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

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

It's all very well you putting it in those sorts of terms, so let's do it, but what happens when their governments collect all that aid and sell it for the stuff Geldofs money went towards... new shoes for the Prez's wife and arms and yet more arms...

Me, I say if you want to do it, go ahead, but then if anyone from that country buys arms from western firms (no matter which foreign department) then bill the full costs of "Fixing the third world (Of which we are still a part of remember)" to the suppliers of the arms, pro-rata.

Then of course, when all hits the fan because they are really not set up to deal with a workforce that has some cash, who's going to run their ecconomy, where are the west going to buy their cheap crap from when their cheap crap increases in price? £1 stores will cease to exist and millions of westerners will become rather resentfull that the poor third world got handouts while many in the rich western nations still starve/die of cold related ailments each year.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Well, I did add this at the end - the question of corruption , the amount we give in aid that never goes to the end we wanted it to - but for now, I am asking about the actual cost in terms of world GDP.
Turns out lower than I though. here is another site with better figures.

http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

scroll down and you get an itemised bill in Billions, not trillions.