Because the technological revolution has brought a new standard of wealth, health and comfort to the people’s of First World countries. Never in history has a generation differed as greatly from those of the past.

It “has created a crisis of sustainability as our propensity to consume exceeds our capacity to conserve diversity and control wastes; removing national barriers has exposed poor and ill-equipped Peoples to the threats as well as the benefits of free trade and competitive markets; globalizing communications has reduced cultural diversity and exposed everyone to the temptations of an often materialistic and trivial international media industry.”

The problems seem overwhelming. Why? It’s not Rocket Science.

People reach a point in which they believe that money should be obtained
regardless of the cost. We would be lead to believe that we live in an “enlightened society” by our worlds leaders, but the truth remains that poverty, hunger and human misery remain very much evident in society today.

The gap between the rich and the poor is widening and will keep widening because more and more middle class society is forced into the lower class and in turn creating more poverty.

In order to eliminate any of these issues we must redefine what we believe is an enlightened society.

The development discourse and practice has been based on a rational approach that assumes that economic growth benefits all society, reducing both poverty and inequality is not working nor will it ever work because of greed.

It seems bizarre, that we, modern, intelligent people, have not yet succeeded to get rid of the differences between DCs (developed countries) and LDCs (less developed countries).  We have not been able to counter rich-countries’ biased trade policies. The Western framework of democratic institutions that has given support, and meaning, to economic liberalism and therefore to “fair dealing” has itself been called into question. Growth with inequality is an explosive mixture, one in which the very rich and the very poor live side by side in large urban centers. This fuels many forms of social conflicts creating a vacuum of meaning in Western democratic institutions.

The contradiction between rich nations’ development aid intentions and their actual trade practices has a negative result among LDC populations. A country’s commercial practice, like its culture, can be, rightly or wrongly, identified with its people’s beliefs. In developing countries, it’s more about having access to what we would consider basic necessities, such as indoor plumbing and running water, food, clothes, and maybe even electricity.

A person who does not have a lot of money cannot live in an upper class neighborhood because their economic status deems them unfit for that neighborhood. There are very few choices that the lower class has thus, there are more people living in poverty and more “middle class” society being forced to live in poverty. All around us we see people segregated by class. From the cars we drive to newspapers we read, there are noticeable differences.

There is a wealth of opinions and viewpoints but no one perfect solution, with a sharp increase in violence during the last decade of ever-increasing globalization. Wealth isn’t just about money or status income inequality is the main division. The power of the rich over the majority of the poor.

The use of that power in relation to globalization: within the unstable political and economic setting of LDCs, inside information is vital for international businessmen. Those who hold economic, political and/or informational power in LDCs are in a position to channel investment and/or development where they want. The overall result is an even larger imbalance of power, which restrains fair negotiation and conflict transformation/resolution practices.

We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas. The old imperialism — exploitation for foreign profit — has no place in our plans. What we envisage is a program of development based on the concepts of democratic fair dealing.

While the existence of such a divide is unquestionable, its origins, structure, and consequences are not. Could one, for example, securely say that income gaps lead to conflict? It could be argued, that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacks on what the perpetrators’ identified as symbols of the main source of LDCs’ growing poverty and inequality:

To some extent, local-scale rich-poor conflicts mirror the conflicts between LDCs and the rich nations. Is it possible to relate intractability to this divide?

Poverty has been approached in both absolute and relative terms. “Absolute poverty” is a measurable quantity referring to a lack of the basic resources needed to maintain a minimum of physical health, normally calculated in calories or nutritional levels. “Relative poverty” has a qualitative dimension. It refers to general standards of living in different societies, taking into account culturally sensitive interpretations of poverty, and variations between and within societies over time.

For those concerned with social policies and economic growth, inequality is normally interpreted as lack of equality of condition, that is lack of achievement of any given welfare indicator (e.g. income, consumption) or any valuable attribute of a population.

The reduction of poverty levels within any given society may not imply a reduction of inequality, because all classes in society may benefit simultaneously from economic growth, keeping the same proportion among them.  While it seems clear that inequality is undesirable, there is a great deal of debate over the desirability of total equality. One debate over equality questions is the meaning and value of concepts such as class, status, power, and authority. These cannot, it is argued, be completely equalized without suppressing other values such as personal freedom and individualism.

Welfare: It has a much broader meaning, referring to the general state of well-being that an “entity” enjoys. Here, “entity” can be taken as a person or as a state, thus one can speak in terms of “personal well-being” or “welfare of the state.”

The larger the difference in income between a country’s rich and poor, the larger the inequality. Inequality is likely to obstruct the rate and quality of economic growth.

Recent events in France (mostly caused by a pre-conditioned belief of each other) is a wake up call not to the suppression of freedom but to the Inequality of opportunity that exist in the world to develop. How can democracy really exist in a country where most of us do not participate in the decision-making where we spend so much of our lives? If workers can’t democratically control their economic lives, are they really free?

Here in the EU the dairy sector receives subsidies of around $16 billion $2 per day per cow, while equivalent to more than Half the world’s people live on less than this amount.

As I have said it’s not rocket Science we must Cap Greed to contribute to all.

 

“There is no democracy in  form of Capitalism.”

( SEE Previous Posts)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the age of globalization, the gap between high and low income countries is not only persisting, but in many cases it is widening,