Our world is stratified according to the countries who have, and those who have not. The interesting thing about this is that ALL countries, whether rich or poor, have a portion of their population living in poverty. The wealthiest nations, like the U.S., and the poorest nations, like Haiti and India, have people struggling and suffering (although the extent of the suffering, including malnutrition and starvation, may differ from country to country). So who's job is it to fix this problem? Certainly there is not enough money, aid, or compassion in the world to solve the issue of global poverty. Each nation should take responsibility upon itself to fix their own economic(and humanitarian) issues.
In the podcast, Ms. Lerner mentions that global inequality affects the cost of the products we buy. The United States, for instance, uses global inequality to "help" the population here to prosper financially. Take the Wal-Mart empire, for example. Wal-Mart (as well as similar superstores) purchase nearly all of the products they sell from manufacturers overseas, mainly China. They do this because in order to pass on low prices to the consumer, they must purchase the goods at low prices from the manufacturer. No where in America can these items be made at such low cost to the company, so in turn they take advantage of the poorer areas of China and hire laborers at extremely low wages in order to maintain the made-cheap-bought-cheap-sold-cheap system. Many Americans might feel sympathetic towards or even compassionate for the individuals who are forced to scrape out a living working for minuscule wages in uncomfortable conditions ,manufacturing toys and clothes for sale in the U.S.. However, these are the same Americans who want everything "cheap and fast!" and do the bulk of their spending at Wal-Mart and the like. If American manufacturers were to take over the production for Wal-Mart's products, it is true that many many people here would find employment, but the costs of the products would increase dramatically. And to address the question Ms. Lerner asks, "Who benefits?" from the system: Without global inequality, the economic situation in the United States would not be what it is today. Capitalist countries like our own use the global economy to their advantage to cater to the desires of the consumer, as well as help big businesses gain financial growth.
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You know, I feel like everyone is down on America and our economy for not doing enough to help and even contributing to global inequality, but can we take a step back and reveiw the facts? America is THE top aid nation in the world. Whenever there is a war or a natural disaster, we are the first ones there. Also, we give more money to charities and other countries (in the form of aid) than any other nation on the planet. I don't deny that in some ways we do contribute to the problem, but we also help the problem. Even our big capitalist corporations usually contribute to reducing global inequality in some way.
ReplyDeleteBesides that little rant, I have to say, there is enough money to at least reduce global inequality. Our country spends some several billion dollars on christmas shopping every year, but it would only take 10 million dollars to completely eliminate global thirst. SO many countries don't have clean water, and a lousy 10 million would build wells everywhere so that everyone could drink disease free water. And Obama's health care bill by the way, is a 1 trillion dollar bill. That means if we took 10 million out of the bill intended for our health care and decided to use it for a little global heath care, our country could single handedly eliminate global thirst. Anyways, not a sermon, just a thought.