this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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We track the change in the number of people living in poverty to the total pop via these statistics. For example if last decade we had 20% of people living in poverty and this decade we have 10% of people living in poverty, that tells us relative to the total population there are less people living in poverty. In other words previously if we had randomly sampled 100 people we would have expected to find approx 20 living in poverty vs now we would expect to only find approx 10 if we randomly sample 100 people.
Bringing poverty down from one percentage to a smaller one as described above describes a success in the sense that poverty is more uncommon compared to the total population.
If P is the total number of people living in poverty, T is the total population and R is the ratio of people living in poverty to the total population then we have R=P/T, in other words P=TR.
Your issue is just that the number of people living in poverty P is too large. But if that's your concern then we either need to decrease T (the total population) or decrease R (the ratio of people living in poverty to total population) or decrease both T and R.
You're arguing that our efforts to decrease R aren't working (or aren't working well enough). So, then what should we do? If we do nothing, R remains fixed (or even increases) and P increases due to the increasing population T, which makes your issue worse. Decreasing the total population T seems tricky too, if that's a viable solution to you, them how do you suppose we should accomplish it? As far as I can tell the only plausible solution is decreasing R, which is exactly what the person you were replying to was talking about?
Note: I'm also ignoring that the rates of change in T and R matter a lot. If you care to argue that we're not decreasing R fast enough, then what would you suggest in order for us to decrease R faster?
Have you ever heard the term “lies, damned lies and statistics”?
When I say that 40 million people in the USA live in poverty, is your response going to be “well, that’s only 11%!” And feel good about yourself?
Or are you going to think “shit. That’s more than the entire population of Canada.” And then rethink on these social programs, their cost and their effectiveness?
It’s fairly clear, when you start digging into these numbers that the more money spent to fight poverty doesn’t correspond to less people living in poverty. And if throwing money at the problem doesn’t help, it’s probably pretty scary for you to try to sus out what the alternatives might be.
In all honesty, with the amount of dollars spent over the last 70 years (an entire generation of US citizenry), poverty should be absolutely eradicated.
The interesting question to get to here, is why hasn’t poverty been eradicated? $20 some odd trillion dollars have been spent.
If you spent $20 trillion on 11% of the population, or 40m people …. That’s what? $500,000 spent per person living in poverty?
How do these numbers work out? How do you spend $500k for every person living in poverty right now, spread over a generation? And how is poverty still a thing?
Did you read my actual post? My point is about how actual accurate statistics work and the logical conclusions that must follow from them. Not about whatever particular statistics you've read and chosen to disagree with today. My points still hold regardless of whether we're talking about statistics you agree with or not.
If you read what I actually said you'll notice part of what I was asking you was what is your suggestion for what to do in place of these programs you're claiming are failures? You disliking a particular statistic doesn't address that question.
Yes, basic familiarity with ratios and the fact that the population is increasing also leads us to this conclusion i.e. basic elementary school math also tells us this. I addressed this in my previous post to you actually.
Why even bother to respond if you're going to address none of my points, answer none of the questions I've asked you and instead whine and moan about statistics that are entirely irrelevant to my point? If you would read what I said you'll notice that my points and questions don't change whether the population is 10 people or 10 million people, or whether the ratio of people living in poverty to the total pop is 100% or 1%.