hahaha f*^k you france

[Hootnow]

What was the news?

That the world's richest 100 people (I've just checked and apparently only 8 are women) earned (not are worth in total) last year enough to end end global poverty 4 times over. Again, earned, not are worth.

I know this is a slightly simplified statistic and that much poverty has underlying causes which cannot be simply brought away by money. I hope others would agree however that this kind of thing is morally distasteful, even if they either don't care or don't think anything should be done.

 

[BushHillSpurs]

Sounds harsh but I actually think that the worlds population needs to be brought under control.
So its a no from me for ending global poverty, etc..
Serious.

 

[southstand1882]

That the world's richest 100 people (I've just checked and apparently only 8 are women) earned (not are worth in total) last year enough to end end global poverty 4 times over. Again, earned, not are worth.

I know this is a slightly simplified statistic and that much poverty has underlying causes which cannot be simply brought away by money. I hope others would agree however that this kind of thing is morally distasteful, even if they either don't care or don't think anything should be done.

It's an interesting moral dilemma

I imagine Apple generated enough cash (just last month) to end homelessness in all our major cities

I'm guessing that I earned enough last year to buy every sick child in hospital a new teddy bear

But is it really my responsibility to do so? Is it Apple's?

I think we should be grateful that there are billionaires with a moral compass. The biggest of them all being Bill Gates and Warren Buffet (both good old fashioned capitalists too )

But blaming the worlds problems on the wealthy is just as morally distateful IMO

 

[Hootnow]

Sounds harsh but I actually think that the worlds population needs to be brought under control.
So its a no from me for ending global poverty, etc..
Serious.

You do realise that people brought out of poverty have far less kids? And that all this stuff about bringing populations under control, while true, doesn't address the fact that worldwide there is more then enough food and water on the planet to go around.

Unless this is a trolling, this is possibly the most disturbing post I have ever read on this board and I've been here for a bloody long time.

 

[Hootnow]

It's an interesting moral dilemma

I imagine Apple generated enough cash (just last month) to end homelessness in all our major cities

I'm guessing that I earned enough last year to buy every sick child in hospital a new teddy bear

But is it really my responsibility to do so? Is it Apple's?

I think we should be grateful that there are billionaires with a moral compass. The biggest of them all being Bill Gates and Warren Buffet (both good old fashioned capitalists too )

But blaming the worlds problems on the wealthy is just as morally distateful IMO

Those are completely different scenarios though.

If you gave away all your earnings last year, even if you have a bit saved up, you would probably be struggling to live on just your savings, certainly struggling to maintain your current standard of living. If Lakshmi Mittal gave away his earnings from last year, he would have to slog along this year on the meagre sum of £17 billion. When you have accumulated that sum of wealth, often because you were born into it or because you are a shady gansgter motherfudger who dabbles in oil etc, there surely reaches a point in which there is effectively nothing left to buy. Abrahmovich has something like 7 super-yachts right? What an outstanding use of money that is.

That isn't blaming the world's problems on the rich. It is however saying that 1/7 of the whole population lives in absolute poverty and struggles day to day to simply find food, clean water or basic healthcare so you don't die from getting a cold or measles, when the richest 100 individuals could effectively end it though giving a quarter of their earnings for one year (again, I appreciate the situation is rather more complicated). I don't see too much of a dilemma if I'm being honest. 1 000 000 000 unable to eat or drink and dying of things we would consider menial?

And funny you mention Warren Buffet. The man who's come out with these quotes:


“Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

“If you’re in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”

The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end - people like myself - should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it.

"I would argue that when your kids have all the advantages anyway, in terms of how they grow up... it's neither right nor rational to be flooding them with money."

"I just think that-when a country needs more income and we do, we're only taking in 15% of GDP I mean, they should get it from the people that have it"

He is also for an inheritance tax.


If someone on this board were to come out with some of those comments, the words heart, socialist, liberal and bleeding would be used multiple times.

 

[Joesh]

Sounds harsh but I actually think that the worlds population needs to be brought under control.
So its a no from me for ending global poverty, etc..
Serious.

I often wonder about this. If you had a dream scenario with no poverty, wars, famine and no cancers etc, the worlds population would explode further to an unsustainable amount. Obviously with technology advancing, you would get less jobs available as machines do most of the work which we have already to an extent. You would have people living too long with pensions and other healthcare adding to the cost per person. To make matters worse, you wouldnt be able to get cheap clothes and food as all these slave labour people would want proper wages.

Its a horrible way to look at these things, but the reality is we need these things to maintain balance in the world.

 

[Dicko]

I haven't been following this entire thread but on the topic of ending poverty, how is it possible to calculated an amount? Is it just food for a year!? or actual solutions? and is there some kind of rough plan of how it could be done "but only if we just had the money". I mean... I don't understand how you could logically say I would install water, help with farming or just create job industries, housing etc when it must go far deeper... Some countries are surely so corrupt that you couldn't guarentee what you provided actually went to the right hands (or remained there). There must be plenty of examples of people/organisations trying to solve poverty on a tiny scale which have failed for numerous reasons outside of their hands.. civil wars for example.. it would probably take a generations to fix in some regions.

Just brainstorming, although it doesn't change the fact that it would be good for some of those on this planet with billions to waste should try to put it to better use.

 

[Spursalot]

I haven't been following this entire thread but on the topic of ending poverty, how is it possible to calculated an amount? Is it just food for a year!? or actual solutions? and is there some kind of rough plan of how it could be done "but only if we just had the money". I mean... I don't understand how you could logically say I would install water, help with farming or just create job industries, housing etc when it must go far deeper... Some countries are surely so corrupt that you couldn't guarentee what you provided actually went to the right hands (or remained there). There must be plenty of examples of people/organisations trying to solve poverty on a tiny scale which have failed for numerous reasons outside of their hands.. civil wars for example.. it would probably take a generations to fix in some regions.

Just brainstorming, although it doesn't change the fact that it would be good for some of those on this planet with billions to waste should try to put it to better use.

It's not. Whilst the people at the top could spend their money for the betterment of human kind that is their choice.


Say it's about buying food? The price of food rockets up due to the sheer amount you are trying to buy. This occurs with pretty much everything. If you're talking about buying land for farms, as soon as you announced your intention to do this the price of the land and farm equipment would shoot through the roof.


Housing? The same problem with land.

 

[Thebarbarian]

Hoot , not sure you are reading other people's posts ! I don't know BushHill from a bar of soap but I can see what he alludes to , you seem to dismiss what he says because of your own political opinion . He is not a troll , has probably been around longer than you and has an opinion to express.

It's easy to say we should all be philanthropists but if I asked you to give up your future earnings would you sign up to it ? Buffet and gates etc did their time in the real world , yes they have progressed to a world we cannot fathom but hey , what would you do in their position ?

 

[Hootnow]

I often wonder about this. If you had a dream scenario with no poverty, wars, famine and no cancers etc, the worlds population would explode further to an unsustainable amount. Obviously with technology advancing, you would get less jobs available as machines do most of the work which we have already to an extent. You would have people living too long with pensions and other healthcare adding to the cost per person. To make matters worse, you wouldnt be able to get cheap clothes and food as all these slave labour people would want proper wages.

Its a horrible way to look at these things, but the reality is we need these things to maintain balance in the world.

:ross: Yes, what a truly horrible world it would be to live in where people get a respectable wage and reasonable working conditions and I have to spend a few extra quid on my clothes.

There is actually, contrary to popular belief, more than enough food, water and land to go around on this planet for the 7 billion people currently on it. The CAP and American subsidies on their crops waste a huge amount of produce.

I haven't been following this entire thread but on the topic of ending poverty, how is it possible to calculated an amount? Is it just food for a year!? or actual solutions? and is there some kind of rough plan of how it could be done "but only if we just had the money". I mean... I don't understand how you could logically say I would install water, help with farming or just create job industries, housing etc when it must go far deeper... Some countries are surely so corrupt that you couldn't guarentee what you provided actually went to the right hands (or remained there). There must be plenty of examples of people/organisations trying to solve poverty on a tiny scale which have failed for numerous reasons outside of their hands.. civil wars for example.. it would probably take a generations to fix in some regions.

Just brainstorming, although it doesn't change the fact that it would be good for some of those on this planet with billions to waste should try to put it to better use.

Oh, I completely agree. I have already said multiple times in this thread that this is more of a headline used to gather attention by Oxfam rather than an actual exact figure. And I have said that there are more underlying causes to many causes of extreme poverty which cannot simply be fixed with money, for sure.

I imagine though that much of Oxfam's prediction was based on long term projections ie rather than giving the people some money this year, make sure that they can sustainably farm each year etc and move them away from the crappy IMF sponsored cash crops which have decimated their economies and helped plunge their people into food poverty etc etc.

 

[Hootnow]

Hoot , not sure you are reading other people's posts ! I don't know BushHill from a bar of soap but I can see what he alludes to , you seem to dismiss what he says because of your own political opinion . He is not a troll , has probably been around longer than you and has an opinion to express.

It's easy to say we should all be philanthropists but if I asked you to give up your future earnings would you sign up to it ? Buffet and gates etc did their time in the real world , yes they have progressed to a world we cannot fathom but hey , what would you do in their position ?

What on earth do political views have to do with the desire to end extreme poverty or finding it morally distateful that while 1.3 billion people in the world struggle daily to find clean water, food, shelter or basic medicines, individuals like Abrahmovich own 5 super-yachts?

I have read his post. And his post seems to be suggesting to allow all these people to continue living in poverty so that 'the worlds population is brought under control'. Which part of that do you think I misunderstood or read wrong?

And I didn't mean that I am older than him (though I'm not youngster that's for sure!) but that I have been on this board for what seems like an absolute lifetime now, must be coming up to 10 years soon.

a) I am not saying we should all be philanthropists. I am saying that for some people to have so much wealth that there is literally nothing to buy anymore while over 1/7 of the world's population cannot afford food or clean water is a disgusting state of affairs. I am not blaming these specific individuals. I am not in any way against making money and doing well for yourself. And I am not expecting the blue collar worker who works hard for his 25k a year to be giving away half his yearly salary to charity.

b) I already give a significant proportion of my family's income away. Obviously we have nowhere near the riches of these kinds of people but beyond our living expenses and saving up for our retirements/ a rainy day/ in case something happens to one of us/ so that we can help out our kids in the future if need be, we don't keep much of the rest. Again, I don't expect everyone to do this, we are lucky enough to be in such a position. But I will reiterate that living in such comfort, whether its at the level of comfort my family and I are at, reasonable, or the levels of comfort these billionaires are at, while so many people suffer, without at least making an attempt to do something, isn't on for me.

 

[Richie]

That the world's richest 100 people (I've just checked and apparently only 8 are women) earned (not are worth in total) last year enough to end end global poverty 4 times over. Again, earned, not are worth.

I know this is a slightly simplified statistic and that much poverty has underlying causes which cannot be simply brought away by money. I hope others would agree however that this kind of thing is morally distasteful, even if they either don't care or don't think anything should be done.

Please present the statistics. We know by your statement that the cost to end world poverty is the amount the top 100 earned divided by 4. How much did the top 100 earn then?

I would hazard a bet that they Top 100 earners could donate their entire salaries to the world and it wouldn't even put a dent in the deficits of the developed world (UK, US etc...). I mean, the US alone has a deficit of $1tn, are we saying the average earnings of someone in the Top 100 is $10bn/yr? And that would do nothing but keep the status quo with the American poor.

I find the statistic very, very dubious.

 

[Hootnow]

a) they earnt $240 bn last year between them

b) oxfam's statistic was for those in extreme poverty, ie those living on or less than $1.25 a day. So approx $500 a year, give or take a few dollars. There are few people in the us who will be living on less than $500 a year.

c) as I've already said, this was clearly a bit of a headline grabber, because the causes of extreme poverty go beyond simply money. It doesn't mean that the underlying message is wrong.

 

[Richie]

So by those numbers, (them being able to pay for it 4 times over) that means it costs only $60bn to 'end world poverty'. However, the US alone donates $53bn on foreign aid.

I know you concede that the statistic is just a headline grab, but I feel as though it's complete nonsense.

I personally despise the developed worlds idea of relative poverty. If you earn less than 60% of the median income in the UK, you are in poverty. Thats over £200/week for two adults with no children. Throw in free healthcare, free education to 18 and all the other benefits we have in this country, I find it a disgrace to call that living in poverty when you look at the real poverty around the world.

In this country if you can afford to feed, cloth and keep yourself warm then are you really in poverty?

 

[Gilzeantoscore]

So by those numbers, (them being able to pay for it 4 times over) that means it costs only $60bn to 'end world poverty'. However, the US alone donates $53bn on foreign aid.

I know you concede that the statistic is just a headline grab, but I feel as though it's complete nonsense.

I personally despise the developed worlds idea of relative poverty. If you earn less than 60% of the median income in the UK, you are in poverty. Thats over £200/week for two adults with no children. Throw in free healthcare, free education to 18 and all the other benefits we have in this country, I find it a disgrace to call that living in poverty when you look at the real poverty around the world.

In this country if you can afford to feed, cloth and keep yourself warm then are you really in poverty?

Feed yourself what? Clothe yourself in what? I would certainly consider someone in this category to be living in poverty considering the context of living in Britain. Why don't you compare the situation of these people with the plight of London slum dwellers in Victorian times. Yes, they really lived in poverty. It makes about as much sense.

 

[spitshine]

Effective birth control would alleviate the poverty crisis. A large percentage of aid donated to developing countries should be spent on this period.
Also spend that aid on educating people to realise the effects of bringing a child into the world.

 

[Hootnow]

So by those numbers, (them being able to pay for it 4 times over) that means it costs only $60bn to 'end world poverty'. However, the US alone donates $53bn on foreign aid.

I know you concede that the statistic is just a headline grab, but I feel as though it's complete nonsense.

I personally despise the developed worlds idea of relative poverty. If you earn less than 60% of the median income in the UK, you are in poverty. Thats over £200/week for two adults with no children. Throw in free healthcare, free education to 18 and all the other benefits we have in this country, I find it a disgrace to call that living in poverty when you look at the real poverty around the world.

In this country if you can afford to feed, cloth and keep yourself warm then are you really in poverty?

30% of that 'aid' is military aid and is almost always tied to buying us made f-16s and abrams. Much of the rest of the remaining 30-35 billion is similarly tied a lot of the time and spent on projects that usaid wants to spend, not necessarily on what's needed. Despite it being pretty widely acknowledged now that this kind of aid really isn't that useful.

And oxfam's statistic was for those living in absolute, not relative poverty.

Another point. I read a little bit of the report and beyond what we all agree was an attention grabbing number, they actually talked about a lot more. A lot of our politicians talk about free trade while maintaining restrictive tariffs on the goods the imf/wb have been telling these countries to grow. There was a good paper published a few years ago which outlined that Africa was losing more to tariffs than they gain in aid. Oxfam's report seemed to be as much a comment on how we run the global economy as it was an attempt to say 'give us 60bn and we ll fix world poverty'.

 

[southstand1882]

Effective birth control would alleviate the poverty crisis. A large percentage of aid donated to developing countries should be spent on this period.
Also spend that aid on educating people to realise the effects of bringing a child into the world.

This is pretty much why I despise Catholics with a passion

Religious nut jobs have effectively helped spread AIDS and poverty with their prehistoric nonsense

I think it took until 2010AD for the pope to approve the use of condoms

The damage was already done

 

[Dicko]

Surely far more important than talking about facts and figures would be to ask how exactly you could go about solving poverty?
Imagine if money was unlimited, say for example you told Oxfam they could have whatever they wanted, it still wouldn't mean that you could eradicate poverty tomorrow? Are there any studies from groups or experts out there who have researched and come up with any practical solution? (Genuine question, I guessing there are?) I have no ideas myself but you always hear reports where funds or resources just fall into the wrongs hands and governments end up using the aid for other means etc..

 

[Gilzeantoscore]

This is pretty much why I despise Catholics with a passion

Religious nut jobs have effectively helped spread AIDS and poverty with their prehistoric nonsense

I think it took until 2010AD for the pope to approve the use of condoms

The damage was already done

Can't say I despise all catholics, but I agree with this sentiment.