DrFever
New Member
The United States takes the biggest piece of the world cake.
The average American owned and consumed twice as much in 1990 as in 1948, but enjoyed much less free time." The meaning of being an American has changed from being a citizen in a democracy to being a consumer in a market place" (Vicki Robin, Consume Less Now). Recent findings show that American parents spend 40% less time with their children now than in 1965, and spend nine times more minutes a week shopping than playing with their children. Employed Americans are spending 163 more hours per year on the job than they did in 1969, and an average of nine hours per week behind the wheel. It is estimated that up to seven million children in America are looking after themselves every day.
Over a lifetime each person in The United States uses on average:
540 tons of construction materials, 18 tons of paper, 23 tons of wood, 16 tons of metals, 32 tons of organic materials; 10 to 15 times as much as people in the underdeveloped world. (Orr, 1994)
Between 1960 and 1990 the annual tonnage of US solid municipal waste has more than doubled (National Wildlife Foundation 1997)
The gap between the rich and the poor has doubled in the period from 1960 to 1991.Already in 1958 John F. Kennedy, as junior Senator from Massachusetts recognized this serious threat of this widening gap.
"In the midst of this age of plenty, the standard of living for much of the world is declining, their poverty and economic backwardness are increasing and their share of the world's population is growing. In the world community of nations, the rich are getting richer while the poorer are getting poorer First of all is the rapid, overwhelming and utterly unprecedented world population growth".
In 1960 was the ratio of the richest 20% to the poorest 20 %: 30 : 1, in 1991 was the ratio 61 : 1!
Stunning wealth on one side and absolute poverty on the other side. Some statistics will give an idea of the magnitude of world poverty:
· 15-20 million people are starving
· 14 million children die every year mainly from lack of food (one child every second)
· 200 million children world wide work in factories as virtual slaves
· 1 million women die each year from preventable health problems
· 100 million people are homeless
· 500 million people have just enough food not to dye.
· 700 million people are unemployed (35 million in the industrialized countries)
Not only in the poor countries is poverty. What to think of the poverty in the rich US: 35 million people live in poverty and one fifth of all US children!
The number of homeless families (mother and children) in the US increased from 27% in 1985 to 34% in 1989. Every night between 61.500 and 100.000 homeless children sleep in emergency shelters, welfare hotels, abandoned buildings or cars and in the streets.
Than to realize that there is enough food on earth to feed every world citizen. Hunger is a matter of poverty and accessibility to food. Overpopulation is not the cause of hunger. It is the other way round. Hunger is the real cause. A poor family needs many children to work in the field or in the city to add some income for the family.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that the undernourished people in the developing countries have increased from 822 million in 1990-1992 to 828 million in 1994-1996. (State of Food and Agriculture Report, November 199
.
It is the more so tragic when we compare the prognoses for the wealth on Earth of more than thirty years ago with the present reality.
In 1967 Herman Kahn, an authority on world futures:
"The year 2000 will find a rather large island of wealth surrounded by a certain measure of relative misery ( ) more than 90 per cent will live in nations that have broken out of the historical $50-$200 per capita range. But for the first time in history the great mass of people in the seven large and partially industrialized nations will have broken through the pre-industrial barrier."
The 1997" report on the World Social Situation" of United Nations:
"Poverty is on the rise in South Asia, sub-Saharian Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. More than 1.3 billion people live below the poverty line, surviving on a dollar a day".
The big paradox of world poverty is that foreign aid increased instead of decreased poverty. Dumping free food to the Third World depresses prices for local farmers and results in less domestic production. The less developed countries become permanently dependent of the rich countries.
Development aid destroys economic incentives. It also strengthens the political power of the ruling class of some countries. It promotes wide scale corruption. Joseph Fletcher (1991) commented on the food aid:
"Food relief in places of chronic famine is self-defeating. It subverts its own purpose naively turning human concern for human beings into a monstrous injury. When Alan Gregg was a vice President of the Rockefeller foundation back in 1955, developing medical and health services all over the world, he explained in the bluntest language that overpopulation is a cancer and said that he had never heard of a cancer being cured by feeding. ( ) we ought not to help the starving if it hurts them by increasing their misery instead of relieving it".
The average American owned and consumed twice as much in 1990 as in 1948, but enjoyed much less free time." The meaning of being an American has changed from being a citizen in a democracy to being a consumer in a market place" (Vicki Robin, Consume Less Now). Recent findings show that American parents spend 40% less time with their children now than in 1965, and spend nine times more minutes a week shopping than playing with their children. Employed Americans are spending 163 more hours per year on the job than they did in 1969, and an average of nine hours per week behind the wheel. It is estimated that up to seven million children in America are looking after themselves every day.
Over a lifetime each person in The United States uses on average:
540 tons of construction materials, 18 tons of paper, 23 tons of wood, 16 tons of metals, 32 tons of organic materials; 10 to 15 times as much as people in the underdeveloped world. (Orr, 1994)
Between 1960 and 1990 the annual tonnage of US solid municipal waste has more than doubled (National Wildlife Foundation 1997)
The gap between the rich and the poor has doubled in the period from 1960 to 1991.Already in 1958 John F. Kennedy, as junior Senator from Massachusetts recognized this serious threat of this widening gap.
"In the midst of this age of plenty, the standard of living for much of the world is declining, their poverty and economic backwardness are increasing and their share of the world's population is growing. In the world community of nations, the rich are getting richer while the poorer are getting poorer First of all is the rapid, overwhelming and utterly unprecedented world population growth".
In 1960 was the ratio of the richest 20% to the poorest 20 %: 30 : 1, in 1991 was the ratio 61 : 1!
Stunning wealth on one side and absolute poverty on the other side. Some statistics will give an idea of the magnitude of world poverty:
· 15-20 million people are starving
· 14 million children die every year mainly from lack of food (one child every second)
· 200 million children world wide work in factories as virtual slaves
· 1 million women die each year from preventable health problems
· 100 million people are homeless
· 500 million people have just enough food not to dye.
· 700 million people are unemployed (35 million in the industrialized countries)
Not only in the poor countries is poverty. What to think of the poverty in the rich US: 35 million people live in poverty and one fifth of all US children!
The number of homeless families (mother and children) in the US increased from 27% in 1985 to 34% in 1989. Every night between 61.500 and 100.000 homeless children sleep in emergency shelters, welfare hotels, abandoned buildings or cars and in the streets.
Than to realize that there is enough food on earth to feed every world citizen. Hunger is a matter of poverty and accessibility to food. Overpopulation is not the cause of hunger. It is the other way round. Hunger is the real cause. A poor family needs many children to work in the field or in the city to add some income for the family.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that the undernourished people in the developing countries have increased from 822 million in 1990-1992 to 828 million in 1994-1996. (State of Food and Agriculture Report, November 199
.It is the more so tragic when we compare the prognoses for the wealth on Earth of more than thirty years ago with the present reality.
In 1967 Herman Kahn, an authority on world futures:
"The year 2000 will find a rather large island of wealth surrounded by a certain measure of relative misery ( ) more than 90 per cent will live in nations that have broken out of the historical $50-$200 per capita range. But for the first time in history the great mass of people in the seven large and partially industrialized nations will have broken through the pre-industrial barrier."
The 1997" report on the World Social Situation" of United Nations:
"Poverty is on the rise in South Asia, sub-Saharian Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. More than 1.3 billion people live below the poverty line, surviving on a dollar a day".
The big paradox of world poverty is that foreign aid increased instead of decreased poverty. Dumping free food to the Third World depresses prices for local farmers and results in less domestic production. The less developed countries become permanently dependent of the rich countries.
Development aid destroys economic incentives. It also strengthens the political power of the ruling class of some countries. It promotes wide scale corruption. Joseph Fletcher (1991) commented on the food aid:
"Food relief in places of chronic famine is self-defeating. It subverts its own purpose naively turning human concern for human beings into a monstrous injury. When Alan Gregg was a vice President of the Rockefeller foundation back in 1955, developing medical and health services all over the world, he explained in the bluntest language that overpopulation is a cancer and said that he had never heard of a cancer being cured by feeding. ( ) we ought not to help the starving if it hurts them by increasing their misery instead of relieving it".
