What is the cause of poverty? How can it be diminished?
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Nailed it!We've all seen them, the sad sob montage of pictures of starving children from around the world with the cheesy peace song a blazing. They plead for your "help" and say we must all do our part to end poverty. But what does that mean!? Help? Do you want me to donate money? How much money? How much money will it take to end poverty?
A quick search on the internet on "Why does poverty exists?" brings me quickly to a yahoo answers post with best answer being:
"Imagine this: a mother of 5, a widow, makes her living weaving mats. But she's super poor ... she has to borrow money to buy the raw material, and the loan shark is the only person who'll give her a loan, cus *D'uh!* she's poor. So most of the money she makes goes to the loan shark! (If we loan her $3 she can buy the material straight ... and make a profit to pay us back /and/ have enough to buy more material. So then the profit next time goes for food!)" - hfx_ben http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060605153435AAsPtvJ
This is a very common story portrayed to elicit emotions of sympathy and outrage of the circumstances the individual is being forced to live in. But where he says "Imagine this: a mother of 5, a widow", I say imagine this, a mother that chose not to have five kids because she knew that she could barely provide for herself. Are we supposed to completely ignore the choices made by her and the others that perpetuate their own circumstances.
A starving child is only a starving child because it was born into a starving family. A choice of procreation made not by the child, not by the rich and well off, but by the consenting adults. And this is not to downplay the many horrible rapes that occur, as those are not the issue being discussed and I would argue do not consist of the majority portrayed. When will people accept the consequences of the choices they make?
I cannot seem to escape from the basic idea of free will. I pose the question to all, is poverty a choice or are you forced into it? Maybe it is an over simplification to say, if there are no opportunities in your current location, move to another location. Choose to move to another city, another town, another country. And many will say, oh well that's not easy to do! And I say, when man took his first breath stood up tall and walked, I dare say that there was no one around saying; hey, all your choices from here on out are going to be easy. A hard choice is still a choice. And if you are at choice then you are responsible for your life and the circumstances that follow to a great degree.
In an article by Duane Gundrum on his take on poverty from growing up in it, one comment that struck me the most was his belief that those impoverished see no way out of it.
" Way too often we talk around the issue, often blaming those in poverty itself, or we talk about great plans to get people out of poverty. But I'll tell you what the real problem is: Few in poverty ever believe even getting out of it is possible." - Duane Gundrum http://www.helium.com/items/547688-why-poverty-exists
And I would probably agree that this may be the case. But this would mean that all the money in the world, all the volunteers pouring their blood, sweat and tears into the issue, isn't going to fix poverty. It is going to take a paradigm shift in self awareness of the individuals suffering from it to change the circumstances of their life. If you cannot see yourself out of poverty then you are forever trapped in the self perpetuating struggle. That is not to say this is the end all fix, but it's definitely a start.
Further reading on poverty:
Obstacles to productivity
"The unwillingness of governments and feudal elites to give full-fledged property rights of land to their tenants is cited as the chief obstacle to development. This lack of economic freedom inhibits entrepreneurship among the poor. New enterprises and foreign investment can be driven away by the results of inefficient institutions, notably corruption, weak rule of law and excessive bureaucratic burdens. It takes two days, two bureaucratic procedures, and $280 to open a business in Canada while an entrepreneur in Bolivia must pay $2,696 in fees, wait 82 business days, and go through 20 procedures to do the same. Such costly barriers favor big firms at the expense of small enterprises, where most jobs are created." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty
Poverty Threshold
"The common international poverty line has been roughly $1 a day, or more precisely $1.08 at 1993 purchasing-power parity (PPP). World Bank has done extensive work in this field. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold
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