[thechat] Dont tax

[Martin Burns]

On 30 Oct 2010, at 21:28, Matt Warden wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 9:23 AM, Mohan Arun L <marun2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> You people in America dont have to deal with real headaches like these.
>> You can worry more about things like Tea Party.
>> These are nothing really. You people have it good, if you havent
>> realized it already.
>> I envy you.
> 
> Exactly. If there is one thing we can probably all agree on, it's that
> the arguments we have here in the US are pretty petty in the grand
> scheme of things. And our definition of "poor" is just ridiculous.

Not least because it's very biased towards our own cultural norms, both in terms of our understanding of 'how much money' and 'what items' define poverty.

Interestingly, *happiness* isn't related to absolute poverty at all, but levels of local inequality.

> How
> many poor people in other countries have cell phones?

Surprisingly many, because in a large number of developing countries, there's no fixed line infrastructure, but mobiles are prevalent. So cellphone isn't as strong a marker of socio-economic status as it is here.

In a fair chunk of Africa, they're also a major money transfer method
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

Cheers
Martin
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