I Did Some Sums About Poverty.

As I understand it, most of us like to think of ourselves as a fairly intelligent, clear thinking, and reasonably charming kind of person.  However there tends to be a few traps or inconsistencies in our thinking that we can often overlook. 

One such trap is when we understand that on a given issues there’s a variety of possible perspectives, and that there’s nothing objectively more correct about our own perspective, yet we tend to feel that any half-wit should be able to see that our perspective is obviously the correct one.

I often prattle on to people about how the public school system is fundamentally a better system than private schooling, but if I actually went to private schools I’d probably be arguing just as fervently for the other side of the debate.

I also reputedly go on about how art is dumb, but of course, there can be no opposition to that perspective.

We tend to feel that the way we were brought up and the way that we choose to live is just the way that makes the most sense. This is a natural reaction, but it can lead us into a danger of irresponsibility.

I think we can all attest that there are some people with too much money in the world, and some people with not enough money.  For instance, if you’re in drought-striken Africa, witnessing your children starving to death, that’s a good indication that you don’t have enough money.

However, when it comes to how much money is “just getting by”, we tend to run into some inconsistency. 

Everyone feels as though they’re just getting by; that they don’t have money to spare.  But this is simply not true.

Even the poorest of us have absolutely everything we actually need.

When people start making sums that are obviously more than they require to live on, they start making even less-factual excuses, like “I work hard for this money, I’ve made a lot of sacrifices and I deserve it.”

How do those sacrifices match up against someone in Ethiopia who works 14 hours a day and can barely feed their family?

They just don’t.  I’m not being a jerk, this is a fact.  Deep down we know that we have more money than most people because we’re lucky.

But how would we feel telling a child who’s teeth are falling out from malnutrition, “Hey there, you’ll probably die soon, but I won’t, because I’m lucky and you are not.  This is the way the world works, so deal with it.”

I would feel pretty terrible saying those words, but in a lot of ways my ignorance says them for me.

So it’s true that in the grand scheme of things we probably do have a bit of money to spare, but it’s just a drop in the ocean, right? 

Well I was bored so I found some pretty fascinating statistics:

Firstly, let’s give the problem a number.

According to the UN, there are about 1.7 billion people living in poverty.

So you could probably buy them all a meal for $1.7billion, but what if you wanted to end poverty for good?

According to a fascinating website www.givewell.org it takes about $1000 Australian dollars to take a person in abject poverty and set them up with the necessary resources to end their poverty for good.

So that’s easy then, 1.7 billion people at $1000 each means $1.7trillion will effectively end poverty.

That’s a fair bit of money, I actually don’t make that much, so we’ll need some other people around the world helping out.

According to the data from the UN, if you take the 10 richest countries, and you isolate just the 500 million richest people from those countries, their average income is about $26 000 Australian.

So let’s say they each devoted 1% of their income to ending global poverty.

1% is $260.  Times that by 500 million and you get $130billion.

1.7 trillion divided by 130 billion is about 13. 

To recap, that means if the richest 500 million people on the planet (and that definitely includes you) each devoted 1% of their income to ending poverty it would take about 13 years. 

After which time, no one on the earth would be in danger of dying of starvation.

Holy fucking shit!

1 fucking percent!

If you make about $100 a day then that’s one fucking dollar. 

That’s the kind of money where if you accidentally drop it on the ground you find yourself really considering whether it’s worth the effort of picking it up again.

But everyone has living costs, right? Sometimes it’s hard to free up any money.

I didn’t want to toot my own horn, but then I realised I’ve been tooting that thing since I started this blog, so why stop now?

My household is two fulltime students who work part time and receive no government benefits.  We make less than the average Australian household income.  We give about 5% of our income to charity and it is piss-easy.  I personally, probably spend more money on cheese.

So what if we all gave 5%?

$130billion is 1%, so times that by 5 and you get $650billion. 

Instead of 13 years of poverty that’ll take it down to less than 3. 

2014. 

And after that you can keep all your money because THERE WOULD BE NO MORE POVERTY ON EARTH.

I can understand that 5% of your gross income can be tough to free up, but what about half that?

Right now the horn of Africa is experiencing the greatest natural disaster of our age.  3 years of drought means that 13 million people are in danger of starving to death.  I did a bunch of reading and it does appear to be fairly dire.

But until the end of November any money that you donate the Australian Government will match, dollar for dollar.  http://www.ausaid.gov.au/country/africa/dollar-for-dollar.cfm

So what about 1%?

If you gave a 1-0ff of 1% you could easily write-off your charity obligations for the year. 

The average income in Australia is about $66 000.  And there’s probably about 20 million people of working age.  Let’s say 15 million, just to be safe.

$660 times 15 million is $9.9 billion.  When doubled, that would become $19.8 billion, which is about 8 times as much money as the UN is hoping to raise in order to avert this crisis.

Then you could spend the other 1% of your poverty-ending money pigging out on icecreams all year, and you'd still be a fabulously generous person!

But it’s not just about giving hungry people some food. 

Currently about 13% of people on earth have the potential opportunity to study at university.  If there was no more poverty we could probably get that number closer to %100, in terms of potential opportunity anyway.

It could be 8 times as likely that a random person with a natural genius for medical science, can actually wind up getting to make a real difference in the world.

I’m going to be old someday.  The more people devising ways of keeping me alive, the better.

So in closing, I’d like you to remember this catch-phrase I’ve devised:

“Give 1 percent, you stingy, butt-faced ass-head.”