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Post by maggiemiller on Oct 18, 2015 20:58:32 GMT -8
It is impossible to eliminate poverty in my opinion because there are so many people in poverty, there is no way to help them all. Although we can wish to end it, realistically it just is not possible. There is not enough resources on Earth to fulfill the needs of everyone on the planet. The population has already reached carrying capacity for the amount of resources we have, yet the population continues to grow. Maybe if the population is brought back down to carrying capacity, there will be a chance for lowering the poverty rate even more.
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Post by emilyf on Oct 18, 2015 21:00:24 GMT -8
Personally, I do not think that it is possible to end poverty. This idea is focused around our dynamic society, and the ever changing meaning of poverty. As far as society is concerned, there will always be some who make less and some who make more. Naturally we are divided into classes by the economy. Now some people may believe that poverty will end, but I do not. I think that we will always consider those who have less to be in poverty, and in our case, someone will always have less. The issue of poverty may be addressed, and may be helped,but it is too large to be conquered. To conquer poverty, we would have to conquer class divisions and the inequality within classes. So looking at it from this perspective, we will never be able to conquer poverty due to its relating factors and the ever changing definition. But I do believe that we will address poverty in a way that takes people out of it and reduces the impact that it currently has on our society.
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Post by maggiemiller on Oct 18, 2015 21:03:24 GMT -8
I agree with Elise that the only way to possibly eliminate poverty is to change our thinking about it. I never thought about poverty that way, but now that I am, I see that we set the boundaries of poverty, and if there was a way to possibly fix it or do something to help even a few people, we can because we are the ones deciding what poverty actually is.
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Post by emilyf on Oct 18, 2015 21:04:28 GMT -8
I agree with Jessica, in that poverty is related to natural divisions in society. We will never rid ourselves of poverty, because we will never rid ourselves of division. Looking at it this way makes poverty appear as a smaller problem than it is. As our population grows, so do our problems, yet they are too immense to be solved. The best we can do is remove some people poverty and look for a "solution" or way to help those who are too deep.
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Post by Jordan T on Oct 18, 2015 21:43:15 GMT -8
Unfortunately, I don't believe that it is ever realistic that poverty will be entirely eliminated as human nature confines us to at least a subtle desire for self-fortune and greed. Even if an individual doesn't desire to be a capitalistic business owner, every individual desires at least a little wealth and, even if this was untrue and only 50% of individuals did, it would still outweigh the balance and put a few individuals in poverty. The only way to eliminate poverty would be to provide everyone with an equal amount of wealth or eliminate money as a source of power and simply focus on survival as a whole. Neither of these are possible as the wealthy enjoy their life and would never give it up. Attempts to make societies where everyone had equal class and money, such as Soviet Russia, have all been tragic failures.
Many of these ideas can be taken from some of the other classes many of the juniors are currently in. In our study of poverty in AP English Composition, we have read that it is unrealistic to expect everyone to donate or help the poor as not everyone is generally good and those that are considered poor in America but still rich in a poor nation would not feel like they have any requirement to donate. As a matter of fact, it is not a requirement to donate to the poor and, because they have never met the poor kid they are helping, most do not feel the need to donate. As a result, it is unreasonable to think we can change poverty. In addition to these ideas, our readings provided the idea that people should teach the poor techniques in agriculture, fishing and other beneficial activities so that they can learn to care for themselves in the long run rather than simply donate money that will be spent quickly.
Furthermore, our AP Environmental class showed us that the Earth is far above its carrying capacity and cannot provide resources for this many people and, as with all other animals, it is likely that many people will die from this lack of resources which will balance out the population again in its negative feedback loop.
As a result, it has been clear through histories many societies that there will always be an upper class and lower class and it is virtually impossible to eliminate poverty.
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Post by Kourosh S. on Oct 18, 2015 21:50:32 GMT -8
It seems like very poorly done math to me. They quote that " $1.90 buys you less now than $1.25 did back in 2005" in more than half of all countries where the survey was done is frankly really obvious; if both figures are equivalent of the same amount in the world, then the figures must be an average and it is expected that 50% are below that average and 50% are above that. This completely throws out the idea of measuring this because they obviously could not understand their own statistics or just used them incorrectly for shock value.
Poverty also won't die out soon like they hope because developing countries still do not have the infrastructure needed to truly pull themselves out of poverty, and some areas, like deep in the Congo, are at least a hundred years behind in infrastructure and have to catch up that much to truly pull themselves out of poverty.
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Post by Maddie Barrios on Oct 18, 2015 21:53:18 GMT -8
I do not think that poverty will ever be eradicated from our world because in order to do so, people would have to be willing to give up their luxuries and riches to accommodate the less fortunate; and in reality, no one is going to just give up their plush life style for strangers. I know that sounds really harsh, but its true. The world is a selfish and competitive place. People only care about how they themselves can become better, and never worry about how they can make the world around them better. Because of this mentality that has become the norm in our world's superficial and vying society, I find the abolition of poverty to be extremely unlikely, if not impossible. To rid the world of poverty, redistribution of wealth would have to occur in order to guarantee that poverty would cease to exist. I cannot think that anyone would be willing to just hand over their fortune to be evenly distributed throughout the world for the greater good. People are too egotistical for this to successfully be applied. Poverty rates could possibly be lowered in the future, but I just don't think that poverty itself will every truly go away.
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Post by Jordan T on Oct 18, 2015 21:53:47 GMT -8
I completely agree with Emily's idea that "we will always consider those who have less to be in poverty, and in our case, someone will always have less" because it states a general idea that is often overlooked in the discussions of poverty. It seems that most people view those in poverty as anyone who is less privileged and poorer than themselves. No matter how close we get, we always consider some to be in poverty and it is unlikely that equal wages will ever be possible to avoid this as a result of a differentiation in people's talent, skill set and motivation at work. People will fight until everyone has equal money and wages but it is unachievable as there will always be an upper and lower class as a fact of society.
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Post by Kourosh S. on Oct 18, 2015 21:54:25 GMT -8
I agree with Emily, but even moreso than she does. Not everyone is equal, even though they are given "equal opportunity to succeed", due to the lottery of birth: parents, location and genetics. So even if we abolish every artificial division, there will still be that factor and that will cause some division forever until we are all identical. So no matter what there will be a marginal outperformance by some groups of people over others which will cause some imbalance we will describe as "wealth" and "poverty."
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Post by Maddie Barrios on Oct 18, 2015 22:01:06 GMT -8
I agree with Maggie when she states that "There is not enough resources on Earth to fulfill the needs of everyone on the planet. The population has already reached carrying capacity for the amount of resources we have, yet the population continues to grow. Maybe if the population is brought back down to carrying capacity, there will be a chance for lowering the poverty rate even more." The number of our population has a huge effect on poverty. Because we have already surpassed our planet's carrying capacity, there is just no way to sustainably care for every person on earth. We need to find a way to reduce our numbers if we ever plan on reducing poverty rates globally.
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Post by Collin Robins on Oct 18, 2015 22:56:52 GMT -8
I think that while there may always be poor people, there does not need to be such an extreme divide between poor and rich. Having some people make 1000x what others make in a day is ludicrous, and purely a result of selfishness. I think all the world needs is for everyone to feel obligated to help out.
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Post by Collin Robins on Oct 18, 2015 22:59:13 GMT -8
I disagree with everyone saying that the earth simply can't support the amount of people on it currently. Many people have much more money than they will ever be able to spend in their lifetime, while others starve in the streets. If the wealth was redistributed, then everyone would have enough.
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Post by savannahsmith on Oct 21, 2015 20:35:09 GMT -8
When we "eliminate poverty" a new type of poverty will pop up (as previously stated by Mr. Tumminelli) because one group will always be better off than another. Not only is this natural for a certain peoples to be wealthier of more comfortable than others, but it is also a human tendency: everyone wants to feel better than others. So sad.
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Post by savannahsmith on Oct 21, 2015 20:40:53 GMT -8
Everything that Jordan said was what I thought, my prose just isn't strong enough (at the moment) to articulate that. However, one note, what he said about the world not being able to sustain this many people anyway's was very cruel. It is also very true. Maybe poverty is "survival of the fittest" for our species. As awful as that sounds, from a scientific point of view in the very distant future it is likely that that will be considered one of the limiting factors/regulators of human population: poverty and war.
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Post by diegoletamendi on Oct 25, 2015 20:18:54 GMT -8
Poverty cannot be eliminated in our current society. Our current social structure makes it so that there will always be an upper-class and a lower-class. So while the living conditions of the lower-class could theoretically improve, that just means that the poverty line would get bigger. There would always still have to be someone in poverty. Another problem with eliminating poverty is that there is simply not enough resources to go around in our world. The earth is not infinite, and currently we are facing a big problem of over-population.
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