Understanding Poverty

Yes, it is true that matters are not good for many people facing difficulties in many parts of the world today – but assuming the worst will not make things better. Let change, innovation and growth elsewhere encourage practical compassion where needed.

Matt Ridley also, notes that – “The precautionary principle – ‘Better safe than sorry’ – condemns itself in a sorry world there is no safety to be found in standing still… Some of the billions still live in misery and dearth. Some are worse off than they were just a few months or years before. But the vast majority of people are much better fed, much better entertained, much better protected against disease and much more likely to live to old age than their ancestors have ever been. Even allowing for the hundreds of millions who still live in abject poverty, disease and want, this generation of human beings has access to more calories, watts, lumen hours, square feet, megahertz, light-years, nanometres, bushels per acre, miles per gallon, food miles, air miles and ofcourse, dollars, than any that went before.”

Despite the doubling of the world’s population in the last 50 years, the actual numbers of people living in poverty (on less than the 1985 US$ 1/day) has dropped by more than half to less than 18 percent and is expected to keep reducing rapidly.

The U.N. estimates that poverty was reduced more in the last 50 years than in the previous 500 years. Life expectancy has been increasing steadily at the rate of nearly a quarter of a year per year for the past 200 years (Industrial Age). People are not only living longer lives but also, in better health as they spend a shorter time dying. IQ, However, it may be measured, is also, increasing, due to better nutrition and greater stimulation from an increasing diversity of childhood experiences.

Yes, the rich have got richer, but the poor have done even better. The poor in the developing world grew their consumption twice as fast as the world as a whole between (1980 and 2000)

The Chinese are 10 times as rich, one third as fecund and 28 years longer lived than they were only 50 years ago. Even Nigerians are twice as rich, 25 percent less fecund and 9 years longer lived than in 1955.

Today even the lowly sales clerk or village assistant has a better quality of life and a greater choice of goods than even most of the Kings and Emperors of old, as unlike the Royals who had to maintain the entire family of the craftsmen or servitors for the whole time, the clerk only needs to pay for the fraction of their time as necessary.

Measure of Prosperity – the Currency That Really Counts – TIME!

All of us begin each day with an equal balance of 86, 400 seconds of Time. This account depletes steadily and inexorably whatever you may do till it is replenished again the next day and so for all the days of your life.

The one thing in life that one cannot. get more of is Time. So, anything that allows one to meet one’s basic needs and do one’s essential tasks in a shorter time is the only way that in effect can add to one’s useful time. Time to do more of what one wants to do, to share with family, to do work for the common good and so get recognition and regard. So please see what you strive to do from the perspective of how much additional time it frees for you to enable you to exercise your free choice of what to do in it. Such free choice is a critical element of Happiness.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10