Poverty is usually measured relatively to the perceived average of your environment’s wealth because that is how poverty affects your life.

You can be 100 times as rich as some poor soul in a third world country and still be so poor in your own society that you are constantly struggling, fighting for survival, skipping meals and inheriting that struggle to your kids who are born into them without much chances of getting out.

This could be because the poor soul can maybe life decently within their society off a hundreth of the cost you have (sometimes you even just need to be a good hunter and be able to build some shelter).

The average societal wealth definition of poor used in sociology is not without critics of course, but you can ask yourself if 30 times the income buys 30 times as much rent today and helps you to sustain 30 times as many families (all costs and benefits considered). The income gap between rich and poor is higher today than it ever was under any industrial rule — I wish I’d be able to share your optimism, but considering the average top manager’s salery (including bonuses for failing upwards and fucking shit up) my optimism about the altruistic nature of today’s wealth distribution seems to vanish just a little too quickly..

> Poverty is usually measured relatively to the perceived average of your environment’s wealth because that is how poverty affects your life.

No, that is how it affects your status.

In every society, half the people are at or below average status, because math. That can never change.

But 95+% of the people in the richest country have better material standard than the average people in the poorest.

And even those in today's poorest countries have better material standard than preindustrial people.

But we still have the same percentage of losers...

We’re arguing semantics, but if a working poor in the US has to work 50 hour weeks and 3 jobs (due to low status maybe —- livable income but high costs for transport, rent, debt and healthcare ect) to get food and shelter, that’s still poverty. A farmer in Eastern Europe could have much more freedom over their life while still earning less in absolute terms.

There’s no inherent reason why relative low status has to turn into slavery in practice, that’s a choice made by society.

The question of absolute material wealth is still relevant and interesting, but it is mostly a different question.

I didn’t come up with that definition of poverty, it is the definition used by UNICEF, UNDP (The United Nations Children's Fund) and the OECD.

And there certainly is discussion about that definition, but other poverty definitions also fail to capture certain aspects of poverty (e.g. the World Bank’s poverty line).

It isn’t status, when bith of your parents work full time and you still don’t get to eat on the last days of the week. That is poverty.

First of all, I don't know why we're discussing the word "poverty". I talked about "30x the income", never mentioned "poverty".

But let's talk about the word.

By the UNICEF/UNDP/etc definition of "poverty", poverty can never be eradicated. There will always be people below average, as any math teacher can explain to you.

In a "Richistan" society comprised only of dollar millionaires and billionaires, the least wealthy millionaires will be living in "poverty".

> It isn’t status, when both of your parents work full time and you still don’t get to eat on the last days of the week. That is poverty.

...but now you've jumped to absolute poverty measures! Those "Richistan poor" could easily dine in fine restaurants every day.

I invite you to visit us in Africa where a dose of real poverty will dis abuse you of your silly notion that relative poverty is a real thing.

And I invite you to ask yourself why UNICEF uses “my” definition.

I nowhere said that I don’t see that definition without problems or that I wholeheartedly stand behind it. Another definition used by the World Bank is the poverty line, which fails to capture other aspects of poverty (e.g. two parents with full time jobs unable to pay the rent in a rich society).

The definitions of poverty are a huge topic in sociology and economy and if you feel they misrepresent reality, go ahead and make a better one.

But you can't buy time.

Well... we live twice as long as those people.

That's not really true. Once you exclude people who died in childhood the average life expectancy shoots up.

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/Life-expectancy-b...

In England and Wales around 1850 the life expectancy overall was around 40 because a lot of people died as children and dragged down the average.

For someone that made it to 5 years old their life expectancy goes us 15 years to 55.

People now definitely have a higher life expectancy but the difference isn't as vast as some might assume.

> That's not really true. Once you exclude people who died in childhood the average life expectancy shoots up.

An entertaining use of the word "true".

Yes, if you exclude a lot of the data, the average changes :)

Sarcasm aside, that is an important point in average life span statistics, but doesn't change the point that preindustrial life was "Nasty, brutish and short", as the old saying goes.

Also, 1850s England was the richest place on earth, almost a century into industrialism. Already a vastly elevated existence compared to our "natural state".

No, "not nasty brutish and short". And not "everybody suffered a short lifespan" either. As we have just seen.

What is true is that many children died young. Beyond that they lived almost as long as we do.

If they had modern medicine then the numbers would have equaled out. Heck, with their superior diet they may have lived even longer.

So the question is, do we need to work long hours to have modern medicine?

Your own numbers say that the richest population in the world in 1850 - way into industrialization - died at 55 on average, after ignoring child mortality. Which BTW means they watched maybe 1/4 of their children die.

If any population lived like that today, their lives would certainly be called nasty, brutish and short.

Well relatively short. Not necessarily nasty and brutish tho.

And, as I said, modern medicine might fix that.

OK, the nasty and brutish part might not have been huge.

Modern medicine is great, but it turns out to not add that many years to our life spans. Mostly money does. Or more likely, the healthy lives money buys.

Put in other words, it's much better to not get sick than to have great health care!

(I'm not just bullshitting here, this is what the data shows (not that I have any links with proofs to show (so feels free to not believe this :)))

Oh I totally believe it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Maybe? It depends on whether that extra income makes people happier. I know people struggling to get buy on $4-500k/year. And I know people who live happily on a much smaller amount.

For me, the marginal value of a dollar diminishes pretty quickly, so the extra effort typical of the American schedule is definitely not worth it to me.

...what? Almost all of that 30x is because of better technology, not the number of hours. We could switch to something like 32 hour weeks, 40 work weeks per year, and still have a truly enormous GDP.

Sure.

My point was more that if you choose to work an extra hour, you're vastly more rewarded for it now.

And I guess that's one reason people do it.

The value of extra income drops the more you have. All else equal, more money per hour should decrease the number of hours worked. The biggest exception is when you're taking advantage of a great deal to save up now and retire or half-retire early, but even that is still reducing your lifetime average work hours per year.

> All else equal, more money per hour should decrease the number of hours worked

I would have shared that guess, but clearly that's not how we humans operate.

Maybe we just like to work!

Or maybe we really like to be richer than others. We're primates after all, and primates really care about their place in hierarchies...

> I would have shared that guess, but clearly that's not how we humans operate.

What are you basing that on? I mean, the article is about as far as you can possibly get from "all else equal".

I just base it on living in the 21th century.

Humanity is stupendously rich, by the standards of all previous generations, and yet most of us work like crazy, certainly including many of the richest ones.

Or maybe we're talking about slightly different things?