Top all-time · #1739
Jason Hickel
Personal blog · jasonhickel.org/blogeconomicspolitics
Jason Hickel's personal blog at jasonhickel.org covers economics and politics. Since 2019, 42 different Hacker News readers have linked it 53 times, most often “A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-08-06, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 9 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jason Hickel's blog for its critiques of extreme-poverty statistics and Pinker-style optimism, and for his degrowth book 'Less is More'. Commenters cite it as support in debates about global poverty.
- Recommended for · 9 comments
- Called a good case on poverty and inequality, a good starting point, a favourite book, an interesting book, and a masterclass essay; 'Less is More' recommended
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Jason Hickel
Most-linked posts?
- A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty14 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2019-02-04
- /less-is-more6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-12-31
- Extreme Poverty isn't Natural, it's Created5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-04-05
- The Divide – A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-02-02
- /blog/2018/8/30/the-moral-egregiousness-of-poverty-is-worse-than-ever-before-in-history3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-01-26
- Global inequality: Do we live in a one-hump world?3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-03-22
- /blog/2019/4/27/200-years-to-end-poverty2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-12-29
What Hacker News says?
If the utility of money is a suitably concave function, those two become much more similar. https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-i... makes a good case that poverty and inequality are quite related historically, too.
Comment linking /blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-isnt-natural-it-is-created
on “How People Get Rich Now”Submitted A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty as a story · 250 points
HN discussionExcluding China, the graph in [1] shows ~3pp decrease in poverty over 30 years, and a good portion of that time was above the starting point so it might just be random fluctuation. Also, > only 5% of new income from global growth goes to the poorest 60% of humanity – people living on less than $7.40/day. https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-...
Comment linking /blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
on “Losing faith in UX”Submitted A letter to Steven Pinker (and Bill Gates, for that matter) about global poverty as a story · 6 points
HN discussionthis one https://www.jasonhickel.org/the-divide ?
Comment linking /the-divide
on “Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland”Submitted Extreme Poverty isn't Natural, it's Created as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe Environmental Kuznets Curve is problematic though, see for instance: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2020/10/9/response-to-mcafe...
Comment linking /blog/2020/10/9/response-to-mcafee
on “Life Improvements Since the 1990s”Submitted Degrowth and MMT: A Thought Experiment as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://www.jasonhickel.org/the-divide The author addresses this question, along with how the UN has continually shifted the goal posts to reinforce the narrative that poverty has been reduced.
Comment linking /the-divide
on “A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?”Submitted A Letter to Steven Pinker and Bill Gates about Global Poverty as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt's a popular narrative, but one that Jason Hickel argues falls short. He disputes the poverty thresholds used in these calculations as far too low - $1.90 per day today is lower than the consumption of 19th century US slaves, he argues: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-i... As far as the Green Revolution, again this story that is has saved millions from starvation is a popular one. But we…
Comment linking /blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-isnt-natural-it-is-created
on “Where have all the insects gone?”Submitted A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty (2019) as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> The alternative is the silly measures of "poverty" we use in the first world which are mathematically unachievable by design so they can always be used to justify measures politicians want to pass: "won't you think of the child poverty you heartless monster" etc. No, I disagree. The alternative, as the original comment said, is to measure access to calories, nutrition, or other metrics like prevalence of starvatio…
Comment linking /blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-isnt-natural-it-is-created
on “Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels”Submitted A letter to Steven Pinker (and Bill Gates, for that matter) about global poverty as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Oh sure, it's theoretically possible that they'd change completely if only the system was different. It's also unlikely, and I don't want to bet the stability, quality of life and relative peacefulness of our modern societies on the off-chance that you're right. Isn't the point that the current system doesn't provide a stable, peaceful and qualitative life for most of the population? Are you saying it's good enoug…
Comment linking /blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
on “Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds”Submitted A Letter to Steven Pinker and Bill Gates about Global Poverty as a story · 2 points
HN discussionUndoubtedly that personal award goes to Citations Needed Episode 73: Western Media’s Narrow, Colonial Definition of ‘Corruption’. You can read the transcript on Medium [1] or listen on Spotify [2]. It may seem a bit bromide for HN, but it really shattered my world view. Or at least was the impetus of a rather radical shift in how I viewed global power structures, old wealth, and the evil systems in place today that…
Comment linking /the-divide
on “Ask HN: Favorite Podcast Episode of 2021?”Submitted The Divide – A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions as a story · 1 points
HN discussionFor those interested in learning more about the agrowth perspective, and how investment in public commons can be a convincing solution I highly recommend Jason Hickel's work, specifically his book "Less is More". If you want the deep dive treatment I've just finished Thomas Piketty's "Capital and Ideology" and was very impressed with the thorough historical treatment. https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more https:/…
Comment linking /less-is-more
on “MIT Predicted Society Will Collapse in 2040. Research Shows We're on Schedule”Submitted A letter to Steven Pinker and Bill Gates about global poverty (2019) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThere is contention about what this supposed progress entails; if its as great as touted, if we could be doing much better, etc. This open letter is a good starting point: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-... >There is nothing worth celebrating about a world where inequality is so extreme that 58% of people are in poverty, while a few dozen billionaires have more than all of their wealth c…
Comment linking /blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
on “Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality”Submitted Global inequality: Do we live in a one-hump world? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI'm not sure where you get the idea that I'm vaguely moralizing -- elsewhere in this thread I recommend a 2020 book called Less is More ( https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more ) that contains analysis of these problems and very specific strategies for addressing them. It's well understood that wealthy countries, and especially the US, generate far more junk than poorer ones. We don't need to, and there's a big di…
Comment linking /less-is-more
on “Mitsubishi Heavy to build biggest zero-carbon steel plant”Capitalism's relentless drive for growth and deregulation would like a word with you. My favorite book of 2020 if you'd like to read more: https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more
Comment linking /less-is-more
on “Mitsubishi Heavy to build biggest zero-carbon steel plant”Replying to myself since I can no longer edit, but with so many questions I finally dug up the author who I was trying to think of as a source to go against this kind of rosy picture of the status quo. It's Jason Hickel and he has written a critique of Steven Pinker's optimism. https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-... Where Pinker looks at some arbitrarily defined numbers to decide that extrem…
Comment linking /blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
on “‘Voyager on steroids.’ Mission would probe region beyond our Solar System”Actually I just didn't share data because I forgot the name of the author who has best spoken to this critique, but I dug him up and it's Jason Hickel. He responded directly to Steven Pinker's rosy optimism about the world, in particular pointing out that our bar for what is extreme poverty is a made up number that is too low. If you use a more reasonable measure for extreme poverty, the situation looks a little dif…
Comment linking /blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
on “‘Voyager on steroids.’ Mission would probe region beyond our Solar System”I agree, such a positive tone encourages complacency. And the reality is that we could do so much better: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/8/30/the-moral-egregio... "We shouldn’t be looking at the cost of ending poverty as a percentage of total world income, but rather as a percentage of the income of all the people who are not poor; say, those who live on more than double the poverty line. In 1990, it would ha…
Comment linking /blog/2018/8/30/the-moral-egregiousness-of-poverty-is-worse-than-ever-before-in-history
on “What’s it like to live on less than $2 a day?”I understand that academics are just humans, and can lose their temper like the rest of us. However what I find very troubling is that the main point that Hickel raised in the blog post[1] – GDP data has the particular potentially crucial problems Allen has raised when used to assess historical poverty – Roser chooses to not actually address it, but instead throws blanket statements of there being continued discussi…
Comment linking /blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-isnt-natural-it-is-created
on “Against Hickelism”Piketty's extensive data on global wages raises serious questions about Pinker's narrative. And if there is still doubt Pinker's data sources [1] and interpretation are questionable to say the least. Here is Pinker himself admitting his selective use of data [2] Watch his answer at 4.30. This is extremely poor use of stats, and makes him look a side character apologist in Hunger Games. And here is an even more subst…
Comment linking /blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
on “Nassim Talebs case against Nate Silver is bad math”At first I really liked Hans Rosling's book. But afterwards I read some very valid criticism [0]. > We see that while per capita income has indeed increased in the global South, the global North has captured the vast majority of new income generated by global growth since 1960. As a result, the income gap between the average person in the North and the average person in the South has nearly quadrupled in size, going…
Comment linking /blog/2019/3/17/two-hump-world
on “Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)”
