Group members: Lau Yu Fan, Perry Tan, Joshua tan, Chiam Dao Wen, Edwin Chua
Issue: Poverty in South America
Guidelines:
1. Case Study
2. Causes of poverty
3. Solutions of poverty
4. Evaluation of solutions
Written Sources:
· POVERTY
Publisher: Opposing Viewpoints Series
Series Editor: David L. Bender & Bruno Leone
Published:
· The Growth Illusion
Author: Richard Douthwaite
Published: 1993
Case Study:
There are approximately 534 million people living in the Latin American/Caribbean area. Of these, 132 million live on less than $2 a day, and 57 million live on less than $1 a day.
About 70-75 percent of South America is suffering from poverty. However, this poverty is caused mainly by its economic growth.
Causes of poverty:
New technologies cause poverty
It has been widely assumed that an obvious factor in the socio-economic growth of nations is the steady introduction of new technologies into the workplace is.
However, British economist and journalist Richard Douthwaite rejects this proposition. He contends that in the majority of cases new technologies have profoundly weakened the economic well-being of a society. Douthwaite stresses that technological advances in industry contribute to joblessness and ultimately promote poverty.
Douthwaite's book The Growth Illusion depicts the interrelationship of technology and social changes in the modern world.
New technologies almost always destroy more jobs than they create. It has taken 180 years for the evidence that this is so to become apparent because, until very recently, the jobs which were lost in the Third World, where growing poverty and underemployment were blamed on the laziness and stupidity of the natives.
Globalization
Globalization has increased the standard of living in more developed countries, and as a result, the markets of these countries demand a higher standard of good. However, Less well-developed countries are unable to cope with the increased standards and therefore are stuck producing ‘inferior’ goods. Inferior goods do not bring about enough revenue to produce better goods and the lack of revenue for Research and Development means that factories continue producing the inferior goods. And the vicious cycle repeats itself.
Solutions for poverty:
One main contender for the cure of poverty is Communism. This is based on the idea that communism seeks to create a society free from all distinctions like class with the means of production being commonly owned by the people. As a result, money earned is shared evenly among everyone. This rids the poverty issue as it means that there is neither rich nor poor.
Evaluation of solution:
Although the idea behind communism is perfect, we are, in fact, dealing with imperfect subjects. Communism does not take into account the basic greed of humans. There is no point in working if one gets the same pay as others, therefore, the individual will depend on others to provide for him.
However, multiply that by a whole nation and all the flaws in the system show up. People start to become lazy, hoping that the next guy would pick up what one left off and society starts to crumble.
10S19
4 comments:
Deborah of 10A06:
I agree whole-heartedly with the view shared.
Communism in this respect has noble intentions, but it seldom, if ever, achieves this. (Those who did History will know this wasn't the case in Russia, when Stalin was in charge.)
Perhaps a more viable solution will be to train those out of jobs due to the introduction of new technology to operate the new technology, as is done in Singapore under a skills-upgrading programme. While this is not viable in cases when the technology used has totally replaced the need for manual labour, it will be better than employing skilled foreigners who not only will demand higher wages, but also take away the jobs of the locals too, at least in the case when the technology employed still requires human labour.
Darren Pang of 10S25
I agree with the view of these group to a large extent. Furthermore, I find the solution that the group has chosen to be very interesting as peole would seldom use communism as a way to solve something.
The reason why I said that people would not usually use communism as we can see the many negative effects of communism in the world, eg. North Korea. You can see how the people are actually suffering and have a very poor quality of life especially with the possibility of the war between North & South Korea.
Lastly, this situation can't be applied to our country especially since our country is not one that is in poverty.
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