If We Are Serious About Ending Poverty

[Orwellian_Ghost]

"If we are serious about ending poverty, we have to be serious about ending the systems that create poverty by robbing the poor of their common wealth, livelihoods and incomes. Before we can make poverty history, we need to get the history of poverty right."

"It’s not about how much wealthy nations can give, so much as how much less they can take."

- Vandana Shiva



"A system like the economic growth model we know today creates trillions of dollars of super profits for corporations while condemning billions of people to poverty. Poverty is not, as Sachs suggests, an initial state of human progress from which to escape. It is a final state people fall into when one-sided development destroys the ecological and social systems that have maintained the life, health and sustenance of people and the planet for ages."

"The reality is that people do not die for lack of income. They die for lack of access to the wealth of the commons."

- Vandana Shiva

[blindpig]

1. Well, that puts it all on it's head, doesn't it?

Capitalism does not raise people out of poverty, it drives them into it.

K&R

[Octafish]

2. For every wolf, a flock of sheep.

Or, for the "Zen minded" suits:

You must have many losers for one winner to appear.

Great post, Orwellian_Ghost.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

4. Here's a very short essay from Vandana Shiva

from which the quotes were taken.

Two myths that keep the world poor
http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/28/two_myths_that_keep_the_world_poor/

[TBF]

6. Excellent article, thank you ... K&R n/t

[malaise]

7. Thanks for that essay

K & R

[Octafish]

8. The poor are not those who have been 'left behind'; they are the ones who have been robbed.

From your reference in Ode Magazine online, Truth:

This is a totally false history of poverty. The poor are not those who have been “left behind”; they are the ones who have been robbed.

We need to make a new world. Now.

When are we getting a little help, my Friend?

[ljm2002]

3. Great post!

Vandana Shiva is a real hero of our generation, here's hoping that many, many more people become exposed to her ideas.

[blindpig]

5. kick n/t

[leftstreet]

9. K&R

[Luminous Animal]

10. Greeat post!

A few moments ago I was going to start a new topic asking people here, as Democrats, what they would be willing to give up for both the health of the planet and society. I see a lot of lip service but without concrete action. Any suggestion of going without what Madison Avenue has conditioned us to believe we need is met by defensiveness and derision driven by the now ingrained notion of American exceptionalism.

[baldguy]

11. And its not like this isn't something everyone knows already.

We just have to stop blaming poverty on the poor.

[TBF]

12. The poor make an easy scapegoat, don't they?

If we stop blaming people for not being good enough, or smart enough, we might actually have to confront the reality of what capitalism does to us. And that would burst the bubble of dreams.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

13. Too true friend