Jurjen's world

Let me share you my thoughts about poverty with you, since Blog Action Day, which is today, has this subject as theme for this year.

Poverty is a global issue, because todays economy is a global economy and wealth and poverty (if we are speaking in terms of money) are directly related to this. The sad thing I notice is how increasingly careless people get about this issue as problems are further away. Further away in miles, but more important how well we can identify ourselves with culture differences.

Living in a wealthy country, I sometimes see small items in the news about things like thousands of people dieing because of raising food prices, next to a big item of a lady in a supermarket having to spend a few more cents for her bread and is very unhappy about it. But she still buys it of course, because 'after all you still need the bread' she would say. The item would continue about the few more bucks an average family would spend on their grocery annually.
If you would do some math, you would conclude that this increased amount still is a very small amount of the average income. Besides this big item about the local raising of food prices would be a small note: 'Oh, before I forget; world wide there will probably die hundred of thousands because they can't pay food anymore.'

People are generally not interested in African or Asian families, having difficulties to earn enough to feed themselves, so they are forced to send their children to a refuse dump in order for them to survive. People here can't identify with those families in foreign regions. They however can identify with the lady in the supermarket.

In the last few years 'poverty' has increased in my country. If you would state that there is no such thing as poverty in this country, you will receive a lot of critique. Of course there are a lot of people that have difficulties manage with their finance. You will see an item on TV of some poor person, who shows the poor environment he/she is living in. There was even no money for a TV set.
If you would reflect this with the poverty in third world countries, in my opinion you'll have to conclude there is not really poverty here. When I have this debate with people here, they would often state that it is not a fair comparison, because of the difference between countries. I really think this is an illogical argument, it kind of says: not all people are equal.

I believe in a perfect open economy, wealth will eventually (it may take a while though) be equally distributed around the world. Problem is that regions that have a high wealth at the moment will suffer, they have to sacrifice for the good of others. You'll actually see this happening when factories are moving to cheaper countries, which means loss of labour in the wealthy countries and more labour in poor countries. It will also happen in the agrarian sector (poor countries can produce cheaper, even with higher transport costs). Problem is wealthy countries protect their own economy against this.

Conclusion: wealthy people don't really want to fight poverty, because without poverty no wealth!
If you think you do, you should consider to give everything of your income above the average to people earning less then average. Sounds fair right? The average yearly income is something like 850 USD btw... (okey, not completely fair, because costs are different in different regions as well, but it gives a good idea).
Well nobody does this, me neither. Still we can reduce the worst poverty, if we (the richer part of the world) would accept a few percent less income in benefit for the most poor. We just have to stop wanting more and more...