Poverty..unaddressed..unacceptable

I'll get right to the point and state the facts, as is:


-An estimated of 842 Million people in all corners of the globe suffer from hunger.
-They cannot afford food to feed themselves and their family.
-Because they are hungry, they are weak, undernourished, and suffer from illness.

-Only 900 million people live in developed and industrialized counties like the United States.
-Another 5 Billion live in developing countries with mostly low living conditions.
-400 million people living in countries that are becoming developed nations.

-3 Billion people (roughly half the worlds population of 6.3 billion), live on less than 2 dollars each day.

-In developing nations, 153 Million children under the age of 5 are underweight.

-In developing nations, 11 million children under the age of 5 years old die each year.
-They die from disease and hunger.

-1 billion people around the world do not know how to read.

-23 million people around the world have died of HIV and AIDS.

-Currently 42 million people around the world are infected with HIV and AIDS.

-Almost 93% of people, who are infected with HIV and AIDS, live in poor developing countries.

-Of the many children who die everyday in developing nations, most die from preventable diseases like diarrhea, malaria, measles, and acute respiratory illness.

-The number of people who can not get enough food increases by almost 15 million people every year.

-In 2001, 11.7% of Americans were living in poverty.

-From 1993-2000, the poverty rate went down. The percent dropped from 15.1% to 11.3%. This was during the Clinton Administration.

-1.3 Billion people around the world don�t have clean drinking water. They drink dirty water that can give them disease.

I personally find this unacceptable! What has the current reigning administration done to date, to combat this sort of oppressive state of living?
When has Bush addressed this issue, and not shoved it under the carpet? He has virtually ignored point blank, the topic of poverty, and deliberately cut funding, for the No Child Left Behind program. No, instead he decided to wage war.
Here are some links that provide some very useful and important data, pertaining directly to this topic, for those interested.

www.bread.org...
www.undp.org...
www.bread.org...
www.globalissues.org...
www.unaids.org...
www.aids.org...

Also here is a press release, that people will find of interest:

www.johnkerry.com...

Question is: What are the priorities here? In order to build a stronger more exemplary America, we need to start at home, before we help those worldwide. How can anyone expect us to do otherwise?

[edit on 5-8-2004 by SkepticOverlord]

First let me ask this of you.

Where is America going to get billions of dollars to fund international welfare programs if the liberal party is trying to create and improve welfare programs back at home? Isn't it bad enough that the democrats feel the need to take care of so called disenfranchised people back at home? Now you want to extend your arms but you won't have anything in them because you'll have a depenant nation on government back at home and not enough independant people to foot the bill you would like to put forth.

Let me share something with you point blank:

The U.S. currently spends approximately $14 billion per year on foreign aid

Since the end of World War II, the United States has spent more than $400 billion on aid to other countries.

The U.S. Agency for International Development itself admits, "Only a handful of countries that started receiving U.S. assistance in the 1950s and 1960s has ever graduated from dependent status."

In fact, despite massive amounts of international aid, the average annual increase in per capita GNP has declined steadily in developing nations since the 1960s, with many of the Third World's heaviest aid recipients actually suffering negative economic growth.

Tanzania provides a perfect example. Since the early 1970s, Tanzania has received more international aid per capita than any other country. Yet, the country remains the world's third-poorest nation and has had no per capita GNP growth between 1980 and 1992. During the same period, inflation averaged 25% and energy and agricultural production declined dramatically.

A recent study by Peter Boone of the London School of Economics and the Center for Economic Performance confirmed that U.S. economic aid does not promote economic development. Studying more than 100 countries, Boone concluded that "Long-term aid is not a means to create [economic] growth."

Foreign aid is little more than welfare for nations -- with the same disastrous effects as domestic welfare programs.

There are many reasons for the failure of foreign aid. First, foreign aid has a widespread record of waste, fraud, and abuse. U.S. aid programs have built tennis courts in Rwanda, sent sewing machines to areas without electricity, and constructed hospitals in cities where a dozen similar facilities already sat half empty.

Frequently, the aid is stolen by corrupt foreign leaders. The Agency for International Development admitted in 1993 that "much of the investment financed by AID between 1960 and 1980 has disappeared without a trace."

As a result, Alex de Waal, president of the human rights group, Africa Rights, concludes that foreign aid is "structurally bad because it undermines the incentive to take responsibility. The more aid a country receives, the less the government of that country has to answer to the people."

If Americans truly want to help other countries, they can best do so not through failed foreign aid programs, but by improving the U.S. economy, so that U.S. businesses have funds to invest abroad, and pursuing free trade policies. As the Congressional Budget Office recently admitted, "Critics rightly argue that the broad policies of the major Western countries -- trade policies, budget deficits, growth rates, and the like -- generally exert greater [positive] influence on the economies of developing countries than does aid."
source: michael tanner lp.org


You say:

Question is: What are the priorities here? In order to build a stronger more exemplary America, we need to start at home, before we help those worldwide. How can anyone expect us to do otherwise?

I agree....

See this thread for the reason it was removed from Campaign2004issues.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Per SkepticOverlord...

General discussion posts without the subject prefix will be either deleted or moved to another forum.

Here's the easiest solution...

If you live in an under-developed nation, and you are already poor, STOP having so many babies!!! It may sound cruel, but an elective "sterilization for reward" program is likely the only way out for these nations. They have all these problems, and then you look at the average family, and they have like 9 kids!!! (when you're poor, sex is at least one fun thing to do, and since they do it without protection, you end up with more births).

Once you have less population boom, you can start attacking the underlying problems, but to try and do so, while the population is still expanding, is like trying to stop leaks in a dam with your fingers.... Eventually, you run out of fingers....