[albatruss]

Yes, and Noah Smith never seems to address Jason Hickle's point that the evidence based poverty line should be $7.40. And it seems that if that point holds, as Smith never actually challenges the point that the population beneath that line has actually gone up while "extreme poverty" has gone down (a point both agree on), then Smith isn't left with much of a position.

[Lazare]

I think Smith's argument is that:

1. We shouldn't use static, arbitrary lines. Going from $7.39 to $7.41 doesn't help much, whereas going from $1.50 to $7.00 helps immensely. An argument over where the single arbitrary static line should be drawn utterly misses the point.

2. The overall income distribution is shifting right, as people become richer.

These things both seem to be entirely correct, and they are devastating to Hickel.

> Noah Smith never seems to address Jason Hickle's point that the evidence based poverty line should be $7.40.

I found his debunking of the idea that we should be drawing a line at all utterly convincing.

[albatruss]

Smith does not address the point, made by Hickle and reiterated by the topmost comment, about taking into account subsistence farming and how that affects how we should be looking at the metric of income per day altogether. Hickle seems to believe that the lower bounds of this number are skewed by these broader concerns. Hence the topmost comment's sentiment, which I share, that they're talking past each other.

[hntrader]

What about this?

  "we want to emphasize is that those estimates of poverty do take into account non-market transactions such as subsistence farming."

https://ourworldindata.org/poverty-home-production-and-consu...

[pm90]

> And it seems that if that point holds, as Smith never actually challenges the point that the population beneath that line has actually gone up while "extreme poverty" has gone down (a point both agree on), then Smith isn't left with much of a position.

One of the points that Smith is making is simply that using a fixed threshold for deciding on whether there has been meaningful progress in alleviating poverty is somewhat meaningless and misses what is actually going on. In the article, he shows how the distribution of per-capita income has changed, with larger parts of the population having more income than before, which seems to indicate that we are making progress in alleviating poverty.

If you were to look at the fixed threshold, you would miss this "shift" in distribution and thus conclude that hardly any progress has been made.

I think this is a meaningful argument, in that it points to us that we are "doing something right".

[albatruss]

It's totally valid to see it as meaningful, but it doesn't really belong in a polemic titled "Against Hickelism" if it isn't what the target even believes. From the cited rebuttal:

> Smith says we need to recognize increases in income that happen below $7.40. Such increases improve the lives of the poor, he points out, and we shouldn’t let that get obscured. I absolutely agree. Once again, I have not argued that we shouldn’t pay attention to low-level increases in income.

[pm90]

The article addresses this too, and I feel like I'm not having an argument in good faith, so I'm going to respectfully bow out.

[albatruss]

The article recognizes it, which I should have pointed out (on phone), but as far as addressing it there is only this line:

> Except in all his later writings, he has relentlessly refused to pay attention to those increases.

No examples are given. The next claim about moving the goalposts also is unsubstantiated. It might be true but I don't see where Hickle had ever moved the goalpost from $7.40.

I don't have a dog in this race. If you feel like I am somehow mistaken then please point it out, preferably without attacking my character. Of course you are under no obligation.

[refulgentis]

The article covers that quite convincingly, there's even charts that are basically 'pick your poverty line'