Friday, January 21, 2005

How to cure third world poverty

The NYTimes claim that the UN has plans to eliminate poverty...More than 500 million people can escape abject poverty, 250 million people will no longer go to bed hungry and 30 million children can be saved if rich countries double development aid over the next 10 years to $195 billion, a new U.N.-sponsored report said on Monday.

however, others point out that logically it's not true...

Ten Lies about eliminating poverty...

Hint: Giving money to aid poor people whose government is corrupt leads to rich government officials.

Scrapple face suggests this:

"This research shows that the root cause of poverty is the absence of money," said Mr. Annan. "Our experts tell us that if we give enough cash to poor people, then they become middle-income people. Naturally, the cash we give them should come from countries that now have too much cash."

Mr. Annan immediately proposed a plan to distribute cash to poor people, with the United Nations serving as middleman and retaining "only the usual processing fee of no more than 65 percent."

This is not as absurd as it sounds. From the NYTimes article

More than 500 million people can escape abject poverty, 250 million people will no longer go to bed hungry and 30 million children can be saved if rich countries double development aid over the next 10 years to $195 billion, a new U.N.-sponsored report said on Monday.

Now, if you calculate that out, it comes to $39,000 a year per person...heck, even I could live on that...

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