From: Robbie Lindauer (robblin@thetip.org)
Date: Wed Sep 10 2003 - 22:28:47 MDT
On Wednesday, September 10, 2003, at 07:15 PM, matus wrote:
>
> http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id=7D0DFAD8-D129-40D8-
> A94C-D
> 5D2FD9E0CC2
> Apparently, National post limits the time it archives files. You can
> find the article mirrored on my site...
why not quote fox news?
http://www.maketradefair.org/
stylesheet.asp?file=03042002121618&cat=2&subcat=6&select=1
>> Poverty is NOT less than 20% - even in the United States.
>
> "poverty" is, of course, relative. Define what you mean by it. As of
> 1992, per this study, the global figure was at 24%, defined as $1 US
> dollar per day.
A dollar a day is a lot in some places.
let's define poverty as:
Inability to afford simultaneously health care, food and shelter.
According to the UN report (which I take to be a relatively biased
report, requiring the consent of the 5 most powerful nations in the
world....)
http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/action/actionindex.htm
as well as excerpted here:
http://www.richmonddiocese.org/ojp/ojp121.htm
In the 1990's, the number of people surviving on less than $1/day was
halved IN EAST ASIA (my emphasis).
Still, human development is proceeding too slowly, for many countries,
the 1990's were a decade of despair. Some 54 (out of 125 "developing"
countries) are poorer now than in 1990. In 21 a larger proportion of
people is going hungry. In 14, more children are dying before age 5.
In 12, primary school enrollments are shrinking (notably India). In
34, life expectancy has fallen. SUCH REVERSALS IN SURVIVAL WERE
PREVIOUSLY RARE (my emphasis).
But in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Arab States, Central and
Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa the number of people living on
less than $1 a day increased. Moreover, at the current pace,
sub-Saharan Africa would not reach the target for poverty reduction
until 2147 and for child mortality until 2165. And both HIV/AIDS and
hunger in Africa are heading up -- not down.
The report notes that in the 1990s average per-capita income growth
was less than 3% in 125 developing countries. In 54 of these
nations, average per-capita income fell -- 20 in sub-Saharan Africa,
17 in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, 6 in
Latin America & the Caribbean, 6 in East Asia & the Pacific, and 5 in
the Arab States.
Why?
One common reason is poor governance. When governments are corrupt,
incompetent or unaccountable to their citizens, national economies
falter.
Now, if you were the president of Burma and Nike were to offer you and
your sweat-shop owning buddies a coupla million to put down revolts.
AND if the US government were selling you weapons at discounted rates,
you might just do it.
>> So are you just ignorant of the political repression in Burma that
>> causes them to be subject to abject poverty and willing to take shitty
>> jobs?
>>
>
> Burma? From the CIA world fact book
>
> http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/bm.html
Granted and affirmed, the Burmese government SUCKS.
> I know little of Burma, but this seems typical of
> oppressive closed societies, do you have knowledge suggesting the
> poverty in burma is FROM the multinational conglomerates?
http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/961120.disney.html
For instance, there's loads of this stuff.
> Population below poverty line = 25%
Again, depending on how you define poverty. There are people who live
in the United States on $20k/year that I think are poor by the standard
above - can they simultaneously afford (adequate) health-care,
food/water and shelter?
> No doubt the perpetuation of poverty is a complex issue, but lets not
> forget that at the very least before agriculture and civilization
> *everyone* was below poverty level,
So things have been better for only 8000 years. Hmmm.
I look at it this way. In every generation and in every time, there
have been slaves and masters, genocides and wars justified by economic
expansion and "progress". Today is not different. We just hide the
word slavery under "obscenely poor". As I told Rafal, if it REALLY
makes you feel better to turn someone from a slave to a share-cropper
fine, but that just means you don't understand the plight of the
share-cropper.
> I have read suggestions that at one point some 10's of
> thousands of years ago the entire adult breeding population was as low
> as 1,000 people.
Surely during the plague years, people dropped like flies. Today's
plagues are AIDS, Heart Disease and Cancer. I gave references to the
CDC before in this thread. People are still dropping like flies - Ma
nish tanah, ha lailah hazeh, mikohl ha-ley-lot. But "since
civilization" there've always been increases in raw numbers of people
as far as I know.
Best,
Robbie
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