The curse of poverty

Poverty has blighted humanity for thousands of years, and continues to affect the lives of millions of people today. The global society can never truly prosper while so many of its members are afflicted with poverty's curse.

In countries across the world, generations of people are born poor and never get the opportunity to realise their full potential. Their poverty goes hand in hand with poor educational opportunities and access to menial work alone. The worst thing about poverty is its cyclical nature. The children of the poor frequently inherit their parents’ lack of opportunities in life, and so are practically condemned to a life of poverty themselves. This cycle goes on, with the talents of millions of people going to waste, and the endless continuation of the suffering that poverty brings.

However, as great a problem as poverty is, it does not have to remain with us forever. One obvious solution to poverty is to more fairly distribute existing wealth, through measures such as supplying surplus food to the poor, cancelling debt owed by developing countries, and guaranteeing a living wage for the poorest workers. This kind of distribution would help to improve the living conditions of the world’s most disadvantaged people.

Presently, there is already enough wealth in the world to confine absolute poverty to history, but unfortunately poverty reduction is not the investment priority it ought to be. For example, a number of governments choose to spend large amounts of money on unnecessary military defence rather than on poverty reduction programmes, despite the widespread suffering and waste that poverty causes. Moreover, poverty can leave people feeling unfulfilled and marginalized, contributing to crime and drugs use, and competition over resources between impoverished groups can lead to violence and war. This justifies making the removal of poverty the top investment priority for every government and for the whole of the global community.