Global Poverty and Solutions- Extreme Poverty

8/2/09
This week we identified our current goal as ending extreme poverty, rather than ending poverty altogether. Trying to fight poverty itself is likely to be unsuccessful, but eliminating extreme poverty, in which people live on less than a dollar a day, should help greatly improve the standard quality of life around the world. We also revisited our discussion about misconceptions, concluding that not all of the issues related to poverty can be linked to one thing, such as the type of government that controls a country. For example, one popular thought seems to have been that if a developing country is made into a democracy, poverty in that country will be eliminated. This has proven to be false, as poverty leads to poor governance instead of poor governance leading to poverty. It is also important for developed nations to trust that developing countries are not too corrupt to put money to good use. Now that I have become more aware of misconceptions like these, I realize that it is my responsibility to make sure that I avoid them and keep a more open mind about the state of the world and how it might be able to improve.