Maths + Poverty + Wealth = Ignorance

ruggedtoast

antrobus wrote: »

Going "three sheets to the wind"?

Are you are telling us that you regularly work when you are as drunk as a skunk? Or are you telling us that you don't know what the phrase "three sheets to the wind" means?

Both of those things.

PasturesNew

antrobus wrote: »

Going "three sheets to the wind"?

Are you are telling us that you regularly work when you are as drunk as a skunk? Or are you telling us that you don't know what the phrase "three sheets to the wind" means?

He might not be drunk. In my family the phrase meant !!!!!!, a simpleton. It was a phrase used to describe an aunt who was .... denser than a big bag of really dense things.

antrobus

Voyager2002 wrote: »

That is interesting...

At the time I posted I was thinking of the data on the extent of malnutrition. According to the FAO work The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014, "Latin America and the Caribbean have made the greatest overall progress in increasing food security with modest progress in sub-Saharan Africa and Western Asia, which have been afflicted by natural disasters and conflict".
http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/2014/en/

Clearly there is a connection between the number of people who are in poverty and the number of people who are unable to obtain an adequate diet, but this demonstrates that the two 'snapshots' do not show the same thing.

There would obviously be a connection between hunger and extreme poverty, although it is the case UN type things appear to measure them as two different things.

However if you look at actual FAO data, their snapshot shows much the same thing as everybody else - http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4030e.pdf

The answer to the conundrum is that when the FAO talk of "overall progress", they mean progress in terms of meeting targets to reduce the proportion of people who are undernourished in that nation or region.

Thus;

• if Region A starts off with 10% of 500 million people being hungry and make it to 5%, they've met the target,
• if Region B starts off with 30% of 1000 million people being hungry and make it to 20% they've failed.

The FAO would therefore regard Region A as showing 'more progress' than Region B, even though region B has taken four times the number of people out of hunger, achieved twice the relative reduction in hunger, and so made a much greater contribution to the total reduction of hungry people in the world.

Or to put it another way, the statement that "Latin America and the Caribbean have made the greatest overall progress in increasing food security" doesn't mean what you thought it meant.:)

antrobus

PasturesNew wrote: »

He might not be drunk. In my family the phrase meant !!!!!!, a simpleton. It was a phrase used to describe an aunt who was .... denser than a big bag of really dense things.

Yes. I think you'll find that if you type the phrase "three sheets to the wind" into Google, (or indeed, 'in' or 'into' the wind) that it means being absolutely !!!!!! out of your mind. Or as the OED puts it "very drunk".

It's nautical in origin. One sheet and you're a bit merry, two sheets and you love everybody, three sheets and you're so rat-arsed you can't even stand up.

zagubov

In my teens the global population was just over 3.5 billion. About a third was in China (which wasn't even in the UN at the time). It made most generalisations about the world meaningless as China, like Albania, didn't participate in anything.

A mate attended an economics lecture in the early 80s "cold war era" by someone with a military background comparing the communist and capitalist economic systems. The guy predicted that eventually communist and capitalist countries would be neck- and-neck because their ultimate endpoint would be a safe secure stable society saturate with consumer goods.

Capitalist societies would start by promoting consumer industries that would then encourage heavy industry to provide the materials. industrial plant etc. but in the east it would be the heavy industry that would be developed first and then the consumer economy would be constructed on top of it. He predicted they're both aiming at the same endpoint. I was skeptical at the time, but having seen how China and Vietnam have changed, I'm impressed by how prophetic it was.

antrobus

zagubov wrote: »

.....The guy predicted that eventually communist and capitalist countries would be neck- and-neck because their ultimate endpoint would be a safe secure stable society saturate with consumer goods.
....

Well, he got that wrong didn't he?

Generali

michaels wrote: »

I was shocked when on holiday recently in a far from third world company that the supermarket staff earned about £8 per day whereas supermarket prices were close to UK prices so it was easy to spend the check out persons daily salary on a few bits and pieces....

A mate lived in Trinidad for a while and the prices there were broadly the same as the US.

He paid his daily maid 2x minimum wage and she lived in a 2 room shack made from discarded wood with an earth floor.

The first piece of advice I got when I visited was if you see a chicken run into the road (value ~20mins work at minimum wage in the UK) then stomp on the brakes because there will be someone chasing it, probably a child because if you can't afford to send the kids to school then they look after the chooks.

Few can afford to lose something so valuable as a chicken.

According to the CIA, Trini is the 53rd richest country in the world. Imagine how poor people live in the median country, the Dominican Republic, which has half the GDP per capita of Trinidad & Tobago, ~$9,700 pa.

Assuming consumption is 70% of GDP like in the UK, people on average spend about twelve quid a day on everything: housing, utilities, food clothing, booze, cigs, travel. I'll happily spend more than that on a bottle of wine as a treat. A 20 a day smoker will do that on cigarettes every other day:eek:

lisyloo

people on average spend about twelve quid a day on everything

It is right to compare in nominal terms?
I work with colleagues in Bangalore. I'm paid about 6 times as much, but they can afford a maid and I can't.
Financially I'd say they are better off than UK colleagues (as in most of their wives don't work and they can afford maids).
In other ways (healthcare, roads) their quality of life is lower.

I'm not sure you can compare nominally somewhere like India and the UK. The property, labour and fuel prices are entirely different.

antrobus

lisyloo wrote: »

It is right to compare in nominal terms?....

No, you're supposed to use to compare in terms of Dollar PPP.

lisyloo wrote: »

....I work with colleagues in Bangalore. I'm paid about 6 times as much, but they can afford a maid and I can't.
Financially I'd say they are better off than UK colleagues (as in most of their wives don't work and they can afford maids).
In other ways (healthcare, roads) their quality of life is lower.

I'm not sure you can compare nominally somewhere like India and the UK. The property, labour and fuel prices are entirely different.

India's PPP GDP per capita is $5,412 according to the World Bank, compared to $38,452 for the UK.

zagubov

antrobus wrote: »

Well, he got that wrong didn't he?

In what way?