http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty.asp
by Anup Shah
Poverty is the state for the majority of the world’s people and nations. Why is this? Is it enough to blame poor people for their own predicament? Have they been lazy, made poor decisions, and been solely responsible for their plight? What about their government? Have they pursued policies that actually harm successful development? Such causes of poverty and inequality are no doubt real. But often less discussed are deeper and more global causes of poverty.
Behind the increasing interconnectedness promised by globalization, are global decisions, policies, and practices. These are typically influenced, driven, or formulated by the rich and powerful. These can be leaders of rich countries or other global actors such as multinational corporations, institutions, and influential people.
In the face of such enormous external influence, the governments of poor nations and their people are often powerless. As a result, in the global context, a few get wealthy while the majority struggle.
These next few articles and sections explore various poverty issues in more depth:
Structural Adjustment—a Major Cause of Poverty
Cutbacks in health, education and other vital social services around the world have resulted from International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank-prescribed structural adjustment policies as condition for loans and repayment. In addition, developing nation governments are required to open their economies to compete with each other and with more powerful and established industrialized nations. To attract investment, poor countries enter a spiraling race to the bottom to see who can provide lower standards, reduced wages and cheaper resources. This has increased poverty and inequality for most people. It also forms a backbone to what we today call globalization. As a result, it maintains the historic unequal rules of trade. Read article: Structural Adjustment—a Major Cause of Poverty
Poverty Around The World
Inequality is increasing around the world while the world appears to globalize. Even the wealthiest nation has the largest gap between rich and poor compared to other developed nations. In many cases, international politics and various interests have led to a diversion of available resources from domestic needs to western markets. Historically, politics and power play by the elite leaders and rulers have increased poverty and dependency. These have often manifested themselves in wars, hot and cold, which have often been trade and resource-related. Mercantilist practices, while presented as free trade, still happen today. Poverty is therefore not just an economic issue, it is also an issue of political economics.
My View
From the above article i cannot help but agree with the author. Poverty is indeed a major issue in this world. It is prevailant everywhere, be it in a developing nation, or in a wealthy nation, poverty exists. Throughout the years, the situation has yet to improve much although steps have been taken to improve it. It is not an easy problem to deal with in the first place.
What causes poverty? It is difficult to explain but there are many factors which cause it. Factors such as work attitude of people, their qualifications, governments and basically which country they live in.
I believe that the government plays acrucial role. They are the ones that represent the people and the nation and are the ones that reach out to other parts of the world. i am sure that governments from all nations wish to eradicate poverty but it seems to me that it is impossible. To have a nation without poverty is almost comparable to Utopia, which in this case, imposssible to achieve. From the article, the world is driven by globalization and decisions, policies and pratices are influenced by the rich and powerful. Naturally, rich and powerful people decides what is best for people like them and not what is best for the world. In this case, the poor people may have been neglected. Like what the author said, in the face of such enormous influence, governments of poor nations and their people are often powerless. In order to attract investment, poor countries enter a spiraling race to the bottom to see who can provide lower standards, reduced wages and cheaper resources. This has increased poverty and inequality for most people.
Thinking about it, i cannot help but ask myself whether the steps taken to eliminate poverty are really "steps" to improve the situation or do they have the opposite effect which lead to social polarisation. Take a look at our home nation, it is quite obvious that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting no where at all and the middle-class seldom make it rich. Is it because the society is too demanding and the inequality of jobs too far apart? For example the salary of a cleaner as compared to a doctor. Both salaries have great differences. Why? All because one has a higher qualification than the other. So is qualification the real reason behind poverty? Maybe yes, maybe no. Again there are many factors which may lead to poverty.
To conclude, i must say i have no idea how this problem can be solved. It can be minimised but that would depend a lot on the nation's willingness to improve it. As i had earlier said, poverty prevails in a society and cannot be removed. To remove it would be Utopia.
