alt Hacker News>Poverty levels are roughly the same between Vietnam and the US from a quick search.
How is this an argument? A poor person in the US has a massively better standard of living than a poor person in Vietnam.
Poverty is relative. If you have a small apartment in a city of McMansions, you're poor, but if you have a goat in a village of no goats, you're rich.
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Not sure if up to date anymore, but if you look at some samples like here, at equivalent adjusted income levels, people across the world have similar standards of living regardless of where they live.
Relative poverty is real, but absolute poverty is a whole lot worse.
I choose to live in a richer country where I am relatively a lot poorer, but overall the advantages of a rich country outweigh the disadvantages.
I always found it interesting that homeless folks in the US seem to live in tents a lot of the time, but in my country they rarely have more than a piece of cardboard. I don't know if my perception is incorrect, or if I'm ready too much into this, but my conclusion has been basically what you said: at every socio-economic level, the people at that level have higher standards of living in developed countries than in developing countries.
> but if you have a goat in a village of no goats, you're rich
No, you need more than one goat if you want to be rich, regardless of what other people have. Really, you need a few dozen.
One goat can't do anything but age and die.
> Poverty is relative. If you have a small apartment in a city of McMansions, you're poor, but if you have a goat in a village of no goats, you're rich.
That worked before globalization. Nowadays, having a small apartment in a city of McMansions means you're upper middle class. Poor people in the west have no apartments and no goats.