Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy

Re:Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy by peteradio on Thursday September 19, 2019 @07:41AM (#21015272)

Since 1970 the world has added about 4 billion people, I don't think the claim that "100 million" have been lifted out of poverty can be taken by itself. What if 100 million have been added to the "not super poor" class while 3.9 billion have been added to the "effectively" slaves class? Not saying that's what has happened but "lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty" sounds like a focused view that ignores all else.

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Re:Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy by simonh on Thursday September 19, 2019 @07:55AM (#21015338)

I didn't say 100 million, I said hundreds of millions. That's a very cautious low ball though. That's probably the rough scale of people added to the middle class, not just raised out of poverty, in China alone. We don't need to guess what happened to the global population though, they're out there in the world. We can ask them.

Just since 1990, the share of the global population living on less than $1.90 a day has fallen from 44% to about 9.5% in 2015[1]. The graphs there are broken because different studies have used different measures of poverty at different times, but the trends and absolute numbers are clear. Global poverty as a proportion of population is about 1/6th what it was in 1960.

[1]https://www.worldvision.org/sponsorship-news-stories/global-...

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Re:Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy by bakuninsbart on Thursday September 19, 2019 @09:05AM (#21015755)

According to official statistics, China's middle class grew from 2.1% (29 million people) in 1999 to 39% (531 million people) in 2013. Average wagegrowth has been 11% between 2001 and 2015.

https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class/

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Re:Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy by peteradio on Thursday September 19, 2019 @09:13AM (#21015813)

Excellent, that paints a much clearer picture.

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Re:Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy by pessimizer on Thursday September 19, 2019 @09:26AM (#21015911)

> in China alone.

More like in China almost entirely. Global capitalist structures take a lot of credit for improving living standards all over the world, but when you look at the numbers, it's really a very dramatic improvement in China, a country that deviates from those structures in significant ways (and is demonized for ir.)

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Re:Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy by jsperson on Thursday September 19, 2019 @09:22AM (#21015881)

You should check out the book Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Rosling, a now deceased Swedish doctor, makes the case that the world has improved immensely over the past two centuries. He backs it up with copious statistics from the UN and other international NPOs. Rosling also gave one of the best TED talks ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

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Re:Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy by ptah on Thursday September 19, 2019 @11:25AM (#21017071)

globalization only started in the 80's

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Re:Economists don’t understand much about the macroeconomy by jsperson on Thursday September 19, 2019 @05:31PM (#21020948)

Check out the book... included in the coverage of the past 200 years is coverage of the last 40.

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