"The poor themselves—the only set of people who can realistically make a difference—are often left out of the discussion" -Imprint
We have homes, cars and wireless internet on our smart phones that allow us to access all the information in the world. We have it all, we know it all—or so we believe. We study, then we solve—we study poverty: the vicious cycle, how small businesses can alleviate monetary stress, and other solutions. We donate. We then go overseas and preach; telling small villages they have it all ‘wrong’, and to ‘know their rights.’ We have never experienced extreme poverty, therefore we don’t have the knowledge to teach about poverty. Only the people living the life of the poor have the knowledge, we simply know the stats and figures. We need to learn from people, not from our textbooks about how poverty is affecting their lives, their families’ lives and the lives of generations to come. Let us learn the truth so we can utilize all of the resources we so fortunately have access to, to get to the root of the issue of poverty.
Measuring poverty is one of the most challenging things to do—especially to people who are unaccustomed to experiencing what poverty is. There are classifications used to measure certain aspects of poverty, such as: income poverty, relative poverty, human poverty and absolute poverty. But how do these categories compare to basic human needs? Shelter, health, hygiene, safety, nutrition, social involvement and respect are all aspects of life no one should be expected to live without. Measuring poverty is always a problem, especially if you recognize that just using money is not enough.
Our global free market has offered many successes and many collapses to our world’s economic situation. Whichever side you find yourself pertaining to, the globalization of our marketplace has significantly increased the gap between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ in our world. Lesser-developed countries were forced to open their economies to the global marketplace and the result was parlous competition. With every country struggling for economic prosperity, it became a competition between states of the global south to provide lower standards, reduced wages and cheaper resources to any country that would invest. This spiraling race to the bottom only increased the power and wealth of more developed nations and lessened the capability of lesser-developed countries to prosper economically.
I think this comment can address this post and the following. As world powers or the "global north" looks at all of these third word countries in almost pity because of wha they do not have and vow to help but almost always do just the opposite. The world has come into a time of globalization and a world economy, and like you said it has made the rich richer and the poor poorer. There are organizaitons like WMF that are there to help less fortunate countries get on their feet again but what they are doing is looking for a way to make money, in multiple ways; they award "aid" but then put stipulation on the recieving country; not just in how they will be paid back and how they are allowed to spend it but in how the country is to handle the economy...most of the time forcing them to enter into the global market where they will not be competive benifiting the larger and more powerful nations. The third world leaders almost have no choice because they need to help but then find it puts them in more of a problem because the money that goes needs to be used for things like school, health care, and clean water.
ReplyDeletePaul Collier wrote the book, "the bottom billion..." and one of the things it talked about was the traps that third world countries get into that keep them in the bottom billion..those being governmental traps, violence traps, and resources traps. I think that another trap that these countries can get into is being so much in debt to the "developed world" from aid that was partially given to benifit the powers of the world. What these countries need from others is hands on help, grass roots movements, and education.
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