What do you think of this poverty stat?

Question

30,000 children die every day because of povety.

To provide clean water, sanitation, education and medicine to all in poverty, it would cost $30 billion. The U.S. spends that on NASA over the course of two years.

Answer 1

I hate hearing these type of statistics.
It is a no-win argument.
Children living in poverty is a tragedy but not just for the US, it is the responsibility of westernised countries the world over.
The US annually commit billions to relief to various countries; poverty will never be solved by money alone.

Answer 2

Just think, without NASA, and the spinoffs that come as a result of the space program you would not have a computer to even use to post your silly comments. I suggest you donate the amount of money you feel lead to give to this cause, because you are free to do so.

Without science we would not even know the importance of clean water or sanitation. Education, now there is a thought. Encourage children living in poverty to become educated, so they can grow up to be unemployed rocket scientist, engineers, or physicist. Why are they unemployed? Someone thought it would be a good idea to cut spending for NASA and create a welfare state, communism really. When mankind was just years away from interstellar travel, colonizing Mars reaching out to the far ends of the universe, someone thought $30 billion was too high of a price.

Answer 3

Instead of transferring your blame to some other organization why don't you just do something yourself first like go to a poverty stricken area that only became that way as soon as it had some other place to compare to and do what you think is right to help poverty end. You will soon find that not only are you obligated to continue the help but also have to deal with the increment in the demographic situation and soon there are lots more poverty than there was before. No one likes to see what is going on in many areas that are poverty stricken but so far those solutions you mention, although they solve some problems of infra-structure they also stimulate the oncoming of more and worse problems such as increased population that in the end encounters about the same percentage of people who are not benefiting from those solutions. And underneath all that is the human psychological conduct habituated to that way of life so badly that many dint know how to handle any solution that threatens their equilibrium and will most likely not appreciate such a solution.

Answer 4

30,000 deaths per day is just short of 11 million per year. I can only assume that the figure is worldwide, as the deaths of about half of the children in this country each year would have been noticed before now.

Now, if it's worldwide, I'd have to ask why we should focus on NASA, or any strictly US program. What role do you think the UN should play? Don't they have UNICEF for exactly this kind of problem? How about the oil rich nations, I'd bet a lot of the kids you're worried about happen to live in those countries. Why NASA when there's money for flying limousines to Switzerland in the affected countries?

Not every problem in the world is the US's problem. We didn't cause it all, we can't fix it all, and hell, when we try, someone blames us for the attempt anyway. Where's France on this one?

Answer 5

I think you're right. I mean give or take the NASA project, our country spends more on everything else than assisting the poor.

The US consists of the <10% of the world that lives in Class 1 status (i.e. 3 meals per day)

It's something like 70% of the world that lives in class 2 (i.e. 1 meal per day . .and not steak.)

There are some other variables, but >10% of the world live in class 3 (Starving to death)

There is enough food in our country alone to feed the entire world for several years. If there is a way to wake up this country . . I'm in!

Answer 6

So you've decided NASA is the program to attack. What if I found the money elsewhere:

"The Congressional Pig Book is CAGW's annual compilation of the pork-barrel projects in the federal budget. The 2005 Pig Book identified a record 13,997 projects in the 13 appropriations bills that constitute the discretionary portion of the federal budget for fiscal 2005, costing taxpayers $27.3 billion. A "pork" project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures. To qualify as pork, a project must meet one of seven criteria that were developed in 1991 by CAGW and the Congressional Porkbusters Coalition."

It takes two years of NASA's budget but only one year of getting rid of waste. You could argue to take that money out of any program's budget, but you'd have to get concensus. Why not go after waste instead of something useful like NASA.

Answer 7

We also waste more than that every year on pork barrel projects. And on bureaucratic inefficiency. Not to mention the half-trillion that's been squandered on the war in Iraq.

I'll agree that spending money to help these people is a good idea. But you need to target the real waste. And that doesn't include NASA and space research. That money pays for some important services--all those satellites that we use for communication and weather forcasting, for starters. And the list of technoloogies that had their start in the space program--including muchof the modern medical technology that saves thousands of lives every year--and the computer you typed your question on.

Answer 8

For starters I think it is bogus, just like the impossible civilian death numbers in Iraq. But let's assume the number is accurate.

Does it include the 3,000 a day that are aborted in the US??? The only redeeming part of this is that most of them would grow up to be liberal voters.

And do you seriously want to take on over 10 million more mouth's to feed every year??? And before you start running your mouth, 3,000 a day works out to 21,900,000 deaths over two years. Do you really believe that???

We have mortality rates for a reason. If all a people can do is breed and the land can't support them, they start dying. It ain't rocket science.

Answer 9

40 million Americans have no basic Health Insurance, half are women and children. We will spend $498 billion on defense in 2007, that would be plus the spending for Iraq. We need to take care of Americans first.

Answer 10

Why is it our problem to fix everyone elses problems? We have people living in poverty here in the US. When everyone here in the US is living above the poverty line then maybe we can help the rest of the world. Its funny, when we try to help the people of Iraq and remove a horrible dictator we are seen as imperialist, and we are sticking our nose where is doesn't belong. But when we don't stick our nose in these other countrys problems we are neglecting the children of the world. You can't have it both ways. Which is it, we should mind or own business, or but in everywhere. By the way I would rather have the war in Iraq, the war there will ultimately help protect us.