Despite the US’s economic success, income inequality remains breathtaking. But this is no glitch – it’s the system
The Chinese did rather well in the age of globalization. In 1990, 943 million people there lived on less than $3 a day measured in 2021 dollars – 83% of the population, according to the World Bank. By 2019, the number was brought down to zero. Unfortunately, the United States was not as successful. More than 4 million Americans – 1.25% of the population – must make ends meet with less than $3 a day, more than three times as many as 35 years ago.
The data is not super consistent with the narrative of the US’s inexorable success. Sure, American productivity has zoomed ahead of that of its European peers. Only a handful of countries manage to produce more stuff per hour of work. And artificial intelligence now promises to put the United States that much further ahead.
This is not to congratulate China for its authoritarian government, for its repression of minorities or for the iron fist it deploys against any form of dissent. But it merits pondering how this undemocratic government could successfully slash its poverty rate when the richest and oldest democracy in the world wouldn’t.
I did acknowledge it.
I said not a single word about exchange rates and never once mentioned the USD. Either your strawmaning what I said or you can’t read.
You pointed to article that describes the poverty rate in dollars without asking why a Chinese population would measure poverty with a US currency.
You also failed to read any of the reasoning behind the Chinese claim of “eliminating poverty”, how improvements to public infrastructure contributed to that analysis, and how the UN Poverty metrics fail to include it in their own analysis.
You linked to an article with a final paragraph that you didn’t understand or interrogate.