Thread: Mind-Boggling Poverty Facts and Stats

THIS REALLY IS MIND-BOGGLING!!!!!!!!!

Poverty Facts and Stats

by Anup Shah

Consider the following poverty statistics.

Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day. source 1

The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined. source 2

Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names. source 3

Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn't happen. source 4

51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations. source 5

The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation. source 6

The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money. source 7

20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the world’s goods. source 8

The top fifth of the world’s people in the richest countries enjoy 82% of the expanding export trade and 68% of foreign direct investment — the bottom fifth, barely more than 1%. source 9

In 1960, the 20% of the world’s people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20% — in 1997, 74 times as much. source 10

An analysis of long-term trends shows the distance between the richest and poorest countries was about:
3 to 1 in 1820
11 to 1 in 1913
35 to 1 in 1950
44 to 1 in 1973
72 to 1 in 1992 source 11

[b]“The lives of 1.7 million children will be needlessly lost this year [2000] because world governments have failed to reduce poverty levelsâ€

Whose fault is this and why should anybody envy wealthy people. As long as they got it legally, more power to them.

If you examine why these countries are in poverty, you find corruption, people living under dicators and theocratic oppression. The U.S. sends more AID to the world than all other countries combined and most of it never makes it past the corrupt leaders. If you dumped all the world's money into these bottomless pits, nothing would change because we have already seen trillions spent and nothing has changed.

The enviromentlists will see to it that people will continue to live in poverty. They are lobbying against coal-fired electric plants in Africa and the use of any fossil-type fuels.

The very "welfare" we have sent these nations have made them just as dependent as the welfare system of our own Nation. They have gotten used to handouts. People in Africa are discouraged from farming because of the aid that comes in.

Can you imagine what the condition of the world would be WITHOUT the U.S.???

I can't read all this. It's just too much.

But frankly I'm sick and tired of being told I should feel guilty because so many people in the world live in poverty.

There's absolutely nothing I can do to stop poverty in the world. People who are dirt poor and suffering need to wise up and stop having children. That's the only way to stop poverty, in my opinion. If you're poor, and you give birth to children whose fate it is to be poor, then YOU are the one who is perpetuating poverty.

If I had the billions (or even millions) of dollars to give to charity, I would give it SOLELY to providing birth control.

Hard to control poverty in the Third World when a major religion says it's a sin to use birth control.

Are we supposed to feel guilty about this? Maybe that was the reasoning behind the article.

What I got out of it was that things are declining and is America heading in this direction?

Yes, corruption has caused a lot of this - and just take a look at our government.

I don't envy rich, if they got it legally - but we can surely see in this country, that many corporations are not getting their income legally - we are on an illegal immigration site right now.

Maybe we should look at this as a warning - the ghosts of times to come.

America is declining in many things -

I don't think the article is intended to make First Wolrders feel bad because the Third World is poor. Most of it was a global study of poverty rates and income gaps. Remember, rich people certainly are not unique to the United States and the First World -- the richest man in the world is a Mexican. I think what it points out are the huge inequities in the Third World, the corruption, the oligarchy etc.

I do not "envy" the rich if they got it "legally," but what constitutes legal in the Third World is a far cry from what is legal here......Besides, what even we consider legal in this country is part of what is destroying our republic and middle-class.....Political lobbying is legal, outsourcing is legal, immigration laws go uninforced etc.

I think the point is that oligarchy, corruption, and oppression is the norm in most of the world, and the West is now leaning that way. At least that is what I get from it.

bearflag

That's pretty much what I got - also the idea that corporations are some of the richest entities on the planet - I guess that's more than some countries - and gaining.

While we are a very generous nation - on a personal level. On the national level, foreign aid seldoms ever makes it to the people. It stops in the hands of the corrupt government. Does anyone think all this foreign aid to Mexico actually goes to the Mexican people?

Foreign aid is sometimes a euphemism for greasing the palms so sweatshops can operate, natural resources can be taken, etc.