“How is living on 1.25 a day in Zambia comparable to living on 1.25 a day in USA or Poland?
I live on 400 a month in the USA. This puts me way below the poverty line but I eat fairly well.
400 a month in Zambia would make me middle class, pretty well off, so to speak, would it not?”

This is something I want to study, the issue of comparative costs across the world. I know, however, that markets are global. I suspect, though don’t know, that housing costs are substantially less in many areas of the world than in the U.S. Food costs should be comparable, although possibly lower in the U.S. for some foods since American agribusinesses are subsidized by American taxpayers.

One way in which you are clearly correct is that relative to the majority of the nation’s population, $400 a month in Zambia is middle class. But that’s not saying anything worthwhile. That’s like saying that with respect to the inhabitants of a slum, someone owning a computer is middle class. Zambia is destitute, so having a median income in Zambia is much worse than having a median income in the U.S., which is an industrial developed economy reaping imperial benefits with a (however eroded) welfare system.

Mulga Mumblebrain wrote:

“I must say Danny does not appear to be a little ray of sunshine by any means. Now what psychological type is it that shows such smug indifference to human suffering?”

To be fair, he may merely be being honest. When it comes down to it, I don’t believe many people even on the left in imperial countries would be willing to accept a system of global socialism, which is what I mean by “civilized” and pulling people around the world out of poverty. This means that your child gets less presents at Christmas, you eat less at restaurants, you may have to forego college for your children, and likely even more sacrifices. Meanwhile, while you are making all of these sacrifices you can’t even see the people you are helping – they are on the other side of the world, represented by statistics only even to those who are educated. Balancing helping someone you can’t even see versus helping your own children is one of the reasons the left in imperial countries has never been serious about civilizing the world.

Global socialism (anarchic or authoritarian) is a radical position, even on the left. I’d love to see the first-world left embrace such a position, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

Here’s what Cecil Rhodes, British financial magnate, had to say about Imperialism in 1895:

“I was in the West End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for “bread!” “bread!” and on my way home I pondered over the scene and a I became more than even convinced of the importance of imperialism … My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.”

The “poor people” of imperial countries are bribed into silence – given bread and butter, and a bit more if necessary, in order for them to have privileges over the terrorized masses (the third world). Divide and conquer once again, and hence the multinational capitalists went on to *produce* massive poverty, intentionally, to kill hundreds of millions of people (perhaps billions by now) and control the world. Do you understand why being “anti-war” is such a nonsense position? “Show the corpses!”, the silly monsters of the “anti-war movement” cry – those same people never say “Show the corpses!” of the tens of thousands killed every day by *economic* imperialism. The only logical conclusion is that they are fine with killing millions of people, except through military war.

It is the “poor people” of imperial countries, as well as the middle class, that *allow* imperialism to happen. The ruling class buys the silence of the rest of us with some bread and butter, and keeps the rest of the profits for themselves. That can end very soon, or 30,000 or more child corpses per day can keep being produced.

We hear the number 1.2 million (or thereabouts) a lot. That’s the number of Iraqis killed due to the American invasion, surely a horrific tragedy. But how often do we hear the number 11 million (per year), who are children that die due to economic imperialism?

The very same people who congratulate themselves on being “left” and “moral” and “environmentally conscious” in America in reality are mass murderers.

That bread is covered by both butter and blood.

Many thanks for the comments which I think altogether raise an important point – that statistics can blind us to the reality of what it means to be absolutely poor. The theme of this article was perhaps even more basic: that ideological assumptions and statistical biases aside, the latest poverty figures reveal an even more abysmal world situation according to any commonsense lay analysis – and yet this straight-forward observation has been widely neglected by the global justice movement. The MDGs on poverty and hunger, following the food price crisis, are now further out of reach than ever. But without even a trustworthy analysis of global poverty, effective monitoring of progress remains elusive.

As for Danny Ray’s point, one might argue that even $10 a day – which is the maximum daily income of possibly 78% of the world – is not enough to live a life of human dignity. The IFPRI’s report last year on ‘The World’s Most Deprived’ sub-divided the national poverty line of $1 a day into 3 further categories, with the ‘ultra poor’ living on less than 50 cents a day (consituting 162m people – a number that would now need a huge revision upwards in the light of the Bank’s new figures!). $1.25 a day, in other words, is far from as bad as it gets.

Whatever our conclusion, and in the light of the financial crisis which threatens to distract attention from the other joint and major crises of hunger, conflict and climate change, a massive reordering of international priorities is clearly needed.

For anyone interested in a more effective measure of international poverty, I would recommend Pogge and Reddy’s approach that focuses on sufficiency for meeting basic human needs – see their website at http://www.socialanalysis.org/ (e.g. see the conclusion of ‘Unknown: The Extent, Distribution, and Trend of Global Income Poverty’).

A longer and referenced version of this article is available at: http://www.stwr.org/globalization/world-bank-poverty-figures-what-do-they-mean.html

I guess I would have to answer a resonding NO to that.

The life expectancy of someone “living” on $1.25 a day is greatly diminished, due to a nearly complete absence of material services (health, sanitation, nutrition). Not only do these people live much shorter lives, those lives are utterly miserable and very desperate. Poor nutrition results in mental and physical health problems, carried on to any children. Desperate need for money results in accepting virtually any conditions to gain that money (theft, prostitution, terrible working conditions). The lives of these people are reduced to a struggle for dignity and survival. Untreated diseases are the norm rather than the exception. This condition would never be tolerated in a world where every human is treated equally.

The question is not “what amount of money is the bare minimum needed for short-term survival” but rather “what amount of money is needed for *decent* long-term survival”. Decent survival includes a limit on the number of hours worked, occasional access to the arts, good nutrition for the entire family, health care, and labor rights. Anything less is uncivilized, and the condition of humanity as it currently stands is abhorrent.

The question for the first-world left is the same as it has always been – are you willing to give up some of your treasures – some of your imperial benefits – so that the world can become civilized? So far history has answered that question with a resounding “no”, and 30,000 child corpses per day is just the tip of the iceberg of the cost of that choice. Unless that answer becomes “yes”, the only solution is for the first-world left to be thrown from their throne along with the rest of the imperial monsters.

If it cost $1.25 just to survive and one quarter of the world’s population are surviving on less than that, then the amount to survive on must therefore be less than $1.25.

I don’t believe that is what the author wrote. He stated that according to the World Bank the international poverty line is is living on less than 1.25/day. That defines what the author states as extreme poverty.

The challenge is trying to survive and living a live of human dignity on 1.25 or less. IMO I think your misstatement of the author’s premise has led to your fallacious conclusion.

I applaud Mr. Parsons for his work. This information needs to be presented to us every day with our $5 latte and $4 croissant.