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Comment by numpad0 | Hacker News Reader

This sounds like bit of column one and column two. On one hand, poverty by income in USD must assume that the world's economy had globalized enough, such that, there can be no such locations on Earth as where $0.01 pays Michelin star lunch for dozen healthy adults. That's going to completely break premises of this metric.

On the other hand, it's probably useful enough for now. Maybe there are 100x differences between prices for a sack of potatoes across different developing countries and therefore this index is at least that much inaccurate, but poverty problems and income gaps are a lot worse than that anyway, so there are ways this could make sense within reason.

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I always had to think of my grandparents when discussing GDP. Aside from being very much part of the regular economy, they were also quite self sufficient. When my grandmother died, we found rows and rows of bottled jam. Some decades old according to the labels. My aunt did the taste test, and according to that at least, they were still very much edible and yummy actually. To the GDP that whole side of life is invisible. But it makes a big different in terms of resiliency when disaster hits. I'm assuming it was a reaction to WW2 or maybe it just is what people always did. I'm guessing that a lot of people in India are quite self sufficient (although I wouldn't know) so the financialization of every day life and resulting gdp growth is indeed a flawed indicator.

> My aunt did the taste test, and according to that at least, they were still very much edible and yummy actually.

Sugar is a preservative just like salt, and fruit jams were developed specifically as a way to preserve more of a fruit harvest.

Honey is an example of a sugary product that is extremely stable. There's honey that has been recovered from Egyptian tombs and is still considered edible.

Also: anything relating to home cooking, exercise, self-care, relationships and caring for children and other relatives. Only "paid professional" services are counted which are often much worse quality than the organic untaxed real thing.

Interesting. So you would say, if someone has a talent for cooking, specializes himself, becomes a professional, paid by people who enjoy the food, you would be at least sceptical, when it comes to quality?

I see paint jobs by people done by themselves. And compare it with paid professional servers. The pendulum always swings to professional. :)

I can say that I would rather visit my friends and have a homecooked meal over a restaurant visit any day of the week. There is an intangible value to the combination of food and personal relationships.

"So you would say, if someone has a talent for cooking, specializes himself, becomes a professional," - do you typically know all that about the people who staff the restaurants you visit? And do you think it is the case?

If that person makes a home-cooked meal for their family, no doubt adding value to the world, the value added is not counted towards GDP. Only the "money (or something else taxable) changing hands" transactions are counted.

Most people who make homecooked meals will buy food from a store so it will show up, just indirectly.

Only the inputs, not the value add.

For babysitting it's obviously better for the children to be with their family instead of "cared for" by the first stranger that accepts the lowest wage.

There are definitely undermining effects in commercialized services. Cooking is one of most approachable skills to try and notice first hand.

It's funny, because not only would I value her jam, I would also value it much higher than anything I could get from the store.

It depends on estimates. I have seen estimates which included all that and also things like illegal prostitution in services category.

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/business/worldbusiness/27... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/30/nicholaswatt.m...

> The revised GDP will include some money from illegal activities, such as money from cigarette and drinks smuggling, prostitution and money laundering.

(Greeks were highly motivate to have higher value by any means necessary as discussed in article, this is a quite extreme case)

That's still 'trade' though. As in, money changing hands.

ok but "untaxed non-monetary things part of a wholesome life" and "black market money exchange" are very different topics

Nah it's not a WW2 thing. Not sure about Western Europe but in Central/Eastern Europe, especially in rural areas, people still have chambers and basements full of jam, compote and basically anything else which can be preserved. Not one or two jars but enough to last several years, that kind of stuff.

Valuing self-sufficiency over dollar efficiency or even time efficiency is not dead.

I have dozens of jars of homemade preserves in my basement right now. I had no part in it, it was all my spouse’s doing. And we’re in a US urban area. But we’re affluent urban tech types with hippie tendencies.

>This sounds like bit of column one and column two. On one hand, poverty by income in USD must assume that the world's economy had globalized enough, such that, there can be no such locations on Earth as where $0.01 pays Michelin star lunch for dozen healthy adults. That's going to completely break premises of this metric.

Poverty levels are measured with PPP dollars, so that's already factored in.

Somewhat, nationwide PPP dollars suggest incomes in San Francisco and Boise Idaho are equivalent.

India and China have similar regional differences.

That's only an issue if you use nationwide metrics to make local comparisons (eg. are new yorkers richer than people in Kolkata?), but if you're comparing the entire country it's fine.

If the goal is to measure things operating at the individual level like poverty then internal differences matter even when comparing countries.

People living in Alaska are a lot poorer than their income suggests because of shipping and heating costs.

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