World Hunger and Poverty

Joe De Capua recently wrote a news article about the hidden costs of war. I include an excerpt:

The new UN General Assembly session opens next week, and there’s a call for the United Nations to address what one group calls the hidden costs of war. The NGO ActionAid says that of the food crises facing nearly 40 countries in mid-2006, 25 were caused by conflict.

Thomas Johnny is a policy research manager for ActionAid in Sierra Leone. He’s currently in New York, awaiting the UN meeting. He spoke to VOA English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua about the hidden costs of war.

“The hidden cost of war I can say one is hunger; two is the increased level of trauma and continuous deprivation of people; and people trying to recover from the loss of relatives, friends and even property. But I think hunger is one of the most hidden costs of war,” he says.

I agree completely. The movement called Food Not Bombs bases its philosophy on the relationship between war and hunger.

Not only does war directly cause hunger and poverty, but it also indirectly contributed to the problem. Namely, the huge expensiveness of war uses funding that could go to anti-poverty measures.

For example, the needless war in Iraq will cost the United States over a trillion dollars (and it has made the United States less safe, in my opinion). With 1 in 8 people in the United States suffering from poverty, imagine if the United States had put that trillion dollars towards funding food, clothes, shelter, healthcare or education, rather than war. Best case scenario, the United States government could have given that money back to the tax-payers instead of wasting it on needless wars. As it goes with all wars.

We need to move beyond researching and discussing poverty. That builds the foundation for action but does not constitute action itself. We cannot end poverty without researching it and discussing it, but we cannot end poverty only by doing that. We also need to organize and take action. We need to form local grassroots groups that work to reduce and hopefully eliminate poverty at a local level by using general principles to address specific community needs in that specific local environment.

We need motivated leaders who can help form and organize local grassroots groups. We need local people who have the resources and willingness to engage in anti-poverty activism. With such leaders, we can create a global network of grassroots groups that can cooperate and share ideas on a general level, and can each attack poverty on a local level.

Are you a leader? Are you willing to help fight poverty? Discuss forming a network of grassroots groups in our Hunger and Poverty Forums. We need local leaders! This can only be done from the ground up.

Do you or do you know someone who works to reduce world hunger, poverty, or homeless? If so, I want contact me to schedule an interview. I want to interview anyone who works to make a difference in their community. We will publish the interviews on this blog. You can contact me through my Hunger and Poverty Forums. You can PM me on the forums (username: Scott Hughes) or you can post about yourself publicly and specify that you are willing to do interviews.

I especially want to interview people who work in prominent positions at non-profit organizations that address poverty. Also, I like to interview writers and researchers.

A recent article at thespectrum.com explored the dynamics of poverty. I include an excerpt:

Typically identified by income level, now poverty can stake claim to people’s quality of life, which is spiraling downward. More hours at the daily grind means there is less time for family, decreased opportunities to vacation and attend or participate in cultural arts, sports or other leisure activities. Reaping the benefits of a bigger paycheck has come at the expense of people’s rest and relaxation.

Less opportunity for a mental, physical and emotional break from occupational duties has impoverished the American worker from a state of health and well-being. Obesity rates are the highest ever in U.S. history. Studies show an increase in stroke and cardiovascular disease. Furthermore, depression is on the rise and drains more than $83 billion annually from the American economy, affects 19 million Americans, and results in thousands of preventable suicides, according to a 2006 report by the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.

I agree with the article’s sentiment that poverty requires a more dynamic approach than simply measuring income levels. The concept of poverty refers to qualitative state, and thus quantitative measurements fail to show the true levels of poverty.

The government’s gross underestimations of poverty demonstrate the problem with quantitative measurements. The United States government sets the poverty line for a family of four at only $5,000 per person. How can person in the United States live unpoorly with only $5,000 a year? That translates to less than $450 per month, less than $14 per day. Who could make a monthly budget for $450 that could pay for food, clothes, shelter (including utilities), healthcare, education, transportation, and everything else required to live self-sufficiently and get to work? Most people can’t even afford rent and utilities with that. It would be hard enough to buy food alone on $13 dollars per day!

In a recent article on BlackEnterprise.com, Alfred Edmond, Jr. wrote about how people hurt themselves financially just to give the appearance of wealth. Though the magazine addresses Black financial issues specifically, I think the advice in that article applies to all people who may struggle financially. He shows how people ring up their credit cards to look rich and live in luxury, while thus accumulating debt. Even if that doesn’t result in poverty for every person, it usually will result in a lot of financial struggling.

I think we need to find a way to get this message to the younger generations. High-schools need to include more financial classes, especially those high-schools in poorer areas. Students need to learn how to invest in their future, rather than just waste their money to temporarily look rich.

Today marks the sixth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks that entailed the murder of about 3,000 people. Additionally, the Bush administration used 9/11 to trick America into waging a needless war on Iraq, which resulted in more American deaths than 9/11 itself, as well as the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

Indeed, 41% of Americans still believe that Iraq was directly involved with 9/11, thanks to the deceitfulness of the Bush administration. Common sense tells us that those duped 41% of Americans probably make up the vast majority of Americans who support the current occupation of Iraq–which I believe only increases anti-Americanism and thus increases the threat of anti-American terrorism. In other words, the war in Iraq is creating more terrorists than it is destroying, especially since the U.S. government still allies itself with the country where most of the terrorists came from: Saudi Arabia.

The so-called “war in Iraq” has cost the U.S. about $450 billion so far, and has created more problems for the United States than it has solved. Most estimates say the total cost will exceed $1 trillion, and may even exceed $2 trillion. Imagine what else the United States could have done with that all that money.

Imagine if the United States had used a large portion of that money to end world hunger and poverty. I bet that would have reduced the threat of terrorism, namely in that one of the major ways wealthy terrorist-leaders like Osama Bin Laden recruit new people; they feed people, and use their apparent “good-will” to recruit poor angry kids into terrorism.

Of course, the United States government appears to have no intention to change its course, as my ideas are nothing new. I posted similar points on last years anniversary. I hope next year I can report something different, but I doubt it. I believe the United States government will continue to spend more money on needless oil wars than it does on world hunger and poverty.

In addition to the 3,000 people who died in the horrible 9/11 attacks, 18,000 children die every day from world hunger, just like last year. I say FOOD NOT BOMBS!

Gentrification plays a major role in poverty. Basically, gentrification refers to removing poor people from their homes usually by purchasing the building and replacing low-cost apartments with high-priced luxury apartments with tough application procedures. This most often happens in cities, where demand exists for both high-priced and low-priced apartments, in that cities tend to have wealthy businessmen as well as a poor underclass.

In regards to gentrification and poverty, many caring people promote the production of low-cost efficiency homes in areas with lots of poverty. I see that as misguided.

If we want to build low-cost housing and apartments for poor people, I suggest building it out of inner-city. These poor neighborhoods and cities have tons of violence, drugs, and other unhealthy environmental factors that contribute to poverty. Additionally, the public schools in poor areas offer the worst educations. Let’s build the low-cost housing in more suburban areas and help otherwise poor people get jobs around it. Then these people can live in neighborhoods with less violence and drugs, and more quality schools and jobs.

Children who grow up out of the poor ghettos of inner-cities have more opportunities and a greatly reduced risk of future poverty.

This will work most effectively if the low-cost housing focuses on peaceful adults with a willingness to work and children who will perform well in schools.

What do you think of this idea? You can talk about it and share your own ideas at our Hunger and Poverty Forums. It’s completely free!

On Wednesday, Robert J. Samuelson wrote an article about poverty in which he blamed stagnant and rising poverty rates on immigration. Since then, I have noticed many blog posts and letters to the editor about Samuelson’s article.

Samuelson’s observation notes a common overlooked factor in poverty. Simply put, statistics show that the United States poverty rate has declined slightly overall in the last two decades, if we do not count the poor immigrants who moved to the United States. These poor immigrants add to the poverty rate.

Of course, Samuelson honestly notes that poverty for natives has risen since 2000, meaning that both the poverty rate for whites and the poverty rate for blacks has risen since 2000. I assume this happened as a result of Bush taking office, as it similarly happened during the Reagan and Bush Sr. eras.

Regardless, as Samuelson’s points show, we have to remember that stagnant poverty rates in the United States do not necessary indicate a complete lack of progress, and rising poverty rates do not necessarily mean regress. For example, quite plausibly, many poor immigrants would live in even poorer conditions if they had not come to the United States, which they presumably did to get better opportunities and employment.

In ideal circumstances, all people in the United States including immigrants would receive high-quality educations, and every working person in the United States including immigrants would get paid enough to not live in poverty. Regardless of immigration, the United States (and the whole world) has two huge problems that allow poverty: Firstly, not everyone can afford education, and many people only get a poor-quality education. Secondly, many working people still live in poverty due to low pay, which many people refer to as the lack of a living wage. Those two problems contribute to each other, in that low-paying jobs mean people do not have enough money to afford quality education, and lack of quality education means people cannot get high-paying jobs.

As a result of those problems, even native poor people often cannot escape poverty. Thus, poor immigrants add to the number of poor people.

To fight poverty, we need to solve those two general domestic problems, so that all people in the United States have a viable route out of poverty. Additionally, we need to work towards global solutions for poverty so that poor people do not continue to flow into the United States. Opening up trade and economic investments into countries like Mexico will help create local opportunities for poor people from those countries.

In recognition of International Literacy Day, I will post today about literacy. Anthony Westbury recently wrote about illiteracy in both the United States and the world. I include an excerpt:

“If You Can Read This, Thank a Teacher,” was the message on a popular bumper sticker a few years back.

There are an awful lot of people, both in this country and abroad, who aren’t able to read such simple messages — 860 million of them to be exact, two-thirds of them women.

On Friday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) celebrates International Literacy Day. UNESCO sponsors reading celebrations and appoints a jury to award international literacy prizes. These include awards for the encouragement of mother tongue languages in developing countries, prizes aimed at developing literacy for rural adults and out-of-school youth, especially women and girls.

So, what’s this got to do with you in rich, well-educated America?

Well, poor reading skills aren’t limited to the Third World. A shockingly high percentage of Americans either cannot read at all or function at a low level of literacy. In technical terms, this second group is described as functionally illiterate. Their numbers include both United States-born natives and immigrants, but around 20 percent of the population is functionally illiterate.

Common sense tells us of the connection of illiteracy to poverty. To escape poverty, poor people need an entire quality education that includes job skills and job training. Both education and job skills require literacy.

While we have to also address adult illiteracy, we can recognize that providing universal quality education to children would have eliminate the problem all-together.

We have to find a way to provide quality education to all children, and I doubt the government can do that due to its bureaucratic immobility and funding problems–taxpayers will always give government school system’s budget problems. I suggest using privately-funded student loans and private schools to provide quality education.

A recent Boston Globe editorial talked about organizations helping enable homeless, low-skilled, and low-income people to take care of themselves mainly through education and better employment. I include an excerpt:

There’s an emerging cure for dead-end jobs and unemployment. Instead of letting people languish in homelessness or despair, the National Fund for Workforce Solutions is making it clear that low-income and  low-skilled workers can succeed with help from a committed team – employers, government, foundations, unions, colleges, and nonprofit organizations. The fund, a new, $50 million initiative, is announcing 10 new grants in 10 cities and states at the National Press Club in Washington today. And it is holding up programs in and around Boston as innovative models.

I recommend reading the entire article, because it recites some individual stories of a few people who uplifted themselves with the help of local non-profits, which focus on education and job training. I hope to see this approach replicated throughout the country.

I think the above methods contrast to some common misguided approaches. Often times, people think of fighting hunger and homelessness through plain charity such as soup kitchens. That only fights the symptoms of poverty, but does nothing to fight poverty itself. To actually stop poverty, we have to help people find permanent solutions through education, job training, and then employment. Additionally, poor people need to break any habits or other obstacles holding them down such as addiction or unemployment. A soup kitchen only provides a single meal that will fend off hunger for a day, but education and employment help poor people actually eliminate their poverty.