The cost of fixing things.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Back in the 80s, I  went to a presentation on world poverty being run by a group called The Hunger Project.

One of the arguments being discussed was that poverty was not inevitable. we had , after all, put a man on the moon - so could we not end poverty on Planet Earth?

Think of the cost of giving every child on Earth a decent home with running water, with proper sanitation, and then giving all those children a primary education and then an adequate diet. the cost would run into astronomical figures.

I was actually shown the figure on a screen - a huge number with a whole string of noughts on the end.
" And yet, " the speaker told us " this is what the UK spends every year on chocolate and sweets, its what Europeans spend every month on alcohol, and it's what the USA spends every day on armaments."

Wow!

A more recent figure put it at three trillion US dollars. A trillion = 1,000,000,000,000.  It's a thousand billions, and a billion is a thousand millions. That is a lot of money - and yet, I wonder  how much that would come to in terms of government spending? Is it an accurate estimate even? It must be added that the money needs to be spent wisely and not funnelled off by corrupt dictators - but what would the cost be of eliminating endemic poverty , and could the world actually raise that amount?

Comments

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

The reason why we could put a man on the moon and could not end poverty is because in relative terms the former was easy. The unstated message in the article was that if we realigned our priorities, we could end hunger. Eat your food Jimmy, there are people starving in Africa. Unfortunately it isn't that simple.

There are theoretical ways to elevate regional standards of living, none of them will work without social changes such as effective birth control. Humans as a species will respond like any other species by completely filling the ecological niche. If we *simply* feed the poor, we end up with more poor to feed. Birth control does not naturally occur without first empowering women. One cannot empower women on a large scale without changing both governance and religion. The problem mushrooms up into a horrible mess.

Over the past 30 years I haven't seen any progress in ending poverty and this is certainly not for lack of trying. The prognosis is bleak. I have come to the belief that it is beyond current human ability to solve the problem on any large scale, if a solution is even possible at all.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

since the 1960s, IMRs have fallen below 50 across the globe.
in this post , I wanted to find the actual cost - is it do able?

In my next post , I will show what has already been done.

You are correct in saying that e mpowering women is a key policy. eradication of preventable illness is another, and there are others still.

But this is a big issue. almost as big as Peak Oil.