Can poverty truly be made history?

Question

The recent concert which was organised to "Make Poverty History" has not worked so far, will it ever work? If I had a million pounds, but the average savings, etc, was in the hundreds of millions, would I still not be poor? (Not that I consider myself poor, I don't) Is the only way to make poverty history to get everyone to give up what they have that makes them rich, to get rid of the system that defines poverty by the power and the riches of the comparatively few?

Answer 1

We will have poverty for as long as the majority of people in wealthy, industrialized democratic states continue to believe that some people deserve to be impoverished. In America, this belief has its roots in the myth of a classless society with the universal potential for social mobility. If the American dream (having money, a family, a house in the suburbs) is really something that anyone can achieve just by working hard enough, then everyone who doesn't have money, a family, and a house in the suburbs doesn't deserve to have those things. It must, following this logic, be their fault that they're not middle-class like everyone else -- they're just too lazy.

This belief is obviously untrue, but we still cling to it desperately because it's the only conceivable way for us not to be horrible people. Those people living in desperate poverty whose homes, often pathetic, one-room shanties, were destroyed by hurricane Katrina? We would be monsters if we allowed humans to live like that in a country where the average family has more television sets than people. It would be simply unconscionable to let people suffer like that if it were, indeed, our fault. . . so we've come up with a clever way for it not to be our fault. We claim that it's the people's fault that they're poor. And we also claim that it's their fault when the conditions that accompany poverty set in -- gang violence, drug use, prostitution. To us, this all seems to prove that poor people are just a naturally inferior kind of person.

This perception is so deeply rooted in the American psyche that I don't believe it will ever change. The only chance for poverty to disappear on a global scale is the replacement of America as the world's primary economic power by other, more sensible countries. I don't have high hopes for this either. The EU is better, for the most part, than America is addressing poverty, but I believe that they will lose out on the global stage to China and India. India still has a rigid, classist society, and China has a middle class that is increasingly identical to its American counterpart, Communism nonwithstanding.

Answer 2

The most generous people are nearly always those who have the least available to give. It is well known that the really wealthy are as stingy as hell, they are too afraid of being poor to part with anything.
While we still have a system where the top paid jobs and the worst paid jobs are being given wage rises on a percentage basis, for example if a top wage earner is getting 100,000 a year and gets a 10% pay rise which would give them an extra 10,000 a year , then the bottom wage earner is on say 10,000 a year and also gets a 10% wage rise which would give them an extra 1000 a year, it is obvious that the rich are going get richer and the poor are going in a downhill spiral towards poverty as the gap grows and the cost of living goes up.
I hate to say this but some people are starting to voice the opinion, that if we don’t start looking after our own poor (for charity should begin at home), and stop giving away what we really cannot afford to others elsewhere in the world, that the western world will become third world countries themselves?
I cannot personally see poverty being erased in my life time.
Read Animal Farm!

Answer 3

Even with the Abolishment, there will still be poverty, just the measure of poverty will be altered.
Poverty is relative, that is that it is measured in comparison to what others are living like.
I wonder wether or not it would work if everybody was given land, tools, animals and then made self sufficinet.....
But of course it is human nature to try to become more successful, to provide enough through hard work in your life time so that your children dont have to work as hard as yourself.
So although Poverty my be abolished for a short while, Human nature will again create an uneven distribution of wealth.

Answer 4

In the bible it states that the poor will always be with us. I believe that statement because as long as there are people there will be poor ones. Some people are not going to do a thing to change the way they are, live and exist. they are the way they are because they are happy or at least not unhappy enough to change it. you can feed people and clothe them and give them a job but, a lot of them will eat, may wear the clothes, maybe not, I have seen them throw them away, really! And they won't show up to work. So, the poor will always be with us. Now, poverty is another thing. That means a lot of people are poor because they are born into it and their situation doesn't change. There are no jobs, no one feeding them or clothing them or giiving them anything. They are sick they are in places in the world where nothing grows in the earth because there is not any water or any nutrients in the soil and no seeds to grow anything with even if there were those things. Most poeple would welcome a way out of their poverty and their way of life. I believe God created the earth to have all we would ever need, enough for every human born on the earth to have enough to eat and drink and to wear and to enjoy the earth but, greed, which is the LOVE OF MONEY, not money for it's own sake but the actual love of it, before everything else, all emotions all things all people, the love of money causes us to have poverty on the earth where there should be none. So, until man stops thinking of him or her self first and starts putting others first we will always have the poor. Some love power and that causes poverty. But power only comes with the love of money which is the root of all evil. When money is used in the correct way it is a blessing from God and can do so much good. It buys food, clothing and shelter for us all. I think anyone born in the USA needs to thank God every day that that is so, because we could have been born in a place where people have no way to earn a living and are forced into poverty with no hope, and no hope is the worst of all. So, I do thank God. Every day. I was born poor in the Appalachian Mtns. Where we had very little to eat, no running water and an outhouse and barley clothes to wear. At Christmas we were lucky to get a paper bag from the church with fruit, candy and maybe a toy. That's how I lived until I was about 14. Then I went to live with my older brother in another state and went to a dentist for the first time in my life. So, people that complain about what they don't have...well, I think Thank God for what I do have. I am truly blessed. Some of the poverty of the world will be helped and some will not. Some want help and some do not. Some will fight for the right to have freedoms and the right to work and not be in poverty some won't. It's different for us all. Sorry, I'm going on and on. Good luck to you. May God always bless you and may you never see poverty but always be rich enough to help stop it. Every small effort helps. It starts with you and me and our neighbor and our neighborhood. that is the way to stop it. One person at a time.

Answer 5

Poverty will never be made history......history is a good predictor of the future. There are selfish people. There will always be power hungry leaders who will keep their country hungry just because it words in to their plan for the country.

There are wonderful people out there. But the evil is out there too.

If we could sovle poverty we would of done it already.

Answer 6

the first big concert was in the eighties with bob geldof
nothing we do within this system will eliminate poverty; as the system has demonstrated, it destroys wealth not creates it; it redistributes the wealth to a very few
i think making poverty universal would be a much better goal'; i think those among us who live high off the hog and are blatant about it are amongst the worst criminals of history; time will not remember them favourably and hungry children are a direct result of the choices of these few

Answer 7

no. because if you made it so that everyone had the same amount of money some people would spend it all right away, some would steal others money and some would put it in the bank and use it resonable. the people that used all of it would then be poor, the people that had there moneystolen would be poor and then thoses peoples familys wouldn't have any mony, then there kids and grandkids and great grand kids wouldn't have any. but the people that had save there money would have lots, there kids would have lots and so on and so on. then you have the same problem as you do today. its like a weird never ending circle.

Answer 8

The definition of poverty moves with changing income so there will always be a percentage of the population thus defined.
With an excess of people in the world, diseases and poverty are about the only chance of salvation of the planet and conserving some of the remaining resources. The alternative is continuing deterioration in quality of life in the West until the system collapses under overload.

Answer 9

Henri Proudhorn said Property is theft. If you can get everyone to believe that the you can end poverty but otherwise I'd say your dreaming!

Answer 10

Somebody will always be poor, it relative.
If everyone was magiced a million pounds, then the trillion and billionaires would be the rich and the millioners still poor.
Plus, its supply and demand.
The communist or socialist theory has yet to work any better than the western way. See what happens in china.