Talk:Poverty

Egalitarian Utopias

You can't stop me dreaming that one day... Scherben (talk) 19:53, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Re-distribute wealth equally worldwide

When I plant the seed (of a new idea) then God gives the increase, so the idea begins as a tiny seed but grows until it's worldwide (although if someone somewhere back in time has suggested it I'll be happy to hear about them:). I doubt if many people ever said we ought to re-distribute wealth. Unequal wealth should not exist because it's slavery of the masses to make a few people rich, & that stops progress. Stupid capitalists think that by TEACHING people to be evil (capitalists) they'll still somehow be good! Look at the crowns & jewels in countries like UK. Those jewels were stolen in the first place over the centuries, then it is still being stolen because there is still poverty & unequal wealth. Capitalism has always existed because slavery has always existed, but with different names: colonialism, imperialism, mercantilism, etc. The wage is the cause of all the world's problems, if only someone would tell USA & UK about that. It forces every person to BUY & SELL something every day or starve. When a big family has only one wage earner & he/she becomes too sick to work or dies, the family will starve. After natural disasters, the people won't have fields growing food until they can get seeds, plant seeds, wait for seeds to grow, then harvest, etc. All people should have a guaranteed income. All people should OWN all things on earth to end poverty, but USA has been, & still is, forcing all attempts of a Perfect system (Socialism/communism) to fail ("Rogue State" Wm Blum shows it best, & "When Corporations Rule The World" David Korten, & Third World Traveler has many book excerpts). If we TEACH people worldwide to do things right, then they'll do things right, & the snowball effect will soon force every person to do things right. How could Perfection possibly be imperfect?! If anyone says "What if no one will work & the human race dies," I say GOOD! They deserve it, I don't care, even if I starve, because I know that won't happen because Perfection will be perfect. And the system we now have (wage-slavery) is doing that now, killing the whole human race, so stop being stupid, people. Klop789 (talk) 03:27, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Look at multi-national corporations to see they cause world poverty by moving to poor countries where they can get away with paying extremely low wages [& kill lots of people, including the rich!) that the employee-slaves can NOT live on, like Disney in Haiti, & Wal-Mart! (see TWT). Klop789 (talk) 03:31, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Horseshoe theory?

Denial that poverty exists in the First World is also found among Maoist-Third Worldists and Leading Light Communists as well as the far right. Vlasyx7 (talk) 03:31, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Destroying the page to save it?

User:Nerd - by all means create an un-referenced section which just contains definitions of absolute and relative poverty, which I can then add references to. But kindly don't delete the entire page to make it just that. Can I ask why you're trying to do this?--MAI742 (talk) 04:05, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

@MAI742 I'm sorry but much of what you wrote contains nothing more than bashing a certain group of people you are critical of. This article is about Poverty. Don't mention something if it does not pertain to Poverty. If it is interesting but only tangentially related, add a concise footnote. Frankly, I would rather see a page that is short and incomplete rather than a long one that contains little relevant information. Nerd (talk) 04:13, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

If you find my assessment unconvincing, let David Gerard know. He is a good one at trimming articles. Nerd (talk) 04:15, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

@Nerd I also desire concision. But what in your opinion defines relevance, and what would the sections and content of a "complete" and referenced page on "poverty" be? --MAI742 (talk) 05:43, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Poverty

Let them fight.

Is the user writing this page planning to cover how social forces can intersect with and exacerbate poverty, such as gender or ethnicity? What about how poverty intersects with the environment, such as how poor people inordinately bear the brunt of the negative externalities of climate change? Do they plan to include criticism of the World Bank poverty line? Such as the obvious one that nobody can live on a dollar ninety a day? How about how, according to a UN special rapporteur on poverty, that over half of the world of the world live on less than 5 USD a day, and how that number hasn't shifted much since the 1990s? [1]

I feel like the Wikipedia article on poverty is fully sufficient for an explanation of this phenomenon, and any RationalWiki article that doesn't cover these issues is gonna be incomplete at best, or misleading at worst. Just a thought. Carthage (talk) 16:37, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Saying that the number of people living on less than 5 USD hasn't changed much is a blantant lie, even if you disconsider the fact that the global population is now 30% higher than it was 30 years ago.[2] I think you are conflating poverty and extreme poverty, both of which are covered by the World Bank. It's hard to compare both things. When people earn less than 5 dollars a day, they live in a terrible situation. When they earn less than 2 dollars a day, their lives are in danger. This is especially true in poorer countries: since things are cheaper in poor countries, earning 5 dollars there can guarantee at least your short-term survival. Is that enough? No. But facing death from starvation is a much bigger problem than having a dire life. Regarding "social forces", maybe I'll write about how the rise of women on the labor market reduce poverty on the institutions/culture section. I don't know if I'll write about specifics. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 17:22, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

If you're not gonna bother to write about the social effects of poverty, such as its gendered or racial aspects, then your article is incomplete. Also, I am not conflating poverty with extreme poverty. I am pointing out the criticism that the World Bank poverty line is too low. As many people have argued. Not covering this criticism, even to rebut it, is also arguably lending itself to an incomplete article. Carthage (talk) 17:29, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

What kind of social effects do you want me to write? Stress? Because I think Wikipedia already covers it. Also, yes, I've already explained why this criticism doesn't make sense: The 2 USD threshold is for people who are facing starvation, the 5 USD threshold is for people who are poor. The criticism I've seen fails to adress this point, poverty and extreme poverty, despite being related, are different situations. You can't really compare how people living under 2 USD live with people earning 2.5 times it. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 17:35, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

If there was no distinction between poverty and extreme poverty in the World Bank data, I'd agree with you. But since there is, I don't see the point. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 17:42, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

You include a criticism section in the free trade article, with responses. I don't see why you can't do the same here. Also, I don't see why we can't include mention that other metrics for poverty exist. This could even be secluded away in a reference note. As for social effects, we could mention how poverty tends to be distributed unequally along racial and gendered lines. In the US for example, Native and African Americans tend to be poorer on average than European Americans. I would argue this merits a mention. Carthage (talk) 17:50, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

You meant just repeating what I said here? I can do that then. Regarding other metrics, the section that I didn't delete on the article, about measuring poverty, already covers them, of course income is not the only way to measure poverty. I'm not confident about writing about those social effects, though as I said before, I'll possibily write about these issues especially on the institutions and culture sections. I don't feel like saying "blacks earn less than white Americans" because, well, whites also earn less than Asians, for instance. I'm not very familiar with the racial gap on the US but I think that, just like systemic racism plays a major role in the issue, the "ghetto culture", that apparently relegate education as a bad thing, could perhaps be of the reasons too. Before you call me a racist or anything I also think that the "redneck culture" explains, for the same reason, poverty among many white Americans. I don't have the time and the energy to make a thorough research that I did on the free trade article, so it's very unlikely that once this article is done, it will be on the same level as that one. Also, free trade is mostly an economic subject, while this one is already testing my knowledge in other areas such as history. I don't think that diving very deep in sociology and other sciences is on the table for me right now. I don't own the article, and once I'm done, however, others can edit it once I'm done. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 18:12, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Oh, wait, that section does not actually cover that. So yeah, I'll probably have to write about it. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 18:14, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh, fun. The person writing this article believes "ghetto culture" is a factor in racial disparities in poverty. As if African-Americans can just bootstrap themselves out of systemic discrimination in school funding, employment, housing, zoning laws, and criminal sentencing. Can't wait for the brocialist lecture on how blood-sucking feminists are ruining class solidarity. Burnt Toast (talk) 02:40, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Did you intentionally miss the part when I said that "systemic racism plays a major role in the issue"? I didn't say I believe that "ghetto culture" is the cause of the race gap, what I did say is that culture can often explain in parts (though not as much as institutions) gaps. If you are unhappy with the example I used, try Northern and Southern Italy. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 02:48, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Immediately after conceding that "systemic racism plays a major role" in economic disparities between races, you stated "the 'ghetto culture', that apparently relegate education as a bad thing, could perhaps be [one] of the reasons too." Stop digging. Seriously. "Ghetto culture," if such a thing exists, is an outgrowth of marginalisation, not a cause of it. Punk rock didn't deepen the economic recession of the 1970s-'80s in the UK. People tend to react similarly to being poor and downtrodden. Burnt Toast (talk) 03:25, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I already said that "ghetto culture" was a poor choice of words since I wasn't aware that it was a dog whistle. Still, if (notice that here I'm indeed changing my words a bit) this sort of marginalization causes people to relegate education for any reason whatsoever, it is still a possible cause for race gap. I'm not blaming the victim or anything (and yes, blacks are victims of systemic racism), just saying that, supposing that the premise is true (some groups, both black and white, think that education is no big deal), it will hinder their development. Can the premise be false? Absolutely. But as I said before, it was just an example, and I already gave another one. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 03:32, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Or, you can see this way: group A puts much more value on education that group B. Which one do you expect to be rich? The argument would still be the same. Again, maybe I was wrong when I said that blacks and some whites don't put so much emphasis in education, I don't know. But keep in mind that I never tried to explain why would they focus less. I do think that, supposing they do it is still at least in parts due to systemic racism. I thought that this was so obvious I didn't have to write in detail. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 03:48, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Education won't necessarily improve outcomes for African-American kids when the whole system is rigged against their success. Growing up in a shitty neighborhood with shitty schools and no libraries means starting at the back of the race. It's harder to get (much less hold down) a good job if you get slapped with a felony conviction for weed possession while your white classmate gets off with community service. It doesn't matter how many degrees you have if potential employers admit to tossing out applications from people with "Black-sounding" names. And what's with the northern Italy vs. southern Italy comparison? Are you seriously suggesting Sicily is poorer because of the Mafia? And not, you know, southern Italy having an agrarian economy, uniting with the rest of Italy last, or being cut off by mountains? Or literally any possible reason I can pull out of my ass that isn't a stereotype? Burnt Toast (talk) 04:07, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ It definitely won't, which, as a (kind of) Rawlsian person, is one of the reasons why I think African-Americans need more than better education, of course the American government is not doing enough for them. And no, I didn't say that Sicily is poorer because of the Mafia. It's poorer because, among other reasons people in the South trust strangers less than people in the North, thus making it difficult to conduct business, which is also a cultural factor. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 04:11, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

This user has practically admitted that they had no clue what they were talking about on their talk page ([3]). Granted, because this user is, well, this user they can't actually admit they were wrong, so they have to resort to a myriad of mental gymnastics to still come out on top. Something that wasn't pointed out on that talk page was that a disparaging attitude towards education in these communities isn't necessarily an organic one either. This user seems to think that cultures grow out of a vacuum, or not consider all factors at play besides something as vague as "culture." For example, this user seems to ignore how college tuition is often unaffordable for poor people, at least without getting into crippling debt. Or how anti-intellectual narratives tend to be pushed from the top-down to benefit the self-interest of socioeconomic elites. In fact, there's evidence that the reason Reagan cut down on affordable education was to avoid the "danger" of an "educated proletariat": [4] Carthage (talk) 04:20, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I didn't say I was wrong, at best, I say that the example could be wrong, but the point still stands: groups that relegate education will probably have a harder time. I've said many times that I was wrong before, including on this very thread on the dog whistle subject, and even this week on a discord discussion with you, and another one with another user about deaths and climate change. So I don't see the point of your post. I don't remember however you or Plutocow doing the same, although I'll be happy if you could prove me wrong. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 04:25, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Also, I'm pretty sure you know what I think about Reagan and his policies, so I also don't see the point of mentioning him here other than being pedantic. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 04:39, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Omertà isn't the sole cause of southern Italy's economic troubles. That's an extremely reductive view, at best. It's like trying to explain Ireland's historic poverty as a product of the Roman Catholic fetishization of suffering. That was a symptom of the disease. The more likely cause was a combination of colonial violence, sectarian in-fighting, famines, and epidemics. Poverty has no singular cause. As such, it needs to be written about from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Burnt Toast (talk) 04:35, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Carthage (talk) 04:36, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Of course it isn't, you can read my post again and you'll see that I've said "among other reasons". The North asking for taxes while not investing in the South is probably even more imporant, for instance. But it's still a possible cause.[5] I've wrote in the article that are at least four reasons: geography, demography, culture, and institutions, with the last one being, in my opinion, the most important. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 04:39, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Any approach to this topic that isn't written from a multi-disciplinary perspective is gonna be incomplete. You don't seem to be taking that approach. Carthage (talk) 04:42, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

And what makes you think I'm not? I never claimed to know as much about sociology as I know about economics and history, but at least one of the authors of the LSE study I've posted is a sociologist. Also, a bit off-topic, can you please prove me wrong and show a diff where you admit that you made a mistake? GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 04:45, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ This cited article ([6]) seems a little too dismissive of climate change without really providing a good reason as to why:

Though the Covid pandemic began to reverse progress in eradicating extreme poverty, and additional challenges will emerge, the damage may have a very limited impact on the overall trajectory of economic growth, according to a Center for Global Development (CGD) report.

“We know the world is going to look very different in 2050, and climate change is a huge concern for the future,” said Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at CGD and one of the report’s authors. “But we can’t let it overshadow the fact that continued economic growth should leave almost no one in the most desperate poverty that was the lot of the vast majority of humanity for most of history, albeit decades after it could have been eradicated.”

Keep in mind this growth is being achieved under infrastructure that was designed for a stable climate, which we no longer have, and will only continue to get worse in the future. In fact, climate change, as noted in the section below, is already acting as a cause for poverty. I would be interested to know the reason why this author thinks that climate change won't meaningfully affect progress in eliminating extreme poverty. Carthage (talk) 17:02, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Steve Keen is a grifter and a hack, and The Intercept should be ashamed of even listening to him. Read Nordhaus' work ify ou think it is stupid. Keen doesn't know basic math, his ignorance on the subject is well-known, so of course he didn't understand it. Yes, climate change can and probably is making poverty harder to fight. But there is still no literature to my knowledge claiming that poverty will get, in total numbers, worse than it is today. I'm not saying that it won't. Just that it is very hard to predict these things in such a long timespan, and the studies I know claim that extreme poverty will keep dropping. You are free to post one that contradicts this claim, as I said I don't know any, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 17:13, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Poverty causes that this article ignores

This article seems to ignore colonialism as an explanation for poverty entirely. Whereas Wikipedia places an entire section on it as being one cause for poverty:

Economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson maintain that poverty is associated with colonialism.[24] Likewise, economic anthropologist Jason Hickel and Dylan Sullivan posit that it was the expansion of colonialism and the bulldozing of regions into the emerging capitalist world system starting in the late 15th and early 16th centuries that created "periods of severe social and economic dislocation" which resulted in wages crashing to subsistence levels, rising mortality rates and the proliferation of famines.[25] The effects of colonialism left behind institutions that were new, alien and unsustainable. The lack of continuity in these foreign institutions, left entirely in the untrained hands of the prior colonized populace, tended to generate poverty in the communities.[24][26]

Wikipedia also goes out of its way to mention that inequality in distribution of wealth can also be a cause of poverty. Wikipedia also explores how climate change can be a cause for poverty, which this article ignores.

Wikipedia lists, among other primary causes of poverty, debt:

Debt – on a micro level, as evidenced in advanced economies, causes poverty as more people without money/resources borrow more to either live within or outside their financial means.[35] On a macro or national level (or even regional level), multilateral lending institutions create unfavorable conditions or terms of debt repayment to poorer economies, leading to greater burden of repayment that affects the masses.[36]

I suppose debt can fall under institutional causes of poverty.

This article mentions that securing property rights can help alleviate poverty. According to Wikipedia, inequality in distribution of land ownership is itself a "primary cause of poverty."

Would inadequate access to healthcare fall under institutions as well?

From what I gather, Wikipedia considers inequality to be a cause of poverty, whereas the user in charge of this draft seems to not consider inequality to be too relevant to the narrative he's crafting. Carthage (talk) 16:45, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Could you please wait a bit? I will write on colonialism on the institutions section I am actually working on it right now in case youhaven't checked. Since I intend to overhaul the inequality article, I won't write a lot about it here though. Since I doubt that hundreds of millions are poor because of debt, I won't mention it though. 16:53, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

And healthcare is already on the article. Are you even reading it? GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 16:57, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

I am reading it, but you added this bit ("Basically, they tend to invest more on public goods related to healthcare and schooling, reduce social unrest, and especially, they enact economic reforms better than nondemocracies.[39]") after I published this section. Unless you mean this bit here: "The indicators are health (measured by nutrition and child mortality, education (measured by years of schooling and school attendance) and living standards (measured by cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing and assets).[7]" In which case I concede the point, about healthcare anyways. I wouldn't be so flippant about the negative effects of debt on poverty, however. Debt may not be a cause of poverty, but it is definitely a contributor to the cycle of poverty. Rich countries also tend to entrap poorer countries through unfair debt agreements, as is mentioned in the section above. When a country fails to repay a loan, harsh terms of austerity are often enforced. This means cutting of social programs that overwhelmingly benefit the poor. Is that a primary cause? I don't know, but it's certainly relevant to discussions of global poverty. Carthage (talk) 17:08, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

It would probably help if you defined what you mean by "institutions" and what is and isn't an institution, since the way you are using it seems very broad. Plutocow (talk) 18:01, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ As I said, I'm working on this section right now, of course I'll include a definition. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 18:07, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Still regarding debt, I'm only writing about less controversial causes. I don't know any study claiming that debt is a major cause of poor countries. I doubt that anyone studying the field do not think that hyperinflation and problems in the balance of payments are major causes of poverty though. In the long term, austerity causes growth. This is another one of the reasons why I don't want to talk a lot about inequality here too. While I personally see it as one of the causes of poverty, there is the whole discussion about equality and efficiency that I don't want to take part. Many people still believe in the "poverty, not inequality, is the problem" talking point, and our article on inequality does a very poor job at explaining why inequality matters, something that I still want to fix. I might write about how rich people often subvert institutions on this article though. Still thinking about it. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 18:31, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Chinese elimination of extreme poverty

This one is a bit of a tickler. The high level summary is China has a program they called "Elimination of extreme poverty" or sometimes "Elimination of rural extreme poverty". They claim to have completed the program and actually eliminated extreme poverty within their borders. Entirely.

It touches on a few bits of relevance. One: is it's propaganda. There's a lot about China claiming they've completely eliminated extreme poverty that is suspicious; For example, China has huge compendiums of published economic data with extremely high granularity, but essentially no published estimates of homelessness, or "rough sleeping". Outside observers claim there is homelessness in China, but offer no estimates. Two, in spite of being propaganda it's more than little accurate. The approaches the government has taken have indisputably reduced extreme poverty rather substantially, especially in the rural areas that were economically stagnant a decade ago. I need better sources than I've got for both sides of that coin. Chinese state media about the program and its approaches are abundant, but verifiable details about the results are sparse. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 18:50, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

You're probably right, their data is not reliable, but I don't know how to cover this on the article except for posting a refnote about it. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 18:54, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

"It is important that the institution and the rules of the game are be the same for everyone. "

This is a fiction. The rules of the game aren't the same for everyone. You need capital to get anywhere in today's society. That's why you're much more likely to be successful if you're born into intergenerational wealth than if you aren't. This also goes a long way towards explaining the interracial wealth gap. There is also a two-tiered system of justice in the US between the rich and the poor. The rich often get preferential treatment in judicial proceedings, go to nicer prisons, or can even buy their way out of doing time or receiving consequences altogether. What is jailtime for the poor is often merely a fine for the rich. The penalties for stereotypically "white-collar" crimes are often not as harsh as those of stereotypically "blue collar" crimes. Carthage (talk) 01:18, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I misread that sentence. Disregard this then. Carthage (talk) 01:19, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

For the record

I'll take a little wikibreak because I don't want get depressed due to all the doom and drama that will probably consume the wiki in the next weeks, but I still intend to finish this article. I'll move it to the mainspace in order to fix the red links since it already has lots of content, but please, don't remove the WiP template. Thanks. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 11:19, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

@Plutocow I'm pinging you since you were the one that move the article to the draftspace. If you think that the article should remain there until I can finish it, I won't dispute. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 11:55, 6 November 2024 (UTC)