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DanielLC comments on Rationality Quotes December 2014 - Less Wrong
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The GDP statistics I cited were nominal. The $2 a day thing was not. They don't make $2 a day. The make enough to go as far as $2 would in the US.
Only 13% of the US population is immigrants. 20% of the world's immigrant population is in the US, so it works out to about two million immigrants. Less than a thirtieth of a percent of the world population. I does not explain the discrepancy of income.
It's not up for you to define either. It seems highly unlikely that living on a fifteenth of what the US would call poor is successful. There are certainly people who value living on next to nothing, but I don't think there are billions of them. It would take powerful evidence to show that they consider themselves more successful than a US citizen. How much evidence do you have of this?
Well, there is a caveat there. The PPP estimates that drive statistics like that are based on the prices corresponding to a basket of consumer goods, but don't (in fact can't) preserve the ratio of prices within that basket. That's not a big deal if you can make some assumptions about distribution, or if everyone you're dealing with has roughly the same lifestyle, but in areas like Somalia I'd expect local distribution costs to make things like, say, razor blades a lot more expensive relative to locally produced goods like, say, sorghum flour. And that does have subsistence implications.
Somalia's still a really poor country, though.
This argument has gone far away from the original quote. I'm not going to argue about the details. If you want to try to disprove your ability to become successful by using your intelligence, go ahead.
It's very difficult to make economic comparisons between countries while simultaneously acknowledging all of the cultural differences between countries. You can do it, but the results aren't necessarily meaningful.