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

Re: Ad homi-what?

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

I already addressed his points and the flaws witht them and even gave you the links to those discussions.

If you want to pretend nothing else has been said and everything is only ad hominems, then that is your choice but honestly I dont have time for it.

I even asked you which points you felt I had ignored, and after asking twice I still get .... nothing...specifying which points he made that I ignored.

So until you list which post I apparently ignored, or list which points I didnt address in some way -- then I'm not interested in this. As I said before, if you can't point out what I didnt answer then I consider this as wank and am not interested.

Re: Ad homi-what?

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

If you believe such is the case I will merely say mea culpa and move on.

Then let's move on shall we? You ignored where I did list out what was wrong which means you actually filtered past my answers...which means you're not serious.

Let's move on-- again you're pretending it has been nothing but snark (snark was had but you've left out the serious response -- which shows your intentions are not open here).

Move on -- not interested in the false objectivity.

Re: Ad homi-what?

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

you seemed to use it as some sort of shield, like your digressions were your method to try and prove a point

Good lord -- I'm in so many battles arguing specific details on this forum that the accusation of "dodging" just makes my eyes roll.

Obviously I was snarking the man in several of my responses, but my frustration is that you seemed preoccupied with the snark and very little with the response.

You perhaps should ask me to *expand* to serious response? Rather than pretend nothing was there?
And of course, there is the matter of me not repeating what has already been said by sealwhiskers.


So if you really want me to specifically shoot holes in his arguments -- which at this point is just drilling down on what was already said, then fine.


But I'm in too many conversations arguing over specifics to accept the label of "dodging" very seriously. In this case could I have gone into more detail? Probably. Was it really needed when his premise was so obviously flawed? Not really.

But if you want to see blood splatter from beating the dead horse -- fine, I'll give you a show later on this weekend when I have time.

Re: Ad homi-what?

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

here, to start it off...

http://community.livejournal.com/talk_politics/527785.html?thread=37934761#t37934761