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Define 'decent living standards'.
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I think Maslow's pyramid of needs would be a good starter. But let's be more concrete.
- House (60 m2, +20 m2 per extra person in household), with electrification, and which can withstand severe weather events (heatwaves, blizzards, heavy rain and wind, etc.).
- Clean air and environment without fine dust, microplastics, PFAS, asbestos, etc.
- Clean, potable and heatable water available anytime
- Healthy and clean food free from animal suffering made available for all
- Everyday and affordable clothes available for all
- Bodily integrity: only the person themselves can decide over their own body, with the exception of vaccination (because everyone ought to be vaccinated!)
- Labour rights, such as automatic unionisation, workplace democracy and self-governance, no vertical hierarchy (so no CEO, overreaching holdings, trusts, etc). And ideally, a wageless gift economy system based on needs. If not that, then this: any company lacking one of the above/being too big, may never get bailed out.
- Protection of personal property, with private property becoming communal property instead.
- Encouragement of meeting people at sport, hobbies, reading (helps finding friendship)
- Bicycle and public transit infrastructure being widely available.
- Free and high-quality public education available for all
- Same with healthcare. No artificial limit mandating that there be max x amount of doctors or teachers.
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I'm sure they define that in the study if you read it
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Well would you look at that, it sure does.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292924000493
Recent empirical studies have established the minimum set of specific goods and services that are necessary for people to achieve decent-living standards (DLS), including nutritious food, modern housing, healthcare, education, electricity, clean-cooking stoves, sanitation systems, clothing, washing machines, refrigeration, heating/cooling, computers, mobile phones, internet, transit, etc. This basket of goods and services has been developed through an extensive literature (e.g., Rao and Min, 2017, Rao et al., 2019) and is summarized in Table 1, following Millward-Hopkins (2022).
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Looking at Table 1 that's definitely acceptable. It skips a lot of things but that's why they say 30% with spare room for luxuries.
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The study does, in fact. Or actually, bare minimum living standards:
Quoting from the article:
"It is important to understand that the DLS represents a minimum floor for decent living. It does not represent a an aspirational standard and certainly does not represent a ceiling. However, it is also a level of welfare not currently achieved by the vast majority of people. A new paper by Hoffman et al finds that 96.5 percent of people in low- and middle-income countries are deprived of at least one DLS dimension."
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214 comments