I suspect a percentage of the 40% don't believe it's possible, or believe it would end up being 0.5% of their income to enrich a select few (as has seemed to happen with previous attempts to "save" entire countries).

Of course, the bigger question is what percent of that 40 actually want extreme poverty to exist for one reason or another — be it that they hate the people who are currently poor and can’t envision it happening to them or their community or because they have some weird cognitive defect like the just world fallacy that causes them to believe this is a positive condition for the world to be in.

Some people also think that we should spend that money on other stuff that they’re interested in like cool space stuff and just don’t care about poor people and never will.

I know a number of people who view basically any kind of aid as morally wrong, ultimately leading to the downfall of the people you're trying to help. Even with their own kids, once they're 18 they're on their own -- no help with college, no inheritance, no etc. They really believe that handouts create a situation worse than whatever ill they're solving.

Mind you, they still think poverty is bad, but they'd object to something like paying for basic infrastructure and be happy to create the modern-day equivalent of CCC camps to pay the poor people to build that infrastructure. That sort of thing.

Remember it said rich-world respondents, not rich people. There are still poor people in rich-world countries that would find it painful to give up any part of what they have.

> There are still poor people in rich-world countries that would find it painful to give up any part of what they have.

Poverty is a relative concept. Even among billionaires, there are poor billionaires that would find it painful to give up any part of what they have.

Another interesting question is what part of the 60% want extreme poverty to exist for one reason or another? Probably the same portion as of the 40%, just the reasons differ.

If they wanted it to persist, why would they give up a portion of their income to end it? Are you suggesting the 40% is just more honest than the 60?

Apparently 75% of the world's population believe in some kind of god. 60% is a low number as far as fantasy beliefs go.

Rich world respondent doesn’t mean Rich themselves. When you’re struggling to make ends meet, philanthropy takes a back seat. Half the population in the us is in debt, has almost no savings and is living paycheck to paycheck. I’d assume even 0.5% would be difficult to part ways with.

> Half the population in the US ... has almost no savings and is living paycheck to paycheck

No. The median American household net worth is $193k, and of that, $8k in checkings/savings accounts. 54% of adults have cash savings that can pay for 3 months of expenses (this excludes non-cash savings, and obviously an even greater percentage have cash savings that would cover 1-2 months of expenses, which is still not paycheck-to-paycheck).

None of these stats (including the person you're replying to) are directly comparable.

- Median net worth is $193k, of which $185k is in their home. Suppose a $10k emergency crops up. Well...you're fucked. If you're lucky you can take out a loan against the accrued value relatively quickly, but otherwise you're taking a 10% haircut having to sell quickly, another 10% in transaction fees, and another $10k in the sudden move/storage/renting/loss-of-work/etc situation you found yourself in liquidating your home to cover an extortionist colonoscopy+lawyer pricing or something. You're _fine_, but when minor road bumps can cause $45k setbacks ($55k if we count the $10k expense this depended on) you're not not living paycheck to paycheck.

- You can't compare the median savings to the median net worth. They're not the same person, and the cross-terms can take almost any distribution.

- The 54% stat is based on self-reported vibes and is pretty blatantly wrong. The median household also has $5200 in unavoidable (without delinquency, losing your home, etc) expenses, which doesn't jive very well with $8k in savings somehow lasting 3 months (assuming the cross terms I complained about aren't too terribly distributed). You would expect 2+ paychecks of stability (which, incidentally, is also the usual prompt for "paycheck-to-paycheck" stability -- not whether it takes one paycheck to be screwed but two), but then you're hosed.

And so on.

You're _right_; the median US household won't go broke missing a paycheck; but 2-3 paychecks is enough to cause major problems at the 50th percentile, give or take friends and family stepping in to soften the blow.

You can quibble with the details but ultimately GP is wrong; the median American isn’t broke or living paycheck to paycheck — which were the claims made — and it isn’t close.

I'm sure the approval rate was even lower among the Actually Rich

I'm not even sure I believe that. Try raising taxes by 0.5% and see how ok people are with it. Doesn't matter what it's for.