Re: Postrel on liberalization

[Alan G Isaac <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 24 Aug 2002 01:46:21 -0400 "Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Obviously, the number of prople living on $1 per day  has dropped from 1970 to
> 1998.  But that does not show that the number of people living in poverty has
> fallen.  $1/day in 1970 would translate into $30 per day in 1998.  The number of
> people living on less than  $30 a day in 1998 is definitively larger than the
> number at $1 per day in 1970.

Surely you do not think an economist would make such
comparison in nominal terms??  Let us give a reasonable
rather than a silly reading to the abstract.

> What is amazing is that with all the benefits of
> globalization that Barro celebrates, the world still has
> people living on less than $1 per day at all.

How wrong this is!  The history of the human race has almost
everyone living in poverty and dying young throughout the
ages.  What is historically extraordinary is two things: the
explosion in the human population over the last few hundred
years, and the even more recent emergence in capitalist
economies of a true middle class with a material standard of
living that has no historical parallel.  To be surprised by
the number of people who remain in poverty at the beginning
of the 21st century shows a bizarre neglect of historical
context, especially for someone with your interest in
history.

Alan