I learned many things about poverty from this documentary Poverty, Inc. It makes sense what they said, and echos what President Bill Clinton once said. “Welfare is a hand up, not a hand out.”
Remarkably we have fewer people in welfare in the US and less poverty worldwide than we used to. It is one of the ways in which the world is improving.
It is a touching documentary that talks about the situation from a detailed and reasonable point of view. I didn’t realize many things like the negative roles that NGO’s have in the economic growth of a country. Like many things in the US, we take something that was once helpful and stretch it out far more than it should be.
I had seen and read other documentaries about how the IMF and other organizations often worked against 3rd world countries. There are many ways in which poverty continues, not only economic reasons but also legal and cultural ones. For example the “rule of law” which contributes to poverty in the US also contributes to it in other places as well.
I have touched on income inequality before in this website. However I have to bring it up again because the US was warned by the IMF about poverty in the US. It is great that we are concerned about poverty in the world. We should always be concerned about the plight of mankind. It is just interesting is it not that we have a huge issue at home that we haven’t solved our-self. Yet we think we can go to another country and more money will fix it.
It is strange isn’t it? Republicans say that a free market capitalism is the best way to help people grow more prosperous. Yet the crash of 2008 was the result of deregulation that both parties helped to create. We demand that we have free market in the US, but when we go to another country like Haiti we dump rice on them that is subsided/reduced tariffs and doesn’t allow them a free market. Why is a free market good for us, and terrible for other people? It seems like we only do what is financially convenient, just what we get mad at China for.
We get mad at China for dumping steel below the price that the market says is reasonable to sell it for. Yet the US has done this for years with various products like rice in Haiti, or used clothing to third-world countries. Isn’t it interesting that we condemn other countries for things we do ourselves?
We choose to keep people in poverty because those in power don’t wish to share their wealth. One day this might change, but until it does, lets not pretend we are the hero solving the problem. We are more of a villain in contributing to poverty.
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