An Even Poorer World

[groovedaddy]

There is a lot more poverty in the world than previously thought. The World Bank reported in August that in 2005, there were 1.4 billion people living below the poverty line — that is, living on less than $1.25 a day.

That is more than a quarter of the developing world’s population and 430 million more people living in extreme poverty than previously estimated. The World Bank warned that the number is unlikely to drop below one billion before 2015.

The poverty estimate soared after a careful study of the prices people in developing countries pay for goods and services revealed that the World Bank had been grossly underestimating the cost of living in the poorest nations for decades. As a result, it was grossly overestimating the ability of people to buy things. And the new research doesn’t account for the soaring prices of energy and food in the past two years.

The poverty expressed in the World Bank’s measure is so abject that it is hard for citizens of the industrial world to comprehend. The new count underscores how much more the developed world needs to do to help the world’s most vulnerable people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/opinion/02tue3.html?th&emc=th

[izquierdista]

1. Quit stealing from them

A good start would be to leave them alone and quit taking what they need to survive. Millions of subsistence farmers have been displaced so that oil palm plantations can export palm oil and palm oil biodiesel. Free trade has made it so self-sufficient corn farmers in Mexico can no longer make a living and have to travel to El Norte so they can stand in front of the Home Depot to try and send some money back home.

An enlightened World Bank would quit funding show-off projects like hydroelectric dams and modern highways and instead lend money the Grameen way, one poor household at a time. The way out of poverty is NOT to sweep the poor up into the global economy, but to provide them with plots of land and supporting infrastructure so they can grow local crops, make clothes from local fiber, and use locally available sources of non-fossil energy.