Poverty Population & Development

3 billion of the world's people (one-half) live in 'poverty' (living on less than $2 per day). 1.3 billion people live in 'absolute' or 'extreme poverty' (living on less than $1 per day).

800 million people lack access to basic healthcare. 17 million people, including 11 million children, die every year from easily preventable diseases and malnutrition.

800 million people are hungry or malnourished. Nearly 160 million children are malnourished worldwide. 11 million people die every year from hunger and malnutrition.

2.4 billion people lack access to proper sanitation. 1.1 billion do not have safe drinking water. By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people or nearly 2/3rd's of the world's population will face water scarcity. More than 2.2 million people, mostly children, die each year from water related diseases.

275 million children never attend or complete primary school education. 870 million of the world's adults are illiterate.

3 million people die every year from HIV/AIDS. Approximately 25 million people have died from AIDS in the last 20 years. 70 million will die from AIDS by 2020. 40 million people are currently infected with HIV/AIDS, who will die within 10 years. 13 million children have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS since the epidemic began, and the number is expected to double to 26 million by 2010.

Over 100 million people live in slums. An estimated 25 to 50 percent of urban inhabitants in poor, developing countries live in impoverished slums and squatter settlements.

The richest 1% of the world's people earned as much income as the bottom 57% (2.7 billion people). The top 5% of the world's people earn more income than the bottom 80%. The top 10% of the world's people earn as much income as the bottom 90%. The richest 16% of the world's population receives 84% of the world's annual income.

The wealth of the world's 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet. The combined wealth of the world's richest 300 individuals is equal to the total annual income of 45% of the world's population. The world's 3 wealthiest families have a combined wealth equal to the annual income of 600 million of the world's people. The wealthiest one-fifth of the world's population receive an average income that is 75 times greater than the poorest one-fifth.

Poor countries (which contain 4/5th's of the world's people) pay the rich countries an estimated nine times more in debt repayments than they receive in aid. Africa alone spends four times more on repaying its debts than it spends on health care. In 1997 the foreign debts of poor countries were more than $2 trillion and growing. The result is a debt of $400 for every person in the developing world - where average annual income in the very poorest countries is less than a dollar a day.

By Reality 16 October 05

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Economic Future Predicted 2003

Change Rapidly But Not Cataclysmically [288]

That the old economic order is destroying itself, and taking the whole world towards a replay of the Argentinean crisis on a global scale, is no secret in financial circles. It's just not featured on the 6 o'clock news or the pages of the mass-media newspapers. The following excerpt from the August 12, 2004, edition of the Dow Theory Letters, a financial newsletter by Richard Russell in the USA, captures what the people inside the economic and financial sectors know and accept. It's scary and it's true.

* "... In the end, the US is fated to drown in liabilities, and in the end the dollar will fall to the point where it will no longer be accepted as the world's reserve currency. But until then, the world, really the Asians, will "play the game" in which they will continue to accept and accumulate dollars.

Why are they doing this? they're continuing to accept dollars because this process allows them to continue to sell their products to the US. Yes, it's a game. Yes, it can't go on forever. Yes, the US and the dollar will finally drown in liabilities. Yes, this is ultimately what the bear market is all about. And yes, there really seems to be nothing that will reverse this process."

* "The whole system is obviously doomed, but the world's politicians don't think in terms of "doom." Doom is in the future, and politicians are concerned with "now," and the next election.

There is no need for anyone to overthrow the old order based on capitalism. The societal flaws and lethal memes that are associated with takerism and capitalism are already well on the way to destroying the empires of the industrial age, New knowledge, new technology, and new thinking are helping to accelerate the process. Time is running out for the old order.

Our concern, as leaver-givers, needs to be with the world beyond the demise of capitalism. We need to have a social and economic logic, and a system of transition, in place well before the looming meltdown. We must have the rudiments of a new civilization and a new society ready for people to join when their old world fails them.

This is the most important work and thinking that we can ever do on behalf of our fellow beings.

Go forward in peace. And always remember the line from Gravity's Rainbow:

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."

Lethal Notions of Capitalism [282]

Wealth creation and economic prosperity are, under capitalism, based on principles of competition and survival of the fittest. The phenomenon of capitalism, which is scarcely two hundred years old, it is grounded in these dominant ideas. The notions are not strictly memes, because they are not ingrained in all members of the society, but they are potentially lethal. Not only can corporations fail because they can't adapt to discontinuous change and economic abundance; whole nations can be impoverished unnecessarily and societies can wither and die of anger, recriminations and blame for corporate and other institutional misdeeds and collapses.

Lothar,
September, 2003 posted 2004

By John Shovelan & Lothar posted by Gregory Kable 17 December 04

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