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China has brought millions out of poverty. The US has not – by choice (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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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.

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[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 7 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Different starting points, it used to be 8/10 Chinese living in extreme poverty.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Yeah, that graph scale is absurd for comparison... I get it, they want to highlight the 'trend' but the scale of the US graph is nothing but a neglible slice of the boottom of the China graph, it's just impossible to intelligently compare the 'trends' in that manner...

Also skeptical of a claim of 0.0% for anyone. It looks to me that, by the criteria of the graph, china has managed to effectively tie the US on this sort of metric, and the US has roughly held it flat for the last 30 years.

As others point out, this particular metric may not be a good one, and depending on how you slice the other metrics, either China or US technically comes out ahead, but broadly a more comparable standard of living.