. Get over yourself.

You don't need a qualification to disagree with me or anyone else. However, you've made quite the fuss to tell me how little I understand.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
Just because I or anyone else do not express themselves in the way you choose to, is no reason to dismiss with such an authoritarian zeal.

Authoritarian? You are the one telling me what I can and can't post about and what I'm "qualified" to post about. I am the one telling you to say what you want but that if I think it's daft I will say so.

Perhaps it's good that you've retired your "Full Stop," posts RG. Get over yourself.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Stop being such a damn sissy. I think what you said makes precious little sense, get over it. I don't have to agree with you about everything.

I've agreed with every point you've made sans one RG. It seems you care a lot more about me "coming around" than I care about you adopting my view. I'll prescribe you your own medicine here.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
I agree with you about not handicapping 3rd world nations with tariffs and leveling the playing field. This seems to me fair, and sensible. Why not keep the topic here?

The topic is bigger than that. The topic is the insular American perspective. Those are noble goals and all but I'm ranting about your insular perspective.

Oh, it's my insular perspective. Rolling Eyes

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
You introduced this topic by demonstrating the overproduction of aircraft carriers and relating their value to what potential good that money could do in a humanitarian sense globally. Why not keep the topic here?

Maybe I have different goals for my topic than you do. And for someone calling me an authoritarian you sure have a lot of rules for my topic.

Nothing above was a rule, simply a suggestion to refocus the topic into something other than ranting and friendly fire.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
Speaking to the title of the thread, what about my (and other Americans) wealth, do you think I don't understand?

I don't think you begin to have perspective on real misery. You kept bringing up examples like Poland, your life and poor people in America as a response to it and that shows how little you begin to understand it.

I addressed the Poland example (that I brought up once, not multiple times) as an example of purchasing power, not misery. If you glossed over that in your currant state of rabid posting, I'm not surprised.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
How does someone convince you that they do understand their wealth?

I have no idea, I can live with failing to convince you and you should probably aspire to more than convincing me of this. We don't have to be on the same page. If everyone were we wouldn't need so many pages.

Perhaps the core of this thread RG is to help others understand their wealth. It is after all the title: Helping Americans understand just how rich we are.

We certainly don't have to be on the same page, but I don't see how we are actually on different pages on this issue: Understanding how rich we are.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
These questions are harder than making angry bold print posts, and in my opinion (an opinion you've declared not to value), are much more important.

Can we move on?

We? You can do what you want. How about that? We don't have to agree, we don't have to do the same things and we don't need each other's permission to post about what we want. Have your say, I'll have mine. We don't need to have the same say.

Consensus is overrated. Disagreement produces more knowledge. I have no qualm with you, I have a qualm with your perspective. That doesn't have to be the end of the world.

I disagree about consensus, however I can see if disagreement is your goal, you'll be much more likely to be successful.

T
K
O

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

OCCOM BILL wrote:
I think you've caught Deist and Cyclo on shaky ground, and they're simply in denial and trying to cover it in deliberately obtuse fashion.

I think they like arguing (like I do) and are taking contrary positions to my abrasiveness, which they view as overstatement. Taking disagreement with my style to my substance in other words.

You're partly correct here RG.

I do object to your style of argumentation here, but I've hardly disagreed with your content. As you've stated, you and I may have different goals for a thread like this. I'm still not clear as to what yours are, and how my perspective (insular or otherwise) is at odds with it.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
The guy eating the several hours old food out of the fast-food dumpster is infinitely better off than the North Korean trying to feed his starving family tree bark. The guy begging at the intersection with literally millions of dollars worth of automobiles passing by it is infinitely better off than the vast majority of people in the Congo. Cyclo talks about "security" as if losing a job or being a paycheck away from being homeless is even in the same category of living where you'll likely never have a job in an American sense, let alone a decent roof over your head. It's easy to think living on a meager $1500 a month is poverty, if you can pretend you don't know there are dozens of nations where the average citizen wishes he could earn that in a year. "Poverty is poverty" is an absurd position to take when you consider just how low that scale can go.

Exactly, poverty without hope is a wretched kind of poverty. And in many places poverty like American poverty is a Cinderella story.

I'm sorry, this is where I struggle to see your enlightenment. I can't find anything profound in a room full of people with two legs describing the people with one leg as being so much better off than the people with two legs. If there is some sort of debate to be had on the merits of one leg versus to, it certainly is not a debate on if both are disabled. We can understand the differences in the challenges that both would have without elevating one to a "Cinderella story."

I regret the wording I choose initially by saying that "poor is poor," because perhaps it was off message from what I was trying to say.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Yep. I want Americans to stop bitching when they hear an Indian accent in a call center and think that that job might be the difference between that guy eating sewage to survive and eeking out his existence (still below US poverty line). I want Americans to think twice before passing laws punishing companies for doing this.

I don't disagree. I remember having some OS issues with Windows XP and calling the service center for some support. I spoke with a Indian man who provided excellent service. At more than one point I thought how much better it was to be talking to a real human versus a damn automated operator to do my trouble shooting.

I never got the whole complaint about accents thing. Almost every one of my college professors were Indian. I didn't ever find them hard to understand.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Quote:
I think it's tragic that guys as clearly intelligent as Cyclo and Deist choose not to learn the truth, because they are precisely the type of men who would support and spread your lesson if they took the time to understand it.

That's the only reason I partly regret being abrasive with them, their politics are such that they should be making my argument for me. So despite not being able to be dispassionate about this I hope they don't take their disagreement with my style too far.

Listen to Thomas more guys, if you want the dispassionate part!

Oh I do. Thomas is good for that. I don't remember who choose the word dispassionate. I'm not looking for dispassionate. I'm looking for passionate... but sober.

T
K
O

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@Diest TKO,

TYPO: I missed the time where you could edit. This passage...

Diest TKO wrote:

I can't find anything profound in a room full of people with two legs describing the people with one leg as being so much better off than the people with two legs.

should have read...

Diest TKO wrote:

I can't find anything profound in a room full of people with two legs describing the people with one leg as being so much better off than the people with no legs.

My apologies for any confusion.

T
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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

If just a few centuries ago the bankers of Genoa and Antwerp were indeed in "Malthusian equilibrium" with their neighbors (a nonsensical notion)

(1) Not the bankers -- the Italians as a whole and the Dutch as a whole. (2) Not with their neigbors, but with themselves. "Malthusian equilibrium" is an equilibrium of the wage rate. It's between technical progress pushing a society's wages up, and population growth pushing them back down to the point where enough people can't pay for food anymore, and starve. Because population growth is in large part generated by technical progress, you have a negative feedback loop that stabilizes overall wages somewhere near the starvation rate.

georgeob1 wrote:

(1) How and by what force was that equlibrium broken, what changed?

Because over time, Europeans got continuously better at having fewer babies, and, by the 17th century, got very good at technological innovation. By the end of the 18th century, both dynamics had proceeded far enough in England to translate into a continuous rise in personal income, and that's what we call the Industrial Revolution.

But no economist has a generally accepted theory about the specifics of how that happened. Nobody really knows why 18th-century England had an industrial revolution and 1st-century Rome didn't. My personal favorite among the theories is Julian Simon's idea that greater populations lead to accelerating technical progress because (a) more people have more ideas and (b) each idea benefits more people. If this is true, there eventually comes a point where technical progress can escape the Malthusian trap. But this theory, elegant as it is, doesn't seem to have reached universal acceptance among economists, either.

georgeob1 wrote:

(2) How do you account for the more or less continuous and easily tracable in history rise of organized economic activity since the late Middle Ages in Europe?

Technical progress. It did happen, but as I said, it pushed individual wages in both directions, so overall it only produced greater populations, living in the same poverty.

georgeob1 wrote:

True life expectancy was short then and many lived in what we would now call poverty. Despite this they too had their rich and poor and they wrote about it in the same way we do now, occasionally wringing their hands at the persistent problem of poverty.

Indeed -- and I'm sure all of this is also true within 20th century Ethiopia. Our current argument isn't about unequal income distributions within societies, it's about unequal income distributions between societies.

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@Thomas,

There are some truths in the analysis you portray, but also some glaring contradictions that persuade me that the theory is behind it is as defective and as useless as a guide as either the original Malthusian ideas from which it takes its cwntral label or the more recent analyses such as Paul Erlich's work of about 1970, "The Population Bomb". Both, it seems to me have been so thoroughly contradicted by facts, old and new, as to become somewhat amusing curiosities.

In the first place the rapid rise in national wealth in the industrializing areas of Europe and America was, contrary to your theory, accommpanied by a rapid (in some areas almost explosive) rise in population and the size & population density of cities. While average wealth grew rapidly, highly unequal distribution left large numbers in an urban squalor that merely replaced the rural hunger they left. Subsequent social and political action gradually improved the economic distribution and lives of working people, raising their standard of living, while populations continued their increase. (Rural poverty was always less noticeable and more tolerated by governments that appeared to notice and fear it less. Victorian England was a major (absentee) landowner and exporter of food products from Ireland, while a million or so starved during the 1840s). I'll acknowledge that over time an enduring prosperity is closely and unversally related to reduced fertility, however, even here the outcomes are highly variable. However the sequence of events historically makes it clear that this is a consequence, not a cause, of increased wealth.

Like many such Malthusian analyses your arguments sound sensible, however they simply do not conform to the salient facts. Contemporary Europe appears to embrace some ideas of this sort, but the fact is they are on the verge of demographic collapse. The median age in Germany is now slightly more than seven years greater than here. The ratio of the population cadres over 65 to those under 14 is almost 1.9, well over twice the ratio here. A similar pattern prevails throughout Central and Southern Europe. That is not enduring prosperity, and the signs of disintegration are already visible with widespread fiscal imbalances and chronic high unemployment among the young..

It is useful to consider the major escapes from widespread poverty that have and are occurring in recent history, and just what forces lie behind them. The two salient contemporary analyses are China and India. Both of these result chiefly from the relaxation of authoritarian govermental central planning and control; the bureaucratic permit Raj in India and Maoist socialism in China. Consider the example of the two Koreas, North and South, or a comparison of the political and economic trajectories of Chile and Venezuela.

What is the cause of poverty , and depopulation, in Zimbabwe, a country with abundant national resources, and of prosperity in Singapore, a country with none?

I believe you and the major posters on this thread have missed the most obvious and fundamental issues.

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