Nice People Thread Number 11 - A Treasury of Nice People

purch

vivatifosi wrote: »

In the USA 4m people live in extreme poverty, defined as on less than $2 per day.

There used to be a guy in downtown Tampa, who rode his bike around asking for 43 cents. Always 43 cents never anymore.....

Maybe if he had a bad day, he might only have $2 :eek:

vivatifosi

Generali wrote: »

I'd be very interested to see how that is calculated. There are a lot of very dodgy statistics regarding poverty.


For example, last week the number of Indians living in absolute poverty (<$1.25/day) fell from about 400,000,000 to about 100,000, 000.

http://www.cgdev.org/blog/global-absolute-poverty-fell-almost-half-tuesday

Most poverty stats measure income distribution rather than poverty as such.

I'm incredibly dubious about that number. In most of the US you'd be dead next winter if you were genuinely living on so little.

It's from a good source, something like the OECD (I need to track back over the audio at some point when I've not got a lot on to check).

However my theory is different to yours. I think that the number could be that high, however it fails to take account of the facts that:

1. A number of these people are engaged in the black economy.

2. The welfare structure in the US means that a lot of people don't show up in stats, but will effectively be being 'kept' by churches, charities and other groups who run far more extensive networks of foodbanks etc than you would see in a country with a different safety net structure.

3. Some may be illegal immigrants near the Mexican border living off the land. There are certainly a lot of v poor immigrants working the land in this area and I know a lot of them aren't classified. Whether or not this group was included in the study I don't know.

I do think that it is a harder place to live. I've never seen whole families of rough sleepers here, I have on the streets of LA. I've never seen people having to sleeping out in extremely low temperatures here (as we tend to have emergency shelters), but I have in Boston and it was -15 centigrade overnight. There was a huge queue to sit in the library all day and stay warm (this is a picture in the UK too, but as a result of people being chucked out of night shelters).

Generali

PasturesNew wrote: »

It depends how you count it .... that's the trouble with random statements, that aren't qualified .... could mean anybody, counted any way. But there are many reasons why somebody might not have an income, or need one, depending how you measured it.

Indeed and that's exactly my point.

To take a slightly trite example, The Boy has an income well below $700 a year. Is he poor? No because I pay his way.

Unless we know the definition of the words it's a meaningless statement.

You remember that people used to go on about people living on a dollar a day? Thay 'dollar' was more like $2 because they took off inflation from a certain date.

Even then, $2 for a subsistence farmer wouldn't include the food they grew for themselves and the house they built for themselves. If you compare that with someone living in a city on $5 a day, the farmer may well have a better standard of living.

vivatifosi

Generali wrote: »

Unless we know the definition of the words it's a meaningless statement.

Sorry Gen, not going to be able to get you an answer to that straight away.

In general terms it is an interesting short course though. It is about globalisation in general. So it has been interesting to see the projections for different things and a few stats that I hadn't seen before. For example:

Due to the rise of the middle class around the world as less developed countries develop, there are now more obese people in the world than hungry ones.

That India's middle class will probably grow to a larger size than China's, partly because India's population growth will be higher (no single child policy) plus China has more very wealthy people rather than lots filling the middle, so more mega rich and income inequality.

In spite of Malthusian projections and scaremongering (some of which we've seen on other parts of this board) the world's population will likely grow to about 10bn and then stabilise there, though the make up of that population will change (eg continued growth in Africa, lower birth rates than replacement in developed nations.

Although much is said about job losses in the home country when TNCs move manufacturing abroad, the IMF states that there is no overall detrimental effect to the country - in other words they still bring money back to the home economy in spite of the job loss and this is generally greater.

Unfortunately because it is subject to a free subscription, I can't link to the specific parts saying these things. I was worried that it would be a bit leftie as a course, but actually it's pretty balanced, even saying you need a degree of inequality in society for it to work.

Generali

Hey viva. I would guess that this is the study:

http://npc.umich.edu/publications/u/2013-06-npc-working-paper.pdf

The first thing we notice is this:

This reform, combined with changes toother public programs that have raised the benefits of work for low-income households, has been followed by a dramatic decline in cash assistance caseloads

(page 4)

Now anyone who watches US TV programs about poor people knows that many poor Americans get 'food stamps' under the SNAP program. They also receive rent assistance (like UK housing benefit). As a result, cash benefits don't have to cover very much when it comes to keeping body and soul together although I admit it wouldn't pay for a life that I'm overly keen to live.

vivatifosi

Pastures, Saga offer reasonably priced home and contents cover and when the people here needed their help (we had a flood due to a burst main) they were one of the better firms to deal with.

tomterm8

very dubious about the direction this thread is going... all economicsy and thought provoking.

Today I'm mostly not getting anywhere, slowly. Got a stomach bug. Mostly gone now, but it's left me tired and grumpy.

tomterm8

purch wrote: »

There used to be a guy in downtown Tampa, who rode his bike around asking for 43 cents. Always 43 cents never anymore.....

Maybe if he had a bad day, he might only have $2 :eek:

You can make a lot of money begging... certainly, more than minimum wage.

michaels

Buildings insurance price sounds good, contents is about 5x what we pay for 30k of contents.

vivatifosi

tomterm8 wrote: »

very dubious about the direction this thread is going... all economicsy and thought provoking.

Today I'm mostly not getting anywhere, slowly. Got a stomach bug. Mostly gone now, but it's left me tired and grumpy.

Apologies tomterm... My other MOOC is about rock music. So later in the week my focus will move to that. I'm not sure whether that is good or bad news for anyone who has to put up with my inane banter.