this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
286 points (90.6% liked)
shitprop
71 readers
121 users here now
founded 4 days ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There are ~700 million people living in poverty according to Google.
The total combined wealth of the top 1% is ~43 trillion according to Google.
That comes out to ~61k per person.
So while that would be life changing money for a lot of people it certainly wouldn't magically fix everyone's situation.
As for the food but we have produced more than we needed globally for awhile now. It's really more of an issue of logistics. The places where food is the biggest issue tend to be fairly remote meaning that even with money there isn't always an easy way to get food/water consistently out to them. It's often better to set up those remote communities with local water and farming/hunting if possible.
My Google says 700 million in poverty worldwide but it says this about wealth "In 2023, the world's richest 1% owned 47.5% of the world's wealth, which is roughly $214 trillion." So 214 trillion ÷ 700 million ≈ $305,714.28. "total wealth of the top 1% of American households was $44.6 trillion" perhaps you used this figure instead which is just the US. I'm pretty sure most people in poverty would be able to fix their situation on $300k.
My take on the food as well is, we have planes that fly everywhere all over the world, celebrities using jets to fly an hour to another city, but there's no way we could just take some planes and air drop or land and deliver food? It would be pretty damn easy logistically. Of course they should be self-sustaining, but the western world throws away so much food that doesn't bring a profit, we could absolutely afford to give a lot of it away.
Giving food aid is a terrible idea, except in extreme emergencies (failed harvest/war/pestilence etc.). Food aid makes it more difficult for local farmers to make a subsistence income as they cannot compete against the free food from the west. It’s far better to aid by transferring money directly or by transferring skills (i.e. education).
Literally capitalism making it impossible
Independent of the system you would have to ask the question whether developing countries should attempt to be self-sufficient or rely on transfers from abroad.