New poverty index finds Indian states worse than Africa

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.khaleejtimes.ae/DisplayArticle08.asp?xfile=data/international/2010/July/international_July506.xml§ion=international

New poverty index finds Indian states worse than Africa (AFP)

13 July 2010, LONDON — More people are mired in poverty in eight Indian states than in the 26 poorest African countries, according to a new UN-backed measure of poverty out Tuesday.

The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) looks beyond income at a wider range of household-level deprivation, including services, which could then be used to help target development resources.

Its findings throw up stark statistics compared to regular poverty measures.

The study found that half of the world’s MPI poor people live in South Asia, and just over a quarter in Africa.
There are 421 million MPI poor people in eight Indian states alone — Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal — and 410 million in the 26 poorest African countries combined.

The researchers said that the extent of poverty in India had often been overlooked, by figures comparing percentages of poor people in countries as a whole rather than sheer numbers.

According to the index, 64.5 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa are MPI poor. In South Asia, 55 percent of people are MPI poor. Both figures are higher than the number considered extreme income poor — living on less than 1.25 dollars per day.

[Oregone]

1. The invisible hand of capitlism works in mysterious ways

[NNN0LHI]

2. Channeling Adam Smith?

[enlightenment]

3. Hardly.

Adam Smith never supported free-range, unregulated capitalism. He would be appalled at how his ideas have devolved.

“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged”. - Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations . . ., I.viii.36)

[NNN0LHI]

4. He also believed the only purpose for government to exist was to protect the wealthy from the poor

He probably would be pretty happy about how well that idea caught on.

Don

[enlightenment]

9. Really?

I do not pretend to be an expert on the text, so could you offer a citation (or quote the passage), please?

My understanding was that he believe the primary purpose of government was to protect the nation (England) from attack from external threats - but also to maintain infrastructure and administer justice.

I suppose it could be argued that because all of that was supposed to ensure the free flow of commerce that it benefit the wealthy over the poor, but that would be stretching his complete argument, wouldn't it?

[NNN0LHI]

14. Really

the competition of the poor takes away from the reward of the rich.
Book I, Chapter X, Part II, pg.154

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
Book V, Chapter I, Part II, 775

[Oregone]

5. True. He supported fairy, paper-capitalism

Real-world capitalism diverges because there are no fairies in reality

[enlightenment]

6. Not terribly surprising that a moral philosopher

would believe in something that humans are incapable of doing - that's pretty much the meat and potatoes of the field.

[Oregone]

8. It was pure idiocy, and there is no other way about it

He proposed a structure that allowed owners of capital to grow egregiously wealthy, while never fully considering such wealth could buy a government and knock down any of the walls of regulation he advocated. In real-world capitalism, that wealth has legs, and it tramples all over anything impeding the investors' ability to grow wealthier. You can hide his lack of insight behind such a term as "moral philosopher", but he was simply short-sighted and lacked some basic logic skills.

[enlightenment]

11. Okay.

I'm not going to argue, since you clearly want him to be at fault for all this rot. Bottom line is that the man was not an economist (the field didn't exist) and he was a moral philosopher.

I'm not 'hiding' behind anything; I was attempting dialogue on something I find interesting. I just don't have it in me to lay blame for all this on Adam Smith.

;)

[Oregone]

12. The blame should go to people who want to keep doing the same thing...

...and pretend they are looking for different results.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. B-but the Wall Street Journal tells us about India's growing middle class

(not about the tenant farmers who are enmeshed in impossible debt slavery and resort to suicide or the "pavement dwellers" in major cities.)

[OhioChick]

10. Interesting how this article comes out the day after this one:

UK to cut foreign aid to 'rich' India

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4460970

[Starry Messenger]

13. The number of Indian billionaires doubled last year.

I've seen people here argue that means capitalism was "helping" India. Sickening. I guess it is working for some people...as usual.