Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Capitalism is Great

Bill Gates has said there will be “almost no poor countries by 2035”, and that child mortality rates in the poorest nations will plummet to the same levels as in the US and UK in 1980. Gates is not saying poverty and inequality will disappear.

"By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been," he wrote in the letter. "People are living longer, healthier lives. Many nations that were aid recipients are now self-sufficient."

Countries once considered poor, such as China, India, Brazil and even Botswana, now have growing economies, he says. "Most countries have moved into a category I call 'middle income,'" he said.
In Africa more broadly, life expectancy has risen since the 1960s despite the HIV epidemic.
More children are going to school and fewer people are hungry and where health conditions have improved, birth-rates have declined, the letter states.

"This gradual progress of less children dying, of economies - even in Africa - getting richer and richer, it's not clear when somebody is supposed to learn that because it's not really a standard headline."

 The philanthropist claims about 70 per cent of countries will have a higher per-person income by 2035 than China does now. Nine out of 10 countries will have average income levels above today's average income in India, he says.

Poverty will continue, says Gates. He says inequality will continue in every region.

Its all a matter of statistics

At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening. The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. Rural areas account for three in every four people living on less than US$1 a day and a similar share of the world population suffering from malnutrition. However, urbanization is not synonymous with human progress. Urban slum growth is outpacing urban growth by a wide margin.  In 2005, one out of three urban dwellers (approximately 1 billion people) was living in slum conditions.

Number of children in the world
2.2 billion
Number in poverty
1 billion (every second child)
According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. Around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The two regions that account for the bulk of the deficit are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Worldwide, 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy)1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. Worldwide, 2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized 15 million children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS (similar to the total children population in Germany or United Kingdom)

 If current trends continue, the Millennium Development Goals target of halving the proportion of underweight children will be missed by 30 million children, largely because of slow progress in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there are:
640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)
400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)
270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)

 72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not in school in 2005, the total is 121 million out of education; 57 per cent of them were girls. And these are regarded as optimistic numbers. Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.

An estimated 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, with 3 million deaths in 2004. Every year there are 350–500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80 percent of malaria victims worldwide.

Water problems affect half of humanity:
1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.
Almost two in three people lacking access to clean water survive on less than $2 a day, with one in three living on less than $1 a day.
More than 660 million people without sanitation live on less than $2 a day, and more than 385 million on less than $1 a day.
Access to piped water into the household averages about 85% for the wealthiest 20% of the population, compared with 25% for the poorest 20%.
1.8 billion people who have access to a water source within 1 kilometre, but not in their house or yard, consume around 20 litres per day. In the United Kingdom the average person uses more than 50 litres of water a day flushing toilets (where average daily water usage is about 150 liters a day. The highest average water use in the world is in the US, at 600 liters day.)
Some 1.8 million child deaths each year as a result of diarrhoea
The loss of 443 million school days each year from water-related illness.
Close to half of all people in developing countries suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits.
Millions of women spending several hours a day collecting water.

For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment. The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money.

SOYMB could go on...such as pointing out that Gates ignores a trend  shows the distance between the richest and poorest countries was about:

3 to 1 in 1820
11 to 1 in 1913
35 to 1 in 1950
44 to 1 in 1973
72 to 1 in 1992

For economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the last 20 years [of the current form of globalization, from 1980 - 2000] have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with the previous two decades [1960 - 1980]. For each indicator, countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980). Among the findings:

Growth: The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced and across the board for all groups or countries.
Life Expectancy: Progress in life expectancy was also reduced for 4 out of the 5 groups of countries, with the exception of the highest group (life expectancy 69-76 years).
Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant mortality was also considerably slower during the period of globalization (1980-1998) than over the previous two decades.
Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed during the period of globalization.

See more here

Gates certainly has his work cut out. But let us give him his due. He did point out that when more children survive parents have smaller families.
"The planet does not thrive when the sickest are allowed to die off, but rather when they are able to improve their lives," she says. "Human beings are not machines. We don't reproduce mindlessly. We make decisions based on the circumstances we face." his wife Melinda explained

Gates argued against claims that foreign aid is wasteful because it is stolen by corrupt officials explaining four of the past seven governors of Illinois have gone to prison for corruption, and  no one has demanded that Illinois schools be shut down or its highways closed to stop corrupt officials.

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