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Comment by AdrianB1 | Hacker News Reader

The first sign of lousy journalism is the chart of poverty with the $5.5/day limit, like the cost of life is measured in dollars and it is the same across the board. No, it is not, in some places $1 is the equivalent of more than $10 in other countries.

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They mean purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars, nor US dollars. That's how the World Bank measures poverty.

Traditionally purchasing power parity dollars are used for comparisons across countries. Would be nice if journalists specified but you can pretty much assume that’s what their sources used

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity

Otherwise, as you say, these comparisons are meaningless.

No, it is not pretty much assumed because most readers are not experts in the area to know about PPP; I double checked the article, there is no mention about PPP in any form: bad journalism.

There was in the chart of per capita GDP.

Always interesting how money data is usually offered up with no context; almost always a ploy to guide thought. In one of my case law classes, the professor had us read a Friend of the Court letter from the CEO of a company that specialized in the wiring for both consumer and industrial vehicles. The case centered on factories being offshored. The CEO was attempting to demonstrate how they had bent over backwards to keep their operations local and their pay high, and as an example he said how starting pay in ~1973 was $7 an hour. The teacher rolled nodded and smiled at the groans of dismay from my woke classmates, and soon followed a round of complaint and anger for the wealthy. Instead of getting pigeon holed as a right-wing shill, I googled the value of 7 1970 dollars in 2019, which was roughly $40. Imagine a world wherein low/no-skilled (by silicon valley view) labourers could start at $40 an hour working for a CEO that works to keep jobs in the country he owes his success to.

A bit of an aside, I know. But it is so frustrating how we've surrendered context for controversy so we can drum up rage and clicks instead of understanding they complicated reality. I hear Belarus is very clean and many of its citizens love their country, but that's probably propaganda.

The “PPP” in the graph is easy to miss, but is what makes the comparisons possible.

Can you point where is that PPP in the graph? Not only it is not mentioned, but not even the year of the data: "most recent" is terribly vague, even if true.

The title says “GDP Per Capita, PPP”.

Except that Central African and continental Europe climates require vastly different expenses to stay alife. PPP is not much better than US dollars.

How vast are the differences in expenses needed to live (due to climate or otherwise)?

>The first sign of lousy journalism is the chart of poverty with the $5.5/day limit, like the cost of life is measured in dollars and it is the same across the board. No, it is not, in some places $1 is the equivalent of more than $10 in other countries.

Assume that's true: $55 a day to support a family still sounds like shit to me, depending on how you enumerate that.

for reference, that daily value multiplied out for an equivalent monthly wage covers about two thirds of my base monthly rent.

That is not counting heat, hot water, and electric bill. Also not counting food, internet, phone, clothes, health coverage, gas, insurance, etc.

i live in the US northeast; $19,800 a year is ~16% below the poverty line for a family my size this year https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines.

So sure. that sounds like poverty to me.

You probably don't live with family members in a poor neighborhood if your rent is over US$200 a month per person.

by the standards of my area, let’s go with “middle middle class”.

$19,800 a year ($55 a day) is, indeed, a fucking struggle to live and support a family on here. (urban area, new england)

If you can support a family on a single salary, you aren't anywhere close to being poor. But I think we're talking about US$5.5 a day, not US$55.

contrariwise, if there's no jobs (or you broke yourself in a job and can't work, or .. ) .. you might not have a choice.

The poster i was originally replying to was complaining that $1 US a goes further in other places and "could be like $10"; my point is that that's still pretty poor!

Poverty is extremely relative. What you consider poor is someone else's rich. I was born in one of these countries with less than $5.5/day and not owning a car was not considered a negative, nobody had one in the entire village, but nobody considered themselves poor. Now we are considered wealthier than one of the countries in that chart (we are neighbors) and the government considers 45% of the population is poor. even if our "poor" neighbor is listed with just 16%. The conclusion: lying with statistics is a fact of life.

The poverty rates in the article are consistent with what one might call abject poverty, as the chart lists the US having 2% poverty but our government considers about 12-13% to be currently under the poverty line. Ours is apparently calculated based on the cost of food. The World Bank uses absolute dollar PPP measures. They’re all blunt instruments that can’t compare individual situations. But the World Bank approach is a good way of measuring trends and comparing countries overall. Georgia looks to be in dire straits, for example.

Georgia has black markets that far exceed Belarusian black markets in volume. Lots of Georgian stats are skewed because they do not account for black market.

There's plenty of single parent families out there.

Section 8 pays about $1200 for a 2 bedroom in my city.

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