Over 50% of Americans who file for bankruptcy do so because
of medical expenses. 75% of those families had medical insurance when their medical
problem was discovered. So, we have medical providers' price gouging to thank
for the majority of credit default in America. The medical industry has gotten
out of hand and is destroying middle income America.
1 out of 6 in the world are in poverty.
In 1970, the wealthiest countries contributed .7% of their Gross
National Product to developing third world countries. In 2000, it was .2%.
33% of those in developing countries don't have clean drinking
water.- UNDP factoid
Diarrhea kills as many as 3 million children under the age of
5 worldwide every year and sickens millions more, mostly in developing countries.
excerpts
from War on Poverty Declared, Never Fought
"...
child poverty is significantly higher in the United States than in wealthy European
nations and in Canada and Australia.
"In
1997 - amid a robust economy - 1 in 5 American children lived in poverty. This
is about double the rate in other wealthy industrialized nations such as France,
Germany and the Nordic countries."
"The
truth is that America tolerates, even accepts, persistent child poverty. Our education
system reflects it, as do our tax policy, child care policy and child support
policy."
"Poor children in France,
Germany and the Nordic countries are 6 times more likely to escape poverty than
their American counterparts.
Fully 1/3rd of
children of single mothers in the United States are not just poor but extremely
poor."
"Decades of economic growth
haven't lifted the worst-off Americans to a higher standard of living. 10% of
America's children are so improverished that their normal health and growth are
seriously at risk."
- by Timothy Smeeding,
01/03/04 The Washington Post, co-author of "Poor Kids in a Rich Country:
America's Children in Comparative Perspective", and director of the Luxembourg
Income Study, a project that assembes income data from a number of countries.
Debt forgiveness gathers steam
Wealthy
nations will discuss absolving poor countries of loan payments at Friday's G-7
summit in Washington. by Abraham McLaughlin,
The Christian Science Monitor, 9/30/04
JOHANNESBURG,
SOUTH AFRICA –It's an idea that's been throbbing
in the hearts and minds of liberal activists, antiglobalization campaigners, and
rock star Bono for years: Canceling 100 percent of the massive foreign debts owed
by the world's poorest countries, thus freeing them to spend millions on healthcare,
education, and other poverty-busting plans, rather than just on interest payments
for their massive loans.
But it's rarely had
much serious political support. Until now. Suddenly both the Bush administration
and British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government are behind the idea. And it's
on the agenda as G-7 finance ministers meet Friday in Washington.
The
Bush team's interest seems to have grown out of its campaign to cancel Iraq's
$120 billion debt. If oil-rich Iraq deserves to be freed from its burden, the
argument goes, so do the world's poorest nations. Also, backing a plan to help
impoverished millions in a single stroke fits with President Bush's "compassionate
conservative" agenda, and could impress swing voters in time for the election.
Observers
don't expect a final plan to emerge immediately. But there's widespread agreement
that the growing momentum means some form of unprecedented action is inevitable.
"This
is the farthest we've come toward 100 percent debt cancelation," says Salih
Booker, head of Africa Action, a Washington advocacy group involved in the fight
against apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s.
By
backing the idea, the US and British governments have changed the terms and momentum
of the debate. For one thing, after long discounting it, the US now supports the
doctrine of "odious debt" - that nations shouldn't have to repay debts
incurred by deposed despots who didn't have popular support.
It's
an argument Mr. Booker and others have used for years. "When a tyrant goes,
his debt should go with him," Booker says, arguing that the notion applies
as much to Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire (now Congo) and Gen. Sani Abacha in Nigeria,
as it does to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. (The Congo now has $9.3 billion in debt;
Nigeria, $30 billion.)
The 30 or so poorest
nations - most of them in Africa - have a total of roughly $200 billion in debt.
The movement to cancel it has been gathering steam of late. This week, for instance,
Britain announced a unilateral plan to cancel $180 million of poor-country debt
per year. And the 1996 Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative, under
which rich nations have agreed to cancel $110 billion in debt, has so far gotten
rid of about $31 billion of debt in 27 countries.
Backers
point to major impacts of the HIPC program in poor countries. Tanzania, for instance,
used the money that otherwise would have gone to service its debt - about $80
million a year - to boost education spending and eliminate school fees. Some 1.6
million children have returned to school, according to DATA, the debt-relief group
founded by U2's Bono.
But some worry that 100-percent
cancelation could spark a welfare-like dependency among poor nations. "It
would certainly have an enormous short- term impact," says Harry Zarenda,
an economist at Witwatersrand University here. "But what's worrying is the
establishment of a precedent - that countries would expect the debt to always
be written off."
It would also be unfair
to less-indebted nations, observers say. And it won't necessarily solve the problem.
All around Africa, governments rely on foreign donors to supply big chunks - sometimes
two-thirds or more - of their annual budgets. Canceling their debt wouldn't likely
staunch that demand.
And then there's the sticky
question of how to pay for it. That's what the ministers from the US, Britain,
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan will debate starting Friday.
As
British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown sees it, it's as easy as a little
accounting change by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Washington-based
organization that's bankrolled by rich countries and facilitates poor-country
loans. The IMF has one of the largest stashes of gold in the world, some 103 million
ounces. It currently values this gold at the 1971 price of $40 per ounce. But
today's market value is about $400 per ounce. Revaluing the gold and selling a
portion of it would give the IMF an extra $42 billion to work with, according
to its website.
As for the rest of the needed
funds, Britain advocates that rich nations step up unilaterally - as it has -
to fill the gap.
That's where it's currently
at odds with the US, which prefers that the IMF use its own funds - including
money coming in from loan repayments - to fund the cancelation. "The Bush
administration is quite keen on multilateral solutions when it comes to spending
money on poor nations," notes John Williamson, a senior fellow at the Institute
for International Economics in Washington. Critics, including Europeans, worry
that this will eventually impoverish the IMF and impair its future ability to
help poor nations.
The Bush team is reportedly
also pushing for all future IMF money to be given out in the form of grants, not
loans. This would, the logic goes, mean poor countries wouldn't have to worry
about loan repayment. But Europeans are resisting the idea, because over the long
term it risks shrinking the IMF's ability to give out funds. If it doesn't have
loan money being repaid, it won't have money to give.
Regardless
of what form it takes - and who pays for it - most observers figure some form
of major debt cancelation is coming. Britain is expected to champion the cause
when it assumes the presidency of the G-7 in 2005. And with an Iraq-debt deal
still being worked out, the US is likely to continue pushing for poor-nation debt
action, too.
Given how debt is dragging down
poor nations' poverty-fighting efforts, and how much political will is behind
cancelation now, Mr. Williamson says: "Something extra will have to be done."
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - The
world's 48 poorest countries are failing to benefit from free trade and globalization
and face worsening poverty, inequality and marginalization, a U.N. report said
Sunday.
Economic production
has declined for three straight years in the least-developed countries while their
share of global trade has plunged, said the report issued by the U.N. Conference
on Trade and Development.
"There
is no greater challenge facing the international community today than integrating
the least developed countries into the world economy," said UNCTAD Deputy
Secretary-General Carlos Fortin. "They are being increasingly marginalized."
Since
1971, the number of countries categorized by the United Nations as extremely poor
has risen from 25 to 48. During that period, only one country, Botswana, has graduated
from the list.
Thirty-three
of the poorest nations are in Africa, nine in Asia, five in the Pacific and one
in Latin America.
The report,
released at an UNCTAD meeting in Bangkok, said rich countries should remove all
tariffs and quotas on products from the poorest countries to allow them to sell
more.
Developing countries have
complained that trade agreements negotiated by the World Trade Organization have
cut tariffs on many products exported by rich nations, while failing to address
agriculture, textiles and garments - key products for poorer countries.
The
report also urged donor countries to provide more aid to enable poor countries
to produce more so they can benefit from free trade.
"The main problem
of the least developed countries today is they don't produce enough," Fortin
said.
In real terms, aid provided
to the least-developed countries has fallen by 23 percent in the past decade,
the report said.
Unlike wealthier
developing countries, the poorest nations are generally unable to turn to private
investment for capital, and attract less than 1 percent of all foreign direct
investment, the report said.
Hunger Persists in America
by
Robin Estrin, January 20, 2000
BOSTON (AP) - In
these times of low unemployment and overnight stock market fortunes, 30 million
Americans worry about where they will get their next meals, according to a new
study.
The number of Americans
who go hungry has held steady for the last four years, despite unprecedented economic
growth, the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Tufts University found.
"I think people assume that the rising tide lifts all boats and, in fact,
at the lowest end of the spectrum, there are as many hungry people as ever,"
said Deborah Leff, president of America's Second Harvest, a Chicago-based agency
that delivers 1 billion pounds of food to food banks annually.
The Tufts study is billed as the most comprehensive analysis of domestic hunger
since welfare was overhauled in 1996. Researchers pulled together federal and
state estimates on hunger, along with reports from food banks and shelters, to
provide a detailed picture of hunger and so-called "food insecurity"
- the fear that there won't be enough to eat.
America is now in the longest economic expansion since the Vietnam War. The stock
market is soaring. The national unemployment rate of 4.1 percent is the lowest
in 30 years.
Yet, the study
found that nearly one in six children lives in a household where meals are an
endless concern. Some families face a harsh choice: heat the home or feed the
children.
"We're constantly
hearing these great economic forecasts," said Ashley Sullivan, a co-author
of the Tufts report, which was to be released Thursday.
"It
seems like one wouldn't expect to see the persistence of hunger and food insecurity
in a society that has such wealth and low unemployment," Sullivan said.
The Tufts study makes several recommendations to Congress, including:
- Ensure that those eligible for food stamps receive them.
- Increase
the allowable assets for food stamp eligibility so a family can own a car and
still get necessary government food assistance.
- Create savings incentives
to provide financial safety nets for the working poor.
How technology can feed the poor
by
Michael Fitzgerald, ZDNet News, October 14, 1999
Can
you feed people through the Internet?
Maybe not directly, but in the
wake of last weekend's NetAid concert, which aimed to fight world hunger, Hewlett-Packard
Co. (NYSE:HWP) is trying to make its e-services concept work to help feed the
millions of Americans who go hungry every day.
HP will team with America's
Second Harvest, the largest operator of food banks, to put together a Web site
called ResourceLink to make it easier for companies to deliver surplus food or
donate, then do dynamic supply, demand and transport linking.
"There's
a misconception in America about hunger," said Deborah Leff, president and
CEO of America's Second Harvest, which runs 189 food banks, with operations in
every state and Puerto Rico. "We think about a stock market over 10,000 and
unprecedented prosperity and that there can't be hunger. But we don't have enough
food currently available in our food banks to fulfill that need.
"Even
though we're distributing one billion pounds of food and reaching 26 million Americans,
we still are turning people away," she said.
35M hungry Americans
The issue is huge. Some 35 million Americans go hungry each day. At the same time,
91 billion pounds of food wind up in landfills every year. ResourceLink aims to
change that.
ResourceLink is meant to complement -- and perhaps ultimately
replace -- a paper, phone and fax system currently used to get extra food distributed.
Also participating are the National Transportation Exchange, which is an online
transportation trading exchange based in Downer's Grove, Ill.; and Cyber Surplus,
which has a matching-and-alert technology for food manufacturers.
HP
has a history of philanthropy, but the company acknowledges that the move makes
good business sense, too.
"This is a very clear, simple, easy way
to demonstrate the power of our e-services vision and the underlying technology
that makes it happen," said Madge Whistler, general manager for e-services
at HP.
Year-long project Whistler said that HP personnel had been working
on the site, which went live Thursday, for nearly a year, and that the company
had invested perhaps a couple of million dollars in building the portal, a figure
she termed surprisingly small.
"A lot of the pieces were already
here. This is about forming the connections," she said. "The pieces
have been here and the humanitarian efforts have been here and this should make
it much easier."
HP will continue to manage the portal on an ongoing
basis. Within 60 days, it should deploy its e-speak dynamic brokering technology
to improve the efficiency of getting items delivered.
If it works, it
could transform the way national nonprofits distribute goods.
Said Leff:
"Nonprofits frequently do not realize what benefits technology can bring
in terms of meeting their vision."
Million pounds promised She said
that ResourceLink already had a million pounds of food promised, but she wouldn't
predict how much more food the organization would be able to distribute using
the new system.
"The fact that we have a million pounds already
gives us a sense of its promise," she said "But we think it's going
to dramatically improve the amount of food available. This is going to transform
the way hungry people get food."
IMF Said Ill-Equipped To Tackle Poverty
by
Mark Egan, Sept 24, 1999
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
International Monetary Fund is ill-equipped to deal with world poverty and should
be cut down to size to end its stranglehold on poor nations, critics of the lending
body said Friday.
The criticisms by charities and recipient countries
came ahead of next week's annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank.
Aid agency Oxfam said the IMF has worsened poverty problems in Africa and that
its "one-size-fits-all policies" employed after the recent financial
crisis in Asia plunged millions more into desperate poverty.
African
finance ministers called for more input into their own development policies and
said they would like to see radical reform of the fund's much maligned low-interest
loan program -- the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility.
Critics
have long maintained that the IMF uses ESAF to foist overly restrictive economic
policies on poor countries at the expense of social spending such as education
and health. They also say ESAF puts the IMF in the business of development economics,
an area where it does not belong.
In preparatory meetings this week,
the IMF went to great lengths to show a softer, more caring approach to economics,
with more focus on poverty and a revamp of ESAF. Managing Director Michel Camdessus
defended ESAF earlier this week saying, "it will be much more and better
centered on social issues, better linked to debt reduction, and, we believe, more
efficient in promoting high-quality growth."
On the agenda of the
annual meetings are exactly how to pay for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries
Initiative which will cut the debts of the world's poorest nations and is the
cornerstone of the fund's poverty reduction plans.
The $27.4 billion
scheme was agreed by the Group of Seven industrial nation in Cologne, Germany
earlier this year. Critics have said the debts of the poorest nations should be
wiped out -- which would double the cost of the scheme.
Oxfam's Kevin
Watkins kicked off the charity's news conference in a church across the street
from the IMF by holding up a box of "IMF pills." He joked that the charity
was planning to "Sell these pills to finance HIPC debt relief which has taken
a very long time."
The "pills" were labeled "IMF
-- Bitter Economic Medicine for the Third World -- Do Not Expose to Reality."
"We believe that the IMF has fundamentally failed," said Watkins."
It has failed in its ESAF program in low income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa,
and elsewhere, and it has failed in East Asia," Watkins said.
In
a report called "The IMF: wrong diagnosis, wrong medicine", Oxfam suggested
that the IMF be removed from development economics completely.
Watkins
said poor nations should develop their own economic and poverty reduction strategies
in conjunction with the World Bank and others and that the IMF should merely advise
on the monetary alternatives available to implement the plan.
Benin's
Minister of Finance, Bio Tchane, tempered his criticism of the fund, noting that
he was also an IMF governor. Nevertheless, he said he would welcome reform of
ESAF, given "intolerable" poverty in his country.
"The
Africans have been asking for a total cancellation of debt for a long time,"
Tchane said, adding that HIPC initiative was at least a start toward that goal.
"Of course we would hope that greater levels of funds be freed up (for
debt relief,) of course we would hope that ESAF could be really revamped so we
would be able to truly attack poverty," he said.
"Our wish
list is one thing, reality is another. We're not asking for money to reward laziness
or to subsidize laggardly activity of a country, we are asking for the minimum
necessary to do what we have to do."
Tchane's sentiment was echoed
by finance ministers from Chad and the Ivory Coast, who said the most important
thing was that governments be responsible for formulating their own strategies.
Cancel the Debt of the World's Poorest Nations
A
billion people are trapped in poverty that they can do nothing about and trapped
under a mountain of debt they can never pay back. Rich nations take back $3 in
debt repayments for every $1 given in aid. Debt relief by the Year 2000 could
save the lives of 21 million children.(Human Development
Report UNDP 1997)
Celebrate the millennium
by cancelling the unpayable debts of the world's poorest countries. The rainforests
are being destroyed to provide timber to earn foreign currency to pay back debts.
Over 500,000 children die each year due to cutbacks to health services. 95% of
debts owed to Britain are for loans used to promote British trade, especially
arms.
In America, 54% of whites own stock, while 19% of blacks own
stock.
Cancel the Debt of the World's Poorest Nations
