Brown Calls Reading a Ladder out of Poverty

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of the UK, referred to reading as a ladder out of poverty. He also said, “It’s not just the joy of reading, father-to-son or in the classroom. It’s also the benefits of reading. It’s probably one of the best anti-poverty, anti-deprivation, anti-crime, anti-vandalism policies you can think of.”

I do not trust politicians, but I agree with Brown about this.

On this blog, I often stress the importance of education in ending poverty and hunger. Education empowers people. It gives them the knowhow to manage their own life and the skills to get jobs that pay enough to avoid or escape poverty.

I believe that people learn the most from reading. I believe that reading educates people more than anything. Formal schooling helps people learn, but even that happens as a result of the texts and books that students read in the school.

People usually only go to school for a small fraction of their life, but they can take on personal reading as a lifetime hobby. School costs a lot of money, but reading costs little to nothing. Many people can go down to a library and get a book for free, or they can hop on the internet and read about nearly anything.

As a society, we need to make sure all people have access to books to read. As individuals, we need to keep reading. Also, we need to encourage children to read and help them read. Doing so will greatly reduce poverty, and it will empower the otherwise disempowered.

Half of Disabled People in UK Live in Poverty

A UK news report has revealed that about half of disabled people in the country live in poverty.

I find that statistic sad but not surprising. Disabled people have more trouble finding work. Even when they do find a job, they will have trouble finding one that pays enough. Additionally, disabled people have a large amount of extra expenses for medical bills, social care, and equipment such as wheelchairs or hearing aids.

The problem of disabled people’s poverty may seem tough to fix because many disabled people physically cannot take care of themselves and their expenses. If they cannot work, they cannot earn an income to support themselves. As a result, it may seem like only charity can keep disabled people out of poverty.

Charity can help, but we can solve the problem without relying on charity. We can stop disabled from falling into poverty by ensuring that all people have enough insurance to cover all the problems involved. This includes unemployment insurance, medical insurance, and secured retirement.

Insurance makes it so that all the clients voluntarily pool their money together. When any of the clients meets hardship (in this case becoming disabled), the insurance company takes care of that person. People voluntarily choose to pay a little money they can afford to eliminate the risk of having to more money than they can afford.

By using insurance to neutralize risk, society can end disabled people’s poverty without charity in a non-governmental way.

What do you think? Discuss this blog post and disabled people’s poverty in general in this thread at the World Hunger and Poverty Forums.

Poverty and Lifestyle Choices

I just read a great opinion article by Melvina Young about the relationship between poverty and lifestyle choices. In the article, she explains that we cannot blame poverty solely on lifestyle choices.

Many affluent people try to blame poverty on poor people by claiming that poor people’s bad decisions cause their poverty. However, in reality, many unindividual factors cause poverty. In the article, Young points out limited availability of quality education and high-paying employment as two major impersonal factors that can make or keep a person poor.

Additionally, famine, illness, and other cases of bad luck can also make a person poor.

Melvina Young also points out the absurdity of the whole “get a job” mantra by pointing out that most poor people have jobs. Also, I know that millions of college graduates in the United States live in poverty.

Even a minor, non-self-inflicted crisis could throw most so-called “middle-class” people into poverty by ruining their financial juggling.

Even in the United States, most children born into poverty will remain in poverty throughout their lives. On average, these children achieve significantly less in their lives than more affluent children. That happens because the poor children receive less opportunity. They do not get quality education. They often grow up hungry and unloved, surrounded by violence, crime, drugs, and bad role models. They end up poor on average because of their enviornment. Like a seed planted in infertile dirt without water or sunlight, they have the individual potential but not the environmental opportunity.

In analogy, even the best poker player can lose a hand if he receives bad cards. As Melvina Young says in her article, “Personal responsibility is a powerful and crucial thing. But it’s only part of the picture.”

We live in a world where a smart, hard-working single mother with 3 jobs can live in poverty while a pathetic do-nothing like Paris Hilton lives the pampered life of richness.

People can end up poor not because of their decision-making but because of external factors. Two people who exercise equal decision-making ability will almost always live very different lives because they will receive different opportunity. One could end up poor while the other ends up rich.

I find it absurd for people to blame poverty solely on personal decisions. Obviously, both personal decisions and socioeconomic forces contribute to a person’s financial status. On average, I do not see poor people as significantly lazier or stupider than non-poor people. Socioeconomic forces seem to contribute more to a person’s financial status than their personal decisions.

What do you think? Which do you think contributes to poverty more–personal decisions or socioeconomic forces? Post your responses in this thread at the World Hunger and Poverty Forums.

Trading Away Poverty

In a New York Times letter-to-the-editor entitled Trading Away Poverty, Ignacio Sosa writes that free markets and trade can do more to fight poverty than donations to large organizations such as the World Bank.

I agree completely. Of course, we can both trade with and donate to poor communities. The two methods do not exclude each other.

Nonetheless, large donations do not usually help people or communities become self-sufficient. Donations often only provide temporary relief to the symptoms of poverty, and they can undermine local markets and increase dependency. To permanently escape poverty, poor people and poor communities need to develop economically so that they can become self-sufficient.

For example, the United States could do more to relieve Mexican poverty by reducing border restrictions. This would allow workers from the labor-intensive country of Mexico to immigrate to the United States, and investors from the capital-intensive country of the United States to invest in Mexico’s labor-intensive economy. This would create a win-win situation for both countries, in that each economy would get what it demands by voluntarily trading away what it has in excess.

Truly free markets allow for mutually beneficial agreements and trades, which leads to economic development and reductions in poverty.

What do you think? You can discuss this post and free trade’s relationship to poverty in this thread at the World Hunger and Poverty Forums. It is completely free, and all viewpoints are welcome.

Some Poverty News From Around The World

I have decided to post some poverty-related news stories from around the world.

A group of economists have criticized the government of Indonesia for failing to reduce the number of people living in poverty in the country despite general economic improvement for the country as a whole. 105.3 million people in Indonesia live in poverty out of the country’s total population of 236.4 million. While it may seem odd that a country’s economy can improve without decreasing the number of people in poverty, I find that it often happens like that because gains in the economy usually correlate with increased inequality. As the rich get very richer, the poor get poorer. And the “average” income still goes up because the rich make more money than the poor lose.

The mayor-elect of Salt Lake City, Ralph Becker, says that he will work to reduce poverty in the city during his term. That pledge apparently came after a coalition of community and faith groups challenged Becker to reduce poverty.

A program director from the University of Oklahoma has decided to hire two researchers to investigate how public schools can reduce poverty. Even without extensive studies, I think most of us can see how grade schools impact poverty. Hopefully, society will start using schools to break the poverty cycle. Personally, I think private schools have much more potential than public schools, but poor children would need to receive some sort of large voucher or loan to attend private school.

You can discuss the above stories and post your own stories in my World Hunger and Poverty Forums. We need to discuss these major problems together so that we can come up with agreeable solutions.