If the Police Force offered to cover part of a student’s HECS fees in return for X number of years service, I reckon some uni graduates could be enticed.

Like far too many posts on LP you are also too fond of the passive voice. Acceptable to whom?

On point of fact, “is acceptable to xyz” is also using the passive voice. The voice is determined by the “is acceptable” part. Tacking an agent on the end won’t change it.

Almost universally, style manuals suggest using the passive when the active would create the wrong emphasis. In this case, the agent is open-ended – it’s whoever contributes to a deliberation on a blog. It would be quite absurd to emphasise such an agent – eg. “Larvatus Prodeo bloggers accept how much inequality?” Clearly this is pointlessly stating information that is obvious.

I know this and I don’t even have the amazing linguistic higher consciousness that only the multilingual posses.

If you are going to be a narky grammar snot, best you be right.

Australia has plenty of absolute poverty if you care to look for it. Here is an example on malnutrition from a medical paper abstract:

“Malnutrition is very common among Indigenous children living in rural and remote communities. Hospitalisation in rural hospitals is often used to break the cycle of malnutrition and infection, but this intervention has never been evaluated.

Hospitalisation was effective in re-establishing growth and defining organic contributors to malnutrition. This, however, occurred at the expense of the high readmission rate and nosocomial infection. The present study suggests that alternative models to nutritional rehabilitation in addition to a broad psychosocial and public health approach to prevention and management of malnutrition is required.”http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1440-1854.2004.00602.x?cookieSet=1&journalCode=ajr

Since the Commonwealth closed down their dental program, we also have plenty of poor people, including the working poor, with a mouthful of swollen gums and rotten teeth. Thanks Mr Howard.

Absolute poverty for an individual is terrible. Much worse than relative poverty.

I’d just like to argue that even this story actually illustrates the the relativity of poverty, particularly over time. 65 years ago, the richest person on Earth would have died in the same circumstance, as antibiotics didn’t exist. Now most people think that everybody should have access to such basic medical care.

No it doesn’t. What it illustrates is the absurdity of the concept of relative poverty. By your reasoning Louis XIV, the Sun King, notwithstanding the gorgeous surroundings of Versailles, lived in poverty because he didn’t have access to antibiotics.

I’d just like to argue that even this story actually illustrates the the relativity of poverty, particularly over time

Yes Rob, but when you do, you jump the shark.

People need to remember that the terms relative and absolute in the context of the poverty debate are not intended to be used with their literal definitions. To do otherwise is to be seduced into harmful semantics.

Absolute poverty is a term used to describe a level of poverty we decide to deem intolerable at a particular place and time.

Relative poverty is the statistical measure of the gap b/w the rich and the poor.

Of course they are different concepts. To disallow them as distinct categories is to fail Poverty 101.

Absolute poverty is necessarily the first order issue; relative poverty is only an issue in rich countries where we have the luxury of being able to spend time on fine-tuning our social order.

The difference principle permits inequalities in the distribution of goods only if those inequalities benefit the worst-off members of society.

It’s supposed to be a risk-minimisation strategy against the worst case scenario.

I don’t think I’d accept it as a universal principle. It would depend on what’s on offer, ie. what’s being distributed, and the nature of the worst case scenario.

There’s another explanation here.

That’s enough from me tonight.

In computer science terms, Rawls is optimising for the worst-case. This often gives you lousy average-case performance.

As to GregM’s disturbing story about friend’s mother dying through lack of cheap medication, I’d just like to argue that even this story actually illustrates the the relativity of poverty, particularly over time. 65 years ago, the richest person on Earth would have died in the same circumstance, as antibiotics didn’t exist. Now most people think that everybody should have access to such basic medical care.

Justified to Rawls, justified according to a community of rational, deliberative liberals, and justified to anyone else who finds his reasoning persuasive.

Seems like that’s devising universal principles on the basis of self-selected and unexamined criteria of wishes without scrutiny according to objective criteria. It seems very self-indulgent as well as dictatorial.

My thesis chair - who has been working on inequality for 35 years - was going to use something similar as a title for his latest book.

Dear god. This is beyond parody.

Justified to whom?

Justified to Rawls, justified according to a community of rational, deliberative liberals, and justified to anyone else who finds his reasoning persuasive.

Sorry about that.

No fuss.

Obviously an emotive subject. The most in-your-face poverty I saw was an extended trip to Egypt; apart from the usually noted prevalence of street-beggars, the presence of a massive underclass living on the streets in Cairo was pretty astounding. The cities were so full of it that you became inured to the sight after barely a week. Rural areas seemed less poverty-striken, but probably only because the problem was less visible.

There’s no need to be such a dick about it though. You might find you get along with people better if you drop the outraged namecalling.

Sorry about that. I spent four years living in South East Asia, mostly in Cambodia, where the absolute poverty of many of its people affected me pretty strongly. I just can’t look at arguments about poverty in a rich country like Australia except through the prism of that experience.

As I was writing I was also recalling the death of the mother of a friend of mine who caught a simple bacterial infection and was dead of cellulitis forty eight hours later for want of the thirty dollars for the antibiotics that would have saved her life. That really taught me what the difference between absolute and relative poverty really means.

Utter bollocks.

My mistake. I was thinking along the lines of the shifting of different corporate definitions of absolute poverty (i.e. World Bank at US$1 per day as opposed to the cited standard of US$2 a day, etc. etc.) which is needlessly overthinking a simple issue.

The argument that absolute poverty at its most basic refers to lack of food, clothing, shelter and health care is pretty self-evident.

There’s no need to be such a dick about it though. You might find you get along with people better if you drop the outraged namecalling.