Those who have already read Bankrupting the Third World, our sixth book in The Underground Knowledge Series, will have picked up on the fact we believe world poverty can be fixed – and fixed quickly.
Just one of many starving children in war-torn Syria right now.
Here’s an excerpt from the book, which, hopefully, clarifies why we are so confident there is a quick fix for world poverty:
Some of you may be doubting our sanity about now. At the very least, you’ll be thinking we are underestimating the task at hand, and that poverty’s far too big a challenge to solve any time soon.
But consider this for a moment: the United Nations Development Program estimated in 1998 that it would only cost an additional US$40 billion above current aid payments at the time to completely eradicate poverty as we know it. This figure was broken down as per the following necessary (US dollar) payments: $13 billion extra for every person on Earth to have enough food as well as access to basic health care; an additional $12 billion to cover reproductive health for all women worldwide; $6 billion extra to provide basic education for all; and an additional $9 billion to provide clean water and sanitation for every man, woman and child on the planet.
Now that $40 billion figure was in 1998 dollars, of course, and the world’s biggest problems have arguably gotten worse since then. So let’s allow for inflation and let’s also assume the UN underestimated the amount required.
Let’s say $200 billion dollars, or five times what the UN estimated, is needed over and above current aid payments. To our eyes, that seems a small price to pay for what would undoubtedly be the greatest moment in human history.
Two hundred billion is also a fraction of the cost governments of major nations like China, the US, Russia and the UK each spend on their annual military budgets. By some estimates, the Afghanistan conflict alone has cost America more than a trillion dollars, with all wars since 9/11 said to have cost America several trillion dollars.
Unfortunately, waging wars is clearly a far bigger priority than ending poverty.
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“About 21,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every four seconds … Sadly, it is children who die most often. Yet there is plenty of food in the world for everyone. The problem is that hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. They lack the money to buy enough food to nourish themselves. Being constantly malnourished, they become weaker and often sick. This makes them increasingly less able to work, which then makes them even poorer and hungrier. This downward spiral often continues until death for them and their families.” –Official statement on the poverty.com website as at February 2014
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T.B.C
BANKRUPTING THE THIRD WORLD: How the Global Elite Drown Poor Nations in a Sea of Debt is available exclusively via Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/BANKRUPTING-THE-THIRD-WORLD-Underground-ebook/dp/B0176UHWH0/
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Morcan Books & Films 