Poverty: Sad pictures...
-
Haiz,poor thing..NKF should be reading this man..
-
I understand what you're saying. The world is an unequal place, with the rich countries getting richer and the poor countries getting poorer. Money is perhaps just a tool of society to facilitate buying and selling, for we have progressed beyond our primitive forefathers.Originally posted by the Bear:imagine an african family, living without money, they have a plot of land, they have a few animals, crops growing on the land, the man has a wife and a few children... the family lives on what they can grow and gather..
now money comes in... the "medium of exchange" is forced upon them and they cannot barter anymore...
suddenly they need to use money.. and in order to get money, they start to sell their crop, their animals, even their land... but someone comes in and buys it all up because of the inequality of the distribution of money... usually someone with power...
so, now, you have, a man, with a pile of banknotes, with nothing else..
his farm, his animals, his land, everything is gone... taken over, sometimes by sheer force.. for money...
this man and his family, suddenly become destitute when before the introduction of money, they had all they needed...
this is a simplistic view of what happened.. what actually happens is something like this.. but with a lot more things thrown in...
were they "poor" before? they were, by our standards but they lived well and proud...
are they poor now? definitely!
the introduction of money to some, caused a lot of misery...
and you don't even have to factor in Greed into the equation for the above to make sense!
The Greed component is that of capitalist economies desiring to become more rich and powerful, exploiting the oilfields in countires such as Nigeria, creating massive enviromental destruction. Then again, poor policies and corruption in these poor countries also contributed to the situation today.
Let's just hope that the G8's pledge of US$50 billion to developing countires by 2010 will turn things around. They're obliged to help for they created the problems. -
As the saying goes, the rich only gets richer and the poor only gets poorer.
There are many reasons for poverty, besides the introduction of money to primarily agrarian society. Like Civil War, Natural disaster, economic crisis..
But then International (and IMF) food/ monetary aid may not be the solution. In fact, some of the countries have got poorer from these 'aids'. Cos these funds usually are attached with some terms and conditions. For eg., in the recent Tsunami, many countries provided 'relief funds' ON THE CONDITION that the construction/ rebuilding projects on some parts of Indon goes to coy from the 'helping' country.
Even IMF aid comes with strings attached. IMF requires the countries to adopt 4 things: Privatization, Capital market liberalization, Market-based pricing, Free trade. But none of these work.
Privatisation ends up with important utilities falling into the hands of corrupt govt officials. Capital market liberalization causes an outflow of capital and creates a vicious cycle of rising interest rates, to attract speculators to return the capital. Market-based pricing is also a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. Free trade only makes it legal for foreign countries to depress wages and gain excess to the countries' capital.
Surprisingly, even seemingly Noble acts of providing food supplies, can damage the economy. Cos it under-sells local farmers and can ultimately affect the entire economy of a poor nation.
If poorer nations are not given the sufficient means to produce their own food, if they are not allowed to use the tools of production for themselves, then poverty and dependency will continue.
(Most of the above material come from this website:
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty.asp ) -
every time i see these pictures i completely forget about buying my dream 1000cc sportsbike and would rather see them have something to eat.
-
so to the gals out there, think twice before u go 4 a diet! u r oreadi beri fortunate tat u still got food to eat!! some even worse... eat liao go toilet vomit! next life born in these countries den u noe
-
send the girls go do volunteer work!
-
this is the sad state of affairs in this world
we have people starving all over the world and the rich nations keep on getting greedy