Comment by zeroname | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zeroname | Hacker News Reader

TLDR; When the numbers don't fit the narrative, you need to pick out different numbers.

"Here are a few points to keep in mind. Using the $1.90 line shows that only 700 million people live in poverty."

It shows that "only" 700 million people live in extreme poverty as defined by the World Bank.

"If $1.90 is inadequate to achieve basic nutrition and sustain normal human activity, then it’s too low – period."

Yeah, no shit. Extreme Poverty is extremely bad.

"Remember: $1.90 is the equivalent of what that amount of money could buy in the US in 2011."

Yes, it's bad. Really really bad. Let's drive that point home some more.

"If we use $7.40 per day, we see a decline in the proportion of people living in poverty, but it’s not nearly as dramatic as your rosy narrative would have it. In 1981 a staggering 71% lived in poverty. Today it hovers at 58% (for 2013, the most recent data). Suddenly your grand story of progress seems tepid, mediocre, and – in a world that’s as fabulously rich as ours – completely obscene."

No it doesn't! The fact that the number of people that used to live in extreme poverty has gone down means that these people don't live in extreme poverty anymore. That's actually much more significant than the number of generally poor people that are now slightly less poor.

Wait a minute, how does that go one way but not the other? Why is using $7.4 "doctoring the data" to fit your narrative but $1.9 not?

The author uses arguments such as

>The USDA states that about $6.7/day is necessary for achieving basic nutrition. Peter Edwards argues that people need about $7.40 if they are to achieve normal human life expectancy. The New Economics Foundation concludes that around $8 is necessary to reduce infant mortality by a meaningful margin.

to support his view that 1.9$ is a ridiculous measure promoted only to make the graphs look good and the narrative of "neoliberal progress" work. While on the other hand, the ~7$ figure, which he argues based on those references is the bare minimum, makes it all look rather drab (71%->58% in 40 years...)

I didn't say anyone is doctoring data. The data may well be true, but it may not fit your narrative. If your narrative is "people are getting poorer" you need to set the bar high, if your narrative is "people are getting richer", you need to set the bar low. In that sense it goes both ways.

However, the difference between outright starving to death, being extremely poor and simply "being poor" is staggering. You wouldn't argue that a million people saved from starvation looks "rather drab when considering that the average poor person still can't afford to drive a car".

You may say "1.90$ is ridiculous", but hundreds of millions of people actually do have to live on that. It's not like it's a fantasy number that nobody actually lives off.

To be fair, Hickel is discussing the different poverty lines because he is refuting an explicit argument from Pinker in his letter:

> "2. The level at which one sets an arbitrary cutoff like “the poverty line” is irrelevant — the entire distribution has shifted, so the trend is the same wherever you set it."

Hickel argues (using data) that this statement is at least not qualitatively true, as the trend is quite different if you set the poverty line at higher level.

Even the data that Hickel picked (excluding China) shows is that the trend is down. I'm not sure Pinker is right in that the it's true for every single social stratum everywhere across the world, I would think that certain middle-class earners are poorer today in relative terms.

However, for anyone considered poor by any reasonable standard, my guess is that the global trend is down, otherwise Hickel could've come up with that data. So in that sense the cutoff is irrelevant.

Note that Pinker in his letter talks exclusively about extreme poverty. In a free market, of course it's easier to lift people out of extreme poverty than ordinary poverty, so it should come as no surprise that the trend is even steeper there.

> Even the data that Hickel picked (excluding China) shows is that the trend is down.

In the infographic Gates tweeted, it claims to show a 75% reduction in global poverty between 1980 and today. In Hickels chart, it goes up 5% from 1980-2000 and down maybe 7% from 2000 to today. You’re claiming they both show a downward trend today so therefore they’re basically the same? That’s not just misleading, but also misses Hickels point. What I got out of his main point isn’t whether the trend is up or down so much as that poverty is not a solved problem. Gates’ infographic makes it look like a solved problem, like we don’t have to do anything because it’s going away on it’s own.

This is Bill Gates' infographic:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxSZ58_XQAAoxM8.jpg:large

It does show a 75% in extreme poverty. That happens to be a straight down trend. Nobody even disputes this. It also shows a number of other things, such that "democracy" is actually stagnating. Bill Gates' actual remark on it is that people underestimate how much things have improved over the last two hundred years.

Hickel picks that one graph and turns it into the "Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing, he couldn't be more wrong" headline:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-g...

That's dishonest. First of all, extreme poverty is decreasing. That's the actual claim and it is true. Secondly, poverty even by Hickel's standards is also decreasing. It may not have been decreasing consistently over every single past decade, but indeed is decreasing today and for the past decade. Hickel then goes on to say that "the number of people living in poverty" has increased. Indeed it has, as has the number of people living. The actual percentage of people living in poverty has gone down.

So what exactly is the problem with what Bill Gates actually said? He never claimed that poverty is solved, nor did he endorse "neoliberalism" as the solution.

I don't care to litigate Hickel's argument, and I don't even necessarily agree with him. It just seems like you're ignoring the actual points Hickel made. The questions you're asking here are all answered in article, so maybe read it again?

The main argument is one of degree. Hickel isn't contradicting whether the trend is down or up, and indeed it's somewhat irrelevant whether the trend is down. What he's pointing out is that the infographic is quite misleading in the impression that it gives to the lay person. Extreme poverty has a specific definition that isn't very useful when trying to understand the big picture, because "extreme poverty" is below the line where you get enough food to live, and it's very far below the line where you can expect a reasonable life. The high level message that the infographic conveys is that poverty in general is nearly gone, where the reality of global poverty is quite different, and not going away as fast as "extreme poverty". Saying that Gates & Pinker never claimed poverty is solved is hiding behind a technicality. The social media they're sharing has a very clear implication, and most people aren't digging into the details and minutiae of this argument.

It would settle this whole thing to put all the trend lines for extreme poverty vs regular poverty vs lower class vs middle class vs upper class all on one graph. No matter what your opinion is here, it's true that using only extreme poverty on a single graph is cherry-picking and likely to not convey an accurate impression of the overall situation.

> The questions you're asking here are all answered in article, so maybe read it again?

I've only asked a single question: What is wrong with what Bill Gates actually said? Hickel doesn't deal with what Bill Gates actually said, he talks a great deal about things that he didn't say. Indeed I am ignoring a lot of these points because they are irrelevant to whether "poverty" or "extreme poverty" is actually going down.

> Hickel isn't contradicting whether the trend is down or up, and indeed it's somewhat irrelevant whether the trend is down.

It isn't irrelevant at all! The title of Hickel's article is "Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong."

There really are only three possibilities here: Poverty is decreasing, increasing, or stagnating. The data says poverty is decreasing. So how can Bill Gates possibly be wrong? Answer: He isn't wrong, Hickel just wants to talk about how neoliberalism and globalization is bad, i.e. not actually anything that either Gates nor Pinker claimed.

I don't know that Hickel's title was a great choice of words, and I do expect he's being intentionally inflammatory, but it seems like you're getting completely hung up on very literal, possibly pedantic, interpretation of only a few of the exact words written, and ignoring the primary broad implications being made.

> The data says poverty is decreasing.

The data show "extreme poverty" decreasing. It's a lot less clear that poverty in general is decreasing... stagnating would be more appropriate to describe overall global poverty. If you can ignore the specific claims and accept the argument as a whole, Hickel's thrust is simply that global poverty is not declining like the graph of extreme poverty would have you believe, so it's not doing justice to the issue of poverty to tweet around charts of extreme poverty in rapid decline, it gives the wrong impression.

> So how can Bill Gates possibly be wrong?

Again, Hickel's article covers this in quite some depth, with many reasons. If you don't like it, that's fine. If you disagree with it, that's understandable. But your incredulity here is misplaced.

> Hickel just wants to talk about how neoliberalism and globalization is bad, i.e. not actually anything that either Gates nor Pinker claimed.

You're probably right that Hickel wants to talk about how neoliberalism is bad. Tweeting to the masses a picture of extreme poverty in rapid decline, however, is a claim and is part of what Gates and Pinker "said".

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