"POVERTY IS A RULE NOT AN EXCEPTION "
Ten (10) exceptional information never said about poor countries.
By: Isaac-Tom G. Seeblee Jr
Contacts : +231886148993/+231775588150
Email: [email protected]
#expert research and concentrated studies :
Authors#
1.Ha Joon Chang
2. Morten Jerven
3. Kate Rickett and
4. Richard Wilkinson
Special credits: #African Methodist Episcopal University.
#The #issues :
Prompted by Bill Gates annual letter to the business community and the responses from the Overseas Development Institute, I thought I'd propagate some of the things that in my experience seem less understood about poor countries.
Like Ha Joon Chang on capitalism, I wanted to list #23 things but I couldn't.
I use the word poor on purpose because although the word risks sounding patronizing or dismissive, euphemisms like developing and less-developed can be worse when a student writer like me tends to draw a dichotomy between two incomparable factors.
Thoughts are welcome.
1. Poverty is a rule, not an exception.
For most people life isn't as good as you and me, the comfortable people from a country rich enough to allow us the literacy, time and internet access to read and peruse blogs written by well-meaning left liberals.
Poverty-as-a-rule-not-an-exception is difficult to bend our minds around because we ought to base our views on the world on direct experience. If people around us seem mostly well-fed and content, then why shouldn't everyone else be?
Although things are improving, a huge chunk of the world's population remains extremely rigid and poor. Nearly a fifth of the world humans, 1.29 billion, are considered extremely poor. In effect, the equivalent of every man, woman and child in Europe, the United States and the Middle East scrape by on seventy-five (75) British pounds a day adjusted for the cost of living in each country. About a third of the world lives on less than $2 a day. The poorest half of the world 3.2 billion people own only 0.71 percent of the world's wealth between them.
A billion people live in chronic hunger and nearly a third of all the children are chronically malnourished, which unless addressed before the age of two often leave them stunted and mentally and physically impaired.
A sixth of the world's adults cannot read and write while many more have only rudimentary literacy. Sub Saharan Africa has only two doctors for every 10,000 people which is partly why on average, it's inhabitants live for an average of 56 years.
Rather than a term like "developing "to describe these people and countries, the travel writer Dervla Murphy's phrase "Majority World "is more accurate.
2. Most countries aren't well– off.
The following using World Bank data shows that most countries have a relatively low level of national income per capita. 120 nations earn less per person than the world average.
When you reach an income per capita of about US $ 20,000, about half that of UK, there's a big jump. Bermuda national income per person is $104,455 times that of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
[NB: Not all countries labels fit on the vertical graph]
National income per capita, US$.
3. Poorer live in Asia than in Africa.
Everyone seems to be withering on about the Asian century these days and Asian development has been miraculous. But yet, on account 69% of Indians live on less $2 a day: 800 million people.
A third of Chinese:400 million people remain similarly poor despite the country's amazing success in reducing poverty. Together, these two countries contain more people than there are Africans.
4. The distinction between "developed " and "developing " is madly meaningless.
What does Brazil have to do with Liberia?
Not much, apart from an Atlantic Coast. One is a newly industrializing behemoth with an average income equated to the world's average. The other is one of the world's poorest countries emerging from civil spelled. Yet, both are officially considered developing.
China, Turkey, Russia, Indonesia, Mexico, and India are all the big names, relatively dynamic even though they contain a lot of poor people.
Per statistics, millions of people in those countries life like Europeans, and the emergence of these countries is one of the biggest reason why poverty will continue to drop in the coming decades even though countries also called developing are left behind.
On account, 41 Supposedly developing nations which in 2017 on some criterion had real incomes that were lower than a decade earlier.
They're properly described as under-developing.
5. "Leisure ".
Like lying on the beach in Thailand, Liberia, Guinea or Gambia doesn't tell you much about poverty.
Many of us try to ignore poor people's experiences of the global🌐 past. Example of a waitress at their table or pool attendantsPer accounts, interestingly the ones found of these enjoyable goodies are those who are lucky to receive jobs and mouth-watering opportunities. Only by direct experience and immersion in local circumstances, it is possible to have a vague inking or what it might be like for one to be genuinely destitute.
There's no obligation on holidaymakers to go wandering around in slums, but anybody who claims knowledge about deprivation should experience or observe it first-hand for themselves, ideally for a long time.
6. Our main tool for understanding poor countries mainstream economics is woefully inadequate and all about the rich world. A sample of 76,000 economics journals and articles published between 1985-2012 Practically shows that more papers were published about the United States than on world 🌍 lest to speak about the Middle East and Africa combined.
Like I said in this blog post, it has been ridiculous as if biologist only study flowers or physicists only outer space. It's no wonder that the mainstream model of humanity bears resemblance to most people on the planet.
Economist starts from an assumption that human beings bear individualistic, utility maximizing and absolutely rational in a narrow sense. Actually, many people are communitarian, social, non-calculative and uncertain about the future and often times act according to sentiments or whims.
Mainstream economics allows no theory of power or politics and can't see the world economy as a system of flows.
7. The economic statistics on poor countries are awful. Which undermines my first four points.
As Morten Jerven says in his book "POOR NUMBERS ":how we react to African Development statistics and what to do about it, the most basic metric of development, GDP, should not be treated as an objective number but rather as a number is a set result of a sudden process in which a range of arbitrary and controversial assumptions are made. "Jerven " finds that the discrepancy between different GDP estimates is up to half in some cases. This support my expert studies of these developed countries, where statistics offices are usually underfunded and don't have the resources to collect data often or well enough.
There has been a kind of false scientism: Foreign academic economists spend ages refining complicated econometric models despite the raw materials being rubbish. However, in the absence of good numbers, the only to live in any country is by using good reliable theories and to rely upon were necessary on case studies and even anecdotes.
8. We need somewhere to make T-shirts.
The 🌐 global development story is all about how wonderful it could end poverty. But, the current economic system relies on cheapness.
Capitalism function via its own ability to maintain low wages.
Why has global inflation deteriorated over the decades?
A question that hasn't been answered by experts. Part, the China's effect, whereby the opening of huge untapped labor markets meant that the whole western industrializing sectors could outsource its manufacturing and that new local manufacturers could emerge.
China's rural poor industry laws, keep Foxconn workers on their feet. If you don't like assembling iPhones at $18 for a ten hours a day job (much higher than it used to be).As difficult as it seemed, over 10,000 unskilled laborers are willing to take your job as soon as you try neglecting your responsibility.
However, I'd be worth paying a lot more for 👕 T-shirts if it meant that people who made them had decent lives. As an increase in demand via higher wages would support economic growth, but again, it is much more naive to think that western countries consumers would pay more for their 👕 T-shirts or that business would tolerate big wage bills.
9. In most of these cases, at least as much as poverty, equalities matters a lot.
A report from Oxfam last month pointed out that, 85 people, about as many as would fit on a double-decker bus, own as much wealth as the bottom half of the world's population.
10. "The spirit level "by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson shows that equity and equality when guided is a good fit for almost everyone.
Redistribution, however, reduces poverty and makes life easier and better for the rich in forms of fewer crimes, better education and a more cohesive society.
Globally, inequality is getting worse, not better. If the conflicts surrounding these issues are not swiftly considered, those people who are situated on the left quadrant of the society might result to eating human beings as daily meals.
Therefore, global aids should not be an option or about the rich world saving the poor. Rather, it should be a necessity for all encounter.
My final take:
One might conclude ill– rationally, that the western nations are much better than we Africans without any real decked accounts, but rather; through an extremely, ridiculously, poor sentimental and unanalytical presumption.
One way or the other, the ratio between us Africans and the rest of the world, based on the indexes of poverty is much better. Unlike the western world against itself.
There are more poor people in Asia than Africa. Therefore, the poorest countries should firstly begin with China and India, Japan and Thailand, Brazil and Bermuda instead of #Liberia and others.
Africans are not poor. We are only used to maximize wealth for the bigger nations and I personally think it's time that the statistics involuntarily be reshuffle and made-over.
I stand with Africa, we are the breadbasket of the world.
#Africa will rise!
I am proud of my origin.
#Blacknature #Blackflesh