What has changed is our idea of what wealth is, and what poverty is, and I think these notions will continue to change.
> Extreme poverty, abject poverty, absolute poverty, destitution, or penury, was originally defined by the United Nations in 1995 as "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services."
IMHO, this is a very timeless definition as well.
To be clear, if you earn $760 a year, by the World Bank’s definition, you’re not extremely poor. By that definition homeless beggars in the US don’t live in extreme poverty, because they make more than that panhandling.
I really do think it’s worth considering the degree to which this definition is designed primarily to produce “victories” like the ones being celebrated here.
@carlosdp: So one of the richest humans of all time approves of a book telling people that the world he helped to create is better than they think? Hm.
This is the book by Hans Rosling right? The one that cherry picks data shamelessly to make the point he clearly wanted to make before he researched it? The one panned by Business Insider, not the most notably loon left publication ever?
According to Business Insider, Rosling "misses critical wrinkles in the data" and has not presented "the whole story".
From Wikipedia:
Although Rosling argues that the future will be better than expected because birth rates are stabilizing, life expectancy around the world is increasing, the gender gap is nearly closed, and the extremely impoverished population is shrinking, others point out that populations are still expanding (with many still under-nourished), life expectancy in the US is decreasing, the gender gap is only nearly closed in education and not in employment, and extreme wealth has become more extreme.
It seems like being a bit skeptical of people selling Panglossian visions, given how much people want to believe them, might not hurt. That’s not to advocate the kind of doom and gloom which forgets that we have antibiotics, indoor plumbing, and electric lights. It is however worth keeping an eye on worrying trends like antibiotic resistance, climate change, and just how many people don’t have indoor plumbing, safe water, and electric lights.
I highly recommend reading Factfulness.
This should be obvious even without the book. :)
You can tell from the percentage of the labour force who worked on farms that most people couldn't have been wealthy, and the industrial revolution changed everything.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/agriculture-value-added-p...
Shocking that corn and cow producers in India are 90% less productive than in the US.
Being a peasant was awful too, mind.