The UN has released a ‘new bold and sweeping’ plan to reduce poverty. Predictably, political and social reform are completely avoided in the document. What, then, is the plan?
The report says drastically reducing poverty in its many guises – hunger, illiteracy, disease – is “utterly affordable.” To fulfill this goal, industrial nations would need to double aid to poor countries, to one-half of 1 percent of national incomes, from one-quarter of 1 percent.
In short, more handouts and bully tactics for the countries who are doing everything right. Clearly, the way to help the poor is to give them money, which lifts them out of poverty, until they spend the money. At which time they are poor again and another UN report is released.
This is, of course, assuming that the money we give does not end up in the pockets of Kofi Annan’s son.
Also note the cashing in on the recent disaster in Indonesia, India, Thailand, etc.:
The worldwide outpouring of grief and aid since the tsunami in South Asia killed more than 150,000 people has stirred hope here that the same wellspring can be tapped for what Professor Sachs called a “silent tsunami” of global poverty that kills more than 150,000 children every month from malaria alone.
Grotesque.