Comments:World Bank says more people are poor, but fewer are in extreme poverty

The reduction of poverty in (what was known as) the Third World, has nothing to do with the World Bank or the IMF. Those institutions were directly responsible for the worst economic catastrophes since World War II. I remember what was South America when dominated by the fascist scum. In Argentina alone, 450.000 people starved, due to "economic policies" that only served to push a certain "ideology". If the "World Bank" and the "IMF" really want to contribute to the Human Evolution, they need to let go of the obsession around "The Market", and start looking at the World with realistic eyes. At the present, the "World Bank" and the "IMF" are bankrupt, morally and economically. For example, if everyone had a raise like mr. Wolfowitz's girlfriend, there would be no poverty anymore.
 * While I most certainly agree that organizations like the World Bank are corrupt, it is specifically because they DON'T value the free market, and instead the organization, like any of considerable size, exists primarily or even exclusively to serve the personal interests of those in charge. Your last statement, unfortunately, is common naivete:  if everyone were suddenly just given a million dollars (or "a raise" of any arbitrary size), then each of those dollars, as well as every other dollar that existed beforehand, is worth much less than it was before, because there are more dollars in circulation but the same amount of goods and services for which to exchange them, and so the cost for everything would go up until everyone had about as much buying power as they did in the first place.  On the other hand, if you suggest that no new money should be created, but it should simply be taken from those who have it and given to those who don't, I'd suggest you instead give to charity from your own pocket rather than steal it from others (raising taxes on those better-off than you is simply stealing by proxy; you'd just be having someone else, in this case a government, do your dirty work for you).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.216.238.26 (talk) 21:45, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Silly Numbers
A dollar and a quarter in 1981 was a very different critter than a dollar and a quarter in 2005. Just assuming an average of 3% per year inflation, it would take $2.54 in 2005 to purchase what you could get for a buck and a quarter in 1981. If that is taken into count, then there are almost certainly far more critically poor people in the world now than there were in 1981. Hence, disparity is increasing not decreasing.

Ken —212.35.92.108 06:36, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I was suspicious of that myself. The way this article is written, it would certainly seem the figures they're presenting are not adjusted for inflation.  If that's the case, then you're absolutely right, and the World Bank is being dishonest.  Imagine that!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.216.238.26 (talk) 12:29, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

In 2005,i made a public presentation of the paper whose title and abstract appear below; based on some very impressive data generated by former world bank chief economist, F Bourguignon and his co-worker C Morrisson,“The Size Distribution of Income Among World Citizens: 1820-1990”. that suggested the current global economic/financial crisis. Only a new 'economics paradigm'can abolish poverty from the world. go through the abstract and note some of the conclusions.

Chidi G Osuagwu chigidos@yahoo.com

MECHANICS OF WORLD INCOMES ORDER AND INEVITABILITY OF					       DEBT-BURDENED PEOPLE ABSTRACT Long-term data on worldwide quintile income size distribution was investigated and shown to be, mathematically, systematic. The averaging of group shares over more than a century showed the relative shares to approximate 3:5:9:17: -: 65 … 2n* + 1. Over time, the percent share of income for the bottom quintiles decreased while the share of the top quintile increased. This paper points out that the dynamics of marginal utility laws, applied to unregulated market economic system, would yield the size distribution pattern observed. The mechanics of this system would, systematically, transfer income from the poor to the rich over time. Therefore, poverty and debt enburdenement of some people are inevitable in the extant world economic system. Unregulated market economic system is therefore inconsistent with sustainable human society. The paper, finally, shows that income size distribution, on average, follows a natural law based on the Fibonacci sequence and associated golden ratio, (1.62). From this fact it was deduced that the most inequitable income size distribution allowed by nature for quintile groups is one in which the common ratio of the incomes of adjacent groups is 1.62 or the Fibonacci sequence 6:10:16:26:42 … SQn = 6(n-1) %. Nature requires that in no quintile size distribution should the bottom group get less than 6% of the total income or the top quintile more than 42%. This is the ‘Golden-edge Size Distribution’ on the one side of which integration and on the other side of which social disintegration sets in. The general law SQn* = m (n*-1) based on the golden ratio governs size income distribution. SQn* is the relative share of the nth quintile group, n*, in the nth ordinal position, subject to possible discrete positional jump.

INTRODUCTION In June 1999 two economic researchers based in France, F Bourguignon and C. Morrison put up a paper o