Bernie Sanders says, “If I’m not mistaken, China has made more progress in addressing extreme poverty than any other country in the history of civilization. They’ve done a lot of things for their people.”
Yes they have, unless you are one of “their people” who just happens to be part of the Chinese Muslim community, for example, or not part of the Maoist cultural revolution, which killed an estimated 20-45 million.
But what should we expect from Bernie the Red? This is the same guy who trumpeted the Cuban Communist health-care system.
Other than those killed or sent to re-education camps, yes, Bernie, China has addressed extreme poverty. Although it depends on how one defines extreme poverty, or poverty in general.
Poverty can’t be gauged equally from one country to the next. Poverty looks a lot different in China and most other countries than it does in the United States.
I want to touch on the word poverty, or as Bernie hyperbolically asserts, extreme poverty. Neither of these terms is objectively definable.
For example, by all recollection, I had a wonderful childhood, not wanting for anything. I don’t ever remember a time when I or my siblings considered ourselves poverty-stricken. But evidently, for a short time when we were very young, we were pretty poor by American standards.
And that’s exactly the point. Regardless of how poor we were, we didn’t know, nor does the rest of America, what true poverty is. Relatively speaking, our poor live like kings compared to most of the world. And notice I didn’t say compared to the rest of the world’s poor. I mean just the rest of the world.
A new study has confirmed this. JustFacts.com has released a study which showsWorld Bank data show that 35 percent of Mexico’s population lives on less than $5.50 per day, as compared to only 2 percent of people in the United States.”
And, as cited earlier, these “data” do not account for the myriad of non-income entitlements Americans receive. An American can make zero “income” and still be much better off than most of the rest of the world.
The takeaway from this should be that just like phony election polling, these “world” surveys cannot be taken at face value. One must delve into the data and what is emphasized and deemphasized – and whether there is a bias toward one outcome over another. And that bias is usually used to dump on America.
Travel to Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America or the Caribbean and compare their “poor” with ours. You’ll discover that Americans know nothing of real poverty.
Whether we agree or disagree with the methods, we can at least take pride in how our poor are treated relative to most other nations.
