World Hunger and Poverty

Increasing prices of energy and food have worsened and will continue to worsen the problems of world hunger and poverty. Even in first world countries such as the United States, rising food prices and inflation have made poor people poorer, have put more people at greater risk of poverty, and have worsened the financial conditions of most non-poor people.

I believe the current food crisis makes it even more important that we utilize long-term solutions to prevent, alleviate and hopefully eradicate poverty.

Let me play on an old metaphor: If you give a man a fish each day, when fishing prices go up you will not be able to afford to give the charity and the man will starve. If you teach a man to fish, then afterwards he can probably fully support himself regardless of fluctuations in the price of fish. Also, in the long run, teaching a man to fish costs less than giving him a fish each day for the rest of his life.

We can protect people and society as a whole from poverty and rising food prices. I believe we need to do it by getting people in poverty or at risk of poverty into programs that will turn poor families into self-sufficient families. Namely, we need to provide people with education, skills training, and job placement services. We need to help the people start their own businesses or get jobs that pay them enough to support themselves and their families. And we need to make sure the people have access to food, shelter and healthcare while they go through the process of getting the job, including the time it takes them to get the education and skills to get the job.

Healthcare can be especially important in cases where a person has an illness or mental disorder that prevents them from doing what it takes to get a job that pays them enough to support themselves and their families.

If you know of any good programs helping families become self-sufficient as I have described above, please post about them in my World Hunger and Poverty Forums. You can also use the forums to post other comments in response to this blog post.

Today’s book of the day is How to Make a Difference by Catherine E. Poelman. Here is the overview:

“A selfless volunteer herself, author Catherine E. Poelman offers hundreds and hundreds of ideas for would-be volunteers. Her book is filled with ways to serve, along with Internet resources, national and community organizations to contact, and books to read. Learn what it takes to become a volunteer at a hospital or a zoo, at a homeless shelter or a battered women’s shelter, in an elementary school classroom or an adult literacy program. In addition, discover dozens of ideas for simple, everyday service.”

You can discuss that book, post about other good books related to poverty or humanitarianism, and discuss poverty in general all at the World Hunger and Poverty Forums.

I could criticize the No Child Left Behind Act. But almost all the people with whom I have spoken about it have expressed strong criticism of it themselves. Namely, they make note of the obvious flaws in taking funding away from failing schools, considering that those schools tend to need the funding the most. I do not want to beat the proverbial dead horse.

While I do think No Child Left Behind does not work and is often counter-productive, I do have some sympathy for the philosophy behind it. Offering conditional funding and threatening to take away funding is the main way the federal government influences local policies of local governments. Additionally, it can be hard to allocate funding for populistic purposes because the taxpayers and general public are rightfully afraid of government spending. So it is easier to get them to accept laws that place more restrictions on funding than laws that just wastefully throw more money at the problem. The problem, in this case, is inefficient, failing schools.

I do not have any clear-cut solutions.

I would consider suggesting making requirements based on methods not on outcomes. Instead of just taking funding away from schools that have too low of standardized test scores, I would suggest making requirements about what the schools need to provide. Namely, I would suggest requiring that all children and students under a local government receive complete healthcare for the schools to get education funding from the federal government.

The healthcare could be provided by a state government, by an even more local government, or by the public schools themselves. It could be provided to all citizens or only to those who cannot afford it on their own. (I would consider charging parents with child abuse if they can afford healthcare for their kids but choose to waste their money on non-essential purposes instead.)

Healthcare would help alleviate the poverty that causes public schools in poor neighborhoods to fail. Also, sick students cannot learn well. Even furthermore, psychological and psychiatric care would help neutralize students’ behavior issues which perhaps is the biggest obstacle for failing schools.

Requiring healthcare coverage for education funding would help alleviate both the education and healthcare problems in the United States without drastically increasing federal government spending and without further federalizing either education or healthcare. If a local government does not want to ensure that all children and students have complete healthcare coverage, then the local government can refuse the federal funding.

I am not dedicated to the idea. I am still thinking it through. So I would love for you to post your comments and replies on my idea of requiring schools to provide healthcare coverage to receive education funding from the federal government. I have decided to post the discussion for that idea in my philosophy forums due to the idea’s very theoretical state. So you can post your thoughts and comments on the idea in this thread at the philosophy forums.

Today’s poverty-related book of the day is Do Unto Others by Samuel Oliner. Check out the overview:

“In Do Unto Others, Holocaust survivor and sociologist Samuel Oliner explores what gives an individual a sense of social responsibility, what leads to the development of care and compassion, and what it means to put the welfare of others ahead of one’s own. Having been saved himself from the Nazis at age 12 as the result of one non-Jewish family’s altruism, Oliner has made a lifelong study of the nature of altruism. Weaving together moving personal testimony and years of observation, Oliner makes sense of the factors that elicit altruistic behavior – exceptional acts by ordinary people in ordinary times.”

The book looks inspiring to me, especially for those of us who so desperately want more unity and compassion in society. I hope to read it soon.

If the idea of altruism interests you, you may also want to read a short philosophy article I wrote in which I talk about altruism: Is Selfishness Compatible with Kindness?

If you know other good books related poverty, including those related to humanitarianism in general, please post about them in our World Hunger and Poverty Forums. Thanks!

On Sunday, May 4th, I will be volunteering at Foodshare’s Walk Against Hunger. If you will be in Connecticut and could make it to the walk site in Hartford, then please do. If you want to go and volunteer with me, just tell me as soon as you can. (You can contact me by email at scott@scotthughes.biz.) Alternatively, you can get more information from Foodshare directly:

http://foodshare.org

I think you can still sign up as a walker. If you think you might want to walk, go to the Foodshare website at foodshare.org.

Walk Date:
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Check-in 1:00, Walk Start 2:00

Walk Site:
The Hartford
690 Asylum Avenue, Hartford

If you do not live in Connecticut, then consider forming a local volunteer group in your local community.

Today’s poverty-related book of the day is First World Hunger: Food Security and Welfare Politics by Graham Riches.

Here is the overview:

“Hunger and undernutrition are widespread in many advanced capitalist societies. Hunger is now publicly acceptable despite undermining common standards of human decency and abrogating the basic right of people to adequate food as guaranteed in domestic and international law. First World Hunger examines this crisis and the politics and practice of food security and welfare reform (1980-95) in five ‘liberal’ welfare states (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA). Through national case studies it explores the nature and causes of hunger, its neglect by governments, the breakdown of public welfare, the depoliticization of hunger as a human rights issue and the failure of New Right policies and charitable emergency relief to guarantee household food security. Alternative policies and strategies of public action directed at the abolition of hunger are discussed.”

You can easily buy First World Hunger and more at discount prices from BookCloseouts.

I have decided to start a book of the day series on this blog. Each day for the rest of the month, I intend to make a post about a poverty-related book that interests me. I have not read any of these books yet. (If I had, I would have already posted about them when I read them.) I hope to read most of them eventually, but it will take me a while since they will not be the only books that I will be reading.

Better yet, I assume some people reading these posts will purchase and read one or more of the books. From an activist perspective, I think it will be a great way to raise awareness and spread information about poverty. Also, I have a relationship with BookCloseouts, so, when any of you purchase any of these books from BookCloseouts by following the links that I post on this blog, then some of the revenue will help fund this blog.

I will still make my regular blog posts too. These poverty book of the day posts will be extra.

Anyway, today’s poverty book of the day is Loretta Schwartz-Nobel’s book, Growing Up Empty: How Federal Policies Are Starving America’s Children. Take a look at the overview:

“Growing Up Empty is a study of the hidden hunger epidemic that still remains largely unacknowledged at the highest political levels and ‘an unforgettable exploration of public policy, its failures and its victims’ (William Raspberry, Washington Post). Twenty years after Ronald Reagan declared that hunger was no longer an American problem, Schwartz-Nobel shows that hunger has reached epic proportions, running rampant through urban, rural, and suburban communities, affecting blacks, whites, Asians, Christians and Jews, and nonbelievers alike. Among the people we come to know are the new homeless. Born of the “Welfare to Work” program, these working poor have jobs but do not make enough to support their families, such as the formerly middle-class housewife reduced to stealing in order to feed her children, or the soldier fighting on our front lines while his young wife stands in bread lines and is denied benefits and baby formula at a military health clinic. With skillful investigative reporting and a novelist’s humanitarian eye for detail, Schwartz-Nobel portrays a haunting reality of human suffering that need not exist. A call to action, Growing Up Empty is advocacy journalism at its best.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today, “The rapidly escalating crisis of food availability around the world has reached emergency proportions.”

Rising prices have already raised the costs of the WFP’s current operations from $500 million to $755 million.

I assume the inflation comes from the rising price of energy, which has risen from increased demand and decreased supply.

Food prices have doubled over the last three years, threatening the economic conditions of millions of people throughout the world.

The world has enough resources to end world hunger and poverty, but I believe those problems will continue to get worse if we do not fix the social and political problems that allow them to occur. Like I have said before, if we do not fix our social structure soon, I fear we will end up doomed.

Throughout my unprofessional studies of history and geopolitics, I have come to the conclusion that young people tend to start, push and lead the most effective and positive social movements. For example, consider the hippies, yippies, and such in the United States, namely in the 60s and 70s.

I believe young people tend to have the most compassion and the most principled and honest sense of justice. I believe young people become the most honestly upset by the world’s constant terrors and injustices, such as war, poverty, oppression, political inequality, violence and so forth. In this harsh, corrupt world, perhaps as people get older they tend to become corrupted and institutionalized. Perhaps age breeds complacency and tolerance of the horrible.

Not only do I propose we try to get the youth involved in poverty alleviation and other progressive social movements, but also I propose we try to turn these movements into youth movements.

Like many activists in the United States, I have often asked myself how we can bring back the social awareness and progressive momentum of the counterculture of the 1960s, a time marked by its heavy involvement of young people and their relative free-spiritedness, originality, sense of individuality and lack of corruption.

If you have any good ideas for getting the youth involved or if you know of any organizations already helping the youth get involved, please post about them in my World Hunger and Poverty Forums.

Today, I just started reading the book Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine. Not being specifically about poverty, Levine argues in the book that sex is not necessarily harmful to minors, and that trying to keep children ignorant about sex and puritanically abstinent often backfires.

So far, I have only read about two chapters of the book. In the short part that I have read, Levine points out that poverty causes many of the problems associated with sex. For example, poverty increases the rate of teen pregnancy, unwanted births, abortion, rape, sexual assault, child molestation and sexually transmitted diseases. Namely, that happens because poor children have less access to quality education and health services. Also, poverty and poor neighborhoods are conducive to violence and crime, which increases sex crime and sex violence.

While trying to hide sexuality from kids tends to backfire, poverty reduction would actually help reduce the rates of many sexual problems especially among minors.

I cannot fully recommend Harmful to Minors until I have finished reading it, but so far I like it very much.

Even if you have not read the book, you can discuss it and its topics in this thread at the Book and Reading Forums.