 According to Wikipedia, poverty is defined as the
deprivation of those things that determine the quality of life. These include
food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water as well as such intangibles as
the opportunity to learn and to enjoy the respect of fellow citizens. According
to latest statistics, a little under three billion people and roughly half of
the world’s population are deprived of these things and are considered not only
poor, but are living in abject poverty. That is, these unfortunate many are
surviving on an income of less than two dollars per day.
Many of us, especially
in Belize, cannot nearly fathom such a condition but it is real. Poverty of
course, is a quite complex issue and the reason why folks get poor or remain
poor has been the subject of wide discussions. For the most part, those who are
poor are considered in two major categories: poor from circumstances beyond
their control and poor because of bad choices or because they do not do enough
to lift themselves from their condition. On the other side of this coin are
those who are considered, filthy rich. In doing research for this article, I
came across some very interesting statistics. First of all, the poorest 40
percent of the world’s population accounts for a measly five percent of the
world’s income, while the richest 20 percent accounts for a whopping
three-quarters. According to these same statistics, three of the world’s
richest people have more wealth than the total gross domestic product of 48 of
the world’s poorest nations. To put that in proper perspective, there are
approximately 192 countries in the world and three people have more money than
a quarter of those countries put together. At last count, there were a total of
8.7 million millionaires worldwide and 946 persons who are classed as
billionaires. Interestingly enough, India which has half of the world’s poor
living in what is described as a cesspit of filth and on an average of less
than one dollar per day has 54 of these billionaires. Russia, the former center
of communism, is close behind with 53.
Now the Bible is chock full of bodings for rich people and
warns about the danger of having too much. Matthew 13:22, Proverbs 28:20, Mark
10:21 and Acts 4:32 just to name a few. And of course, the most quoted or
misquoted of them all, 1 Timothy 6:10. I say misquoted because most people
mis-cite the verse as saying “money is the root of all evil” when in fact, the
true statement is “For the love of money is the root of all evil”. A slight
miscarriage, but one that shifts the burden of offense from the action of man
to the inanimate object, cash. Money is a neutral medium of exchange that can
be used for either good or evil while the love of money is specifically
condemned in the Bible.
Of course, not even this cognitive dissonance between
spirituality and wealth seems to bother the rich or the wannabe rich as the
pursuit of the almighty dollar is hailed as being meritorious. There seems no
limit to what some people would do to get rich or to remain rich with little
condemnation of behavior. Now certainly, none can fault an individual for
wanting to improve their condition but the question has to be asked; how much
is enough? Consider this, if a person reaches a million dollar plateau and
deposits that million in a bank, a conservative interest return would yield
$90,000 per year, $1,724 per week or $246 per day. Compare that to $2 per day
and one would have to believe that a million is plenty. Let us go back to those
statistics. Latest United Nations figures show an alarming 8 million people
dying each year simply because they are too poor to stay alive. Those same
statistics reveal that of these, some 6 million are children who die before
their fifth birthday as a result of malnutrition. With these figures in mind,
189 world leaders met at the United Nations in 2005 and signed unto the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These are eight ambitious objectives that
the UN believes to be not only achievable but imperative. At the top of the
list is a plan to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty with a deadline set for
achieving this by the year 2015. With the threat of an economic recession in
the United States though, and its negative impact on the rest of the world,
along with the dramatic rise in oil prices and foodstuff worldwide, there is a
relatively gloomy outlook for this particular MDG. Amid the news of all this
extreme hardship by so many people, is news that Exxon Mobil saw profits soar
to over 40 billion dollars last year and 85% of the world’s rich people
recorded increases in net holdings. The rich is getting richer and the poor is
getting poorer. This rise in the price of basic foodstuffs, in particular bread
and rice, has already triggered demonstrations and riots in several countries,
leading some to compare present day conditions with those which led up to
infamous French Revolution. The attitude of today’s filthy rich is also
compared to that of Marie Antoinette, who when told that the poor had no bread
to eat responded with a flippant admonition to “let ‘em eat cake”.
Now again, one must take into consideration that some poor
people are poor with good reason. Some
are drug addicts, alcoholics, compulsive gamblers or just downright lazy. These
are those who can only be helped through efforts of their own and might have
been who Jesus was referring to in his comments from John 12:8 that “the poor
always ye have with you.” Given that the majority of the world’s poor are
children however, and poor because of circumstances beyond their control, there
must something that can be done. Should we allow a few individuals because of
pernicious greed and in the name of predatory capitalism to amass such
embarrassing wealth while we watch the gap widen and watch so many children
die? One cannot speak on this issue of course without reference to the
corruption in many governments and the large fortunes spent on less than
productive projects. It has been suggested that if less than one percent of the
money spent on weapons each year was put into education, that we could put
every child on the planet in school. For a fact, the world community has both
the knowledge and the resources to eliminate poverty and hunger, at least from
those who really deserve and desire the help. Whether we can eliminate greed and
the need for some to feel above others however, is another story.
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