Is it possible to eliminate poverty?

[Murky]

I watched a talk yesterday about the struggle to end extreme poverty by the year 2020. Extreme poverty is defined as when a person is unable to provide for their own basic needs, food, water and shelter. These are people who make less than a dollar a day. Over a billion people from around the globe fall into this category. About 30% of these are living in countries with unstable governments that don't provide essential government functions like enforcing laws, building roads, basic education, etc.

There are several good books on the subject. It seems like just throwing money at it can do more harm than good. Nobody is interested in transfering wealth from rich nations to poor. What's needed is someway to transform the improverished from from having no way to support themselves to being productive members of society, that do way more than just survive.

There are some programs that seem to be working. They give them the basic education of running their own business then give them something to start with. They coach them along for 18 months until they can manage on their own. Once they are established, they can get microloans to grow their businesses. So do you think that if we could do this on a massive scale, it would work to eliminate extreme poverty?

 

[El_Machinae]

If you mean "eliminate extreme poverty", then gods yes, it can be eliminated. If you mean "eliminate the fact that some people are poorer than others", then no.

A LOT of people complain about how we can't just "throw money at the problem", but the truth is that we're throwing very little money at the problem. By goodness, it could stand to have much more thrown at it. And that means wise, but generous, donations to charities. And there are many, many charities (and charitable concepts) to choose from. By all means, pick your favourite theory. But at least do something.

 

[lovett]

These are people who make less than a dollar a day.

They've actually updated the international poverty line to $1.25 a day. Inflation and all that.

And incidentally, El Machinae is quite right. Take Africa for example. The amount aid per African is actually pretty small. Only $30 per Sub Saharan African from the entire world, each year. of that, about $9 is spent on debt servicing or relief, $5 on consultants from donor countries and $3 on emergency aid. Only $12 goes into Africa as anything approching developmental aid. Is it much surprise that we don't see the affect of $12 a year?

 

[general_kill]

Extreme poverty is defined as when a person is unable to provide for their own basic needs, food, water and shelter.

Unless you want to kill all "mentally challenged" people in the world or otherwise remove genetic traits that cause mental ******ation from our species, then I don't think it's possible. There will always be people who can't provide for their most basic needs and will depend on others to survive.

 

[betazed]

As El machinae said, yes it is possible to eliminate extreme poverty and it is not that hard a global problem too (relative to the numerous more knotty ones that face us).

If you are really intrested in knowing more about this subject spend $11 and get this book by Jeffrey Sachs who has worked and championed for this cause for quite some time.

 

[WillJ]

They've actually updated the international poverty line to $1.25 a day. Inflation and all that.

And incidentally, El Machinae is quite right. Take Africa for example. The amount aid per African is actually pretty small. Only $30 per Sub Saharan African from the entire world, each year. of that, about $9 is spent on debt servicing or relief, $5 on consultants from donor countries and $3 on emergency aid. Only $12 goes into Africa as anything approching developmental aid. Is it much surprise that we don't see the affect of $12 a year?

I remember Jeff Sachs making that argument, and it seems rather disingenuous, considering aid to Africa isn't exactly spread among all Africans equally, so those numbers are meaningless.

 

[WillJ]

and it is not that hard a global problem too (relative to the numerous more knotty ones that face us).

If you are really intrested in knowing more about this subject spend $11 and get this book by Jeffrey Sachs who has worked and championed for this cause for quite some time.

No, I'd say it's a pretty damn hard problem. Quite a bit harder than that book makes it out to be* (although it's still a good book), anyway. I'm not sure what global problems are harder, besides environmental ones, which you can then combine into the crazy-hard problem of environmentally sustainable poverty eradication, yay.

*Namely, that the solution is to take seriously the UN's Millennium Development Goals, eight of them, with about thirty total sub-goals, with thousands of pages of briefings on each one of them, with hundreds of experts gathering to discuss the issues behind them, with billions of dollars (.7% of the rich world's GDP) to fund a bunch of bureaucracies to implement them in a big maze of projects for which no particular human being can ever be held accountable for accomplishing any particular goal.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Possible to eliminate extreme poverty? I'd say virtually inevitable, though probably not by 2020. For impressive data on global trends, see this talk by Hans Rosling.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

The richest 225 people in the world hold more wealth than the next 1 Billion combined. They posess enough money to provide all the world's poor with sanitation and healthcare for a year.

So yes, it's quite possible to eliminate poverty, but not while the money rests in the hands of a few.

 

[lovett]

I remember Jeff Sachs making that argument, and it seems rather disingenuous, considering aid to Africa isn't exactly spread among all Africans equally, so those numbers are meaningless.

I see your point, but I think the numbers go to show that huge amounts of aid are not going into Africa. Especially compared to certain thing. The nex Farm bill, for example, equals about 61 billlion dollars per year. That's triple the amount of aid going into Africa. And it's far more wasteful.

 

[betazed]

No, I'd say it's a pretty damn hard problem. Quite a bit harder than that book makes it out to be* (although it's still a good book), anyway. I'm not sure what global problems are harder, besides environmental ones, which you can then combine into the crazy-hard problem of environmentally sustainable poverty eradication, yay.

Sure it is a hard problem; I meant it was easy relative to all the other problems that we are facing globally. (Almost all other global problems that we face are harder be they about environment or political). The reason I say it is easier are the following :-

• We already know the solution (sustainable economic development)
• The problem is being solved all by itself in a large part of humanity (notably India and China). The only problematic patch is Africa and rogue states like NK and Myanmar where it is more of a problem of politics first and then poverty.
• The problem is well understood and there are no global interests intimately tied with not solving the problem.

*Namely, that the solution is to take seriously the UN's Millennium Development Goals, eight of them, with about thirty total sub-goals, with thousands of pages of briefings on each one of them, with hundreds of experts gathering to discuss the issues behind them, with billions of dollars (.7% of the rich world's GDP) to fund a bunch of bureaucracies to implement them in a big maze of projects for which no particular human being can ever be held accountable for accomplishing any particular goal.

If you put it that way...

But the core of the book is not about funding these agencies - but to spur sustainable economic development.

But the actual Millenium Development Goals are worthy causes. We can all argue about the implementation details (and of course there are issues with all of that). But as El Mac said lets at least do something about it. This is one of those case where doing something (almost anything) is better than just sitting on our hands.

 

[cubsfan6506]

The richest 225 people in the world hold more wealth than the next 1 Billion combined. They posess enough money to provide all the world's poor with sanitation and healthcare for a year.

NOt that I doubt you but but coul I please have a link. I find it interesting.

 

[Abaddon]

Not while its a free market.

 

[Elrohir]

If you mean "eliminate extreme poverty", then gods yes, it can be eliminated. If you mean "eliminate the fact that some people are poorer than others", then no.

A LOT of people complain about how we can't just "throw money at the problem", but the truth is that we're throwing very little money at the problem. By goodness, it could stand to have much more thrown at it. And that means wise, but generous, donations to charities. And there are many, many charities (and charitable concepts) to choose from. By all means, pick your favourite theory. But at least do something.

I agree. If you're talking about extreme poverty, where people are literally starving to death or unable to get food or water or a place to sleep, I think it can be eliminated. (Although I'm not sure it ever will be, and I very much doubt in my lifetime) But if you mean some people having a whole lot more stuff than others, no, that can't be eliminated, and I don't think it should.

The richest 225 people in the world hold more wealth than the next 1 Billion combined. They posess enough money to provide all the world's poor with sanitation and healthcare for a year.

So yes, it's quite possible to eliminate poverty, but not while the money rests in the hands of a few.

I doubt that's a correct estimate (The amount of wealth held by the richest 225 versus the amount held by the next richest 1 billion). But even accepting that that is so, your statement isn't true: money quite often isn't the problem. The people of Zimbabwe don't have food because their government is corrupt and incompetent and is effectively a joke - because they put a nut in power, and he has kept himself from being ousted since. Not because Bill Gates is stingy, but because of their own poor choices, and of the poor choices of them men they choose to allow to rule over them.

You can crunch numbers and say "It would take X amount of money to provide healthcare to all of Africa, and this list of Y men has that much money" but that doesn't mean that list of men could actually do so. Because money is only a part of the problem.

 

[Cutlass]

Yes, but politically it won't happen. And to do it would be a long and hard process.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I doubt that's a correct estimate (The amount of wealth held by the richest 225 versus the amount held by the next richest 1 billion). But even accepting that that is so, your statement isn't true: money quite often isn't the problem. The people of Zimbabwe don't have food because their government is corrupt and incompetent and is effectively a joke - because they put a nut in power, and he has kept himself from being ousted since. Not because Bill Gates is stingy, but because of their own poor choices, and of the poor choices of them men they choose to allow to rule over them.

It's taken from the 1998 United Nations Human Development Report.

You can crunch numbers and say "It would take X amount of money to provide healthcare to all of Africa, and this list of Y men has that much money" but that doesn't mean that list of men could actually do so. Because money is only a part of the problem.

I don't know how they were found, but I'm sure they did more than "crunch numbers mindlessly." You seem to think that people come up with things in this way, and its often your prime argument against something. It's never been right before.

 

[El_Machinae]

I agree that some of the numbers may be way off.
But the fact is that currently we're doing almost nothing.

~$300 can purchase a complete leprosy cycle
~$10 can purchase a DEET covered net: more important with malaria migrating northward
~$200 can purchase an OLPC laptop

These are all token amounts in our economies, but we still barely do anything.
Sachs is (apparently) asking for about 0.7 - 1.5% of our income to deal with this issue. That's hardly anything. But we're not even doing that, nowhere near.

And hey, don't like the UN route? No one's asking you to go that route. There are a gazillion great ideas that are seriously underfunded.

 

[Abaddon]

Not unless we make being in poverty punishable by death to those over 5.

 

[emzie]

Microloans, IMHO. I loaned a woman in Kenya 500 US this April to start her own business.

 

[Abaddon]

An has her business grown since?