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Comment by _rpd | Hacker News Reader

The past few decades of globalization have resulted in the greatest destruction of poverty in history. For every person experiencing stagnation in the developed world, ten people in the developing world have experienced double digit growth. Poverty destruction has massive benefits, and not only for those in poverty. Even from a purely self-interested point of view, developing nations are already seeing exports to developing markets rise, and that will only continue.

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Not that I disagree with you, but what would you say to "Joe Middle America" and all like Joe who are seeing their middle class lifestyle evaporate alongside this reduction in poverty? Welcome to being upper-lower class?

To see it as an investment, and also an act of self-interest. Getting basic health care to billions lowers the risk of new plagues. Improving their quality of life lowers discontent and the risk of more and larger wars. Establishing a basic standard of education does more than all the rest, adding billions of voices to the global conversation and inventions that benefit everyone. You can't sell tertiary services to people subsisting on $1/day. The situation had to be addressed, the pain is real, but we will all be better off.

The "investment" would be in plague prevention, foreign education, and potential war prevention? So that tertiary services can be sold by members of the upper class to citizens of the developing world? This seems like the sort of argument that strengthens Joe Middle America's nationalist sentiment, not alleviates it.

Plagues and wars don't respect national boundaries. Joe Middle America knows that it's his sons and daughters that would be on the front lines in a large war. Foreign education alleviates the environment of ignorance that allows fundamentalism and extremism to thrive, and also lowers population growth rates that threaten a wide variety of problems. Joe Middle America is almost certainly employed by an organization that provides tertiary services, or else high tech manufacturing that, again, requires wealthy, educated buyers.

I'm not saying it's an easy sell. The mood in the developed world is definitely protectionist.

None of those things immediately impact the number of dollars in his bank account, or his ability to move upward in the economy moving forward, so Joe doesn't care. "Joe, I know all of your anecdotal experience says quality of life has been declining for you and everyone you know since the 70's, but just go with it a little bit longer and it'll be ok. Check out this chart of global income levels. And this one of happiness in America. See, life is better. Just not for you."

Unfortunately Joe and Jane Middle-America don't care about the far-off billions they have never met. They care about their hometown, that is descending into a post-industrial ghost-town because the local manufacturing was undercut by the almost-free labor of those far-off billions, or their friends and family that are losing their financial independence, or spiraling into depression, suicide, or opioid abuse.

It's not looking like a good deal to Joe and Jane.

It seams to me as period of 50s to 90s contributed as a blip. Yeah, the American middle class doing artificially well. Europe was still rebuilding from WW2. The Soviet Union wasn't really a match (despite the pretenses). Rest of the wold with filled with poor counties with terrible with repressive regimes.

At the time the US had a liberal business climate compared to other parts of the world. As a result a lot of industry was created and exported via culture.

What's happened since is that rest of the world caught up. Europe is no longer rebuilding. Soviet Union fell apart freeing a lot of nation states to purse western ideals. In Asian countries the regimes got softer and also liveried their economies. So there's a lot more competition. Globalization became possible and practical.

In the US life expectancy went up (medication and not smoking) so that made generous defined benefit programs a lot less practical. Women and African Americans can now do a lot of the jobs that were reserved for white middle class males.

All of these things contributed to white middle class American males losing out compare to what they had before. Baby boomers and before just happened to be in the right place / right time.

> every person experiencing stagnation in the developed world, ten people in the developing world have experienced double digit growth.

As the article speaks of half a billion people experiencing stagnation, that would make ~5 billion people experiencing double-digit growth.

I've heard the general claim of reduced poverty pretty often, but I'd be (genuinely) curious to see sources of it. It seems strange in light of the current migratory movements from "developing" into "developed" countries: As in, if poverty has been reduced by such a tremendous amount, why are so many people ready to risk their life to get to europe instead of taking part in the booming economy at home?

It's a big world. India and Syria can exist simultaneously.

Rising a country out of poverty is close to zero sum. When they rise out, those incomes are coming from people in developed countries.

When many millions of people go from being subsistence farmers to producing a massive amount of manufactured goods on the planet, how could you possibly come to the conclusion that it is a zero sum game?

Because many of the people in the developed world who used to be doing that manufacturing are now out of work. Unfortunately, at least here in the US, we've been pretty bad at retraining and helping those who get laid off because factories moved overseas.

>Rising a country out of poverty is close to zero sum

This is obviously false. When a poor country becomes developed, the net productive capacity of humanity increases.

In a completely undeveloped ecoonomy, there is no money to be made domestically. It is all coming from producing for advanced economies. One of the biggest fallacies in current times is that of a growing pie. People in the United States are starting to catch on as the middle class vanishes.

I think the "elephan curve" described above contradicts your point. We see 80% growth near the bottom of the world income distribution, and ~0% growth at the worst point for the American/ developed world middle class. If it was zero sum, there would have to be some negative growth somewhere.

The whole world is lifting itself into wealth, despite the hand-wringing of pessimists. It's awesome!

>The past few decades of globalization have resulted in the greatest destruction of poverty in history.

At the same time there are still more poor people than ever before in history, ~3 billion, so what is the net? 50 years ago there was only ~3 billion people on the planet.

There's no doubt that population growth is one of the defining features of the world economy. But improving average wealth and education inevitably lowers population growth. Population growth must slow to allow further advances in poverty reduction, but I think everyone understands that population growth will slow one way or another. The question is whether it will happen through economic growth or through the four horsemen.

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