It’s also important to remember that there’s ‘poverty’ as defined by governments, and then there’s POVERTY, defined as not having the resources needed to live a reasonably comfortable existence.
The ‘poverty line’ in the U.S., for example, is almost double the average income for the world, and about ten times higher than the average income for the third world. So the difference in the percentage of people living in ‘poverty’ may just be the difference between how countries define it.
Making $13,000 a year may be ‘poverty’ in the U.S., but it doesn’t come close to comparing to what it’s like to be poor in Haiti, where families live in discarded shipping containers and many, many people make less than $500 a year.
Well, when I hear a statement like, “There is no poverty in Japan”, what comes to my mind is the garden-variety usage of the word, as in, “There are no homeless people living a hand-to-mouth existence in cardboard boxes” or “There are no single mothers with four children standing in line for government food commodities” or “There are no slum-dwellers living in huts made of Hefty sacks and flattened tin cans.”
Not the “governmental bureaucratic technical word-definition” usage of it.
Your post is misleading. $13,000 can buy a lot more in Haiti than in the United States. The issue is standard of living. Have you ever been into the Third World? Well, I haven’t, but I have been to the Second World (Hungary and the Czech Republic) and it’s surprising how cheap things there are. I also have an Azeri friend who asked me what a good pair of sneakers in the US cost, he was visiting for a month and he didn’t want to be wearing old Soviet crap. I told him 60 dollars. His jaw dropped (I guess he had figured out the conversion to Azeri currency). He told me he could buy 10 pair back home for that much.
Which is irrelevant. I don’t care how cheap things are in your country - if you’re living in a discarded packing crate in a makeshift community with open sewers in the streets, and you’re wearing burlap on your feet and working in the field for 14 hours a day in order to provide your family with 800 calories of bland food, you are POOR.
The poor in America don’t come close to those levels of poverty, aside from a small number of mentally disturbed people who refuse help or some people living in Appalachia by choice. In fact, the ‘poor’ in America live better than most people in the world. As I said, the world average income is about $8,000 per year, and that’s skewed by the high income from the wealthy countries. The average income for the 3rd world is much, much lower.
Which is irrelevant. I don’t care how cheap things are in your country - if you’re living in a discarded packing crate in a makeshift community with open sewers in the streets, and you’re wearing burlap on your feet and working in the field for 14 hours a day in order to provide your family with 800 calories of bland food, you are POOR.
The poor in America don’t come close to those levels of poverty, aside from a small number of mentally disturbed people who refuse help or some people living in Appalachia by choice. In fact, the ‘poor’ in America live better than most people in the world. As I said, the world average income is about $8,000 per year, and that’s skewed by the high income from the wealthy countries. The average income for the 3rd world is much, much lower.
I was going to mention this myself. My family growing up always had enough to eat, and we lived in a rather large house which we owned in the clear, with no debt, so you can imagine my surprise in junior high when I learned that we had been below the “poverty line” my entire life. If we applied the standards of most of the world, it would be perfectly reasonable to say that the U. S. has no poverty.
Whilst there are the obvious signs of individual poverty in Toyko and Osaka - the cardboard towns etc. The poorest places to live (per capita income) are Okinawa and Aomori prefectures. I lived in Aomori for 6 years and witnessed this kind of poverty. People in the far North live for the most part traditionally, so three or four generations live together and support each other.
For unskilled labourers, many fathers are forced to go to work in Saitama ken etc and only see their families once or twice a year. They can’t afford to stay in Aomori as there is no work there, and can’t afford to have their families with them, where there is work.
Some old people without families to look after them (there are very few old people’s homes) live in flimsy wooden houses but there is usually someone to check they eat etc in the smaller villages.
Huge conflicts arise because of life insurance. The Aomorians I lived along side with seem to be obsessed with life insurance and couldn’t believe I had none. They basically rely on it and even though they can’t stand living with the elderly parents, put up with it for the insurance. They have been known to actively discourage elderly parents from cashing in their life insurance and moving to retirement homes where they want to go to be with other people the same age with the same interests etc, so they can get the money.