ShareThisDespite gains in reducing world poverty, 1 billion people continue to live on just a dollar a day -- the accepted measure of absolute poverty. It was not a famine that precipitated the new crisis, but the economics of the global marketplace.The Economist reports that "the middle classes in poor countries are giving up health care and cutting out meat so they can eat three meals a day. The middling poor, those on $2 a day, are pulling children from school and cutting back on vegetables so they can still afford rice."Starvation is an everyday prospect for those whose staple food is rice. The Economist warns that "the desperate -- those on 50 cents a day -- face disaster," and refers to the worldwide rise in the price of food as "the silent tsunami."According to Scripture, Jesus fed the multitudes in his time by miraculously multiplying loaves and fishes. How can we achieve the same result in 2008 by human effort alone? Sending CARE packages won't suffice, because a single meal doesn't solve a continuing problem. People need to eat every day. Few have land to grow their own food.Nor can we preach contraception as a palliative to reduce the number of mouths to feed. Starvation already reduces our world's population by killing 40,000 men, women and children each and every day. That is hardly a method of choice for birth control.The World Food Program of the United Nations is the best-known agency devoted to serving the hungry. Today it mostly buys grain and distributes it to those places where there is little or no food. In the long run, this effort actually hampers poor countries in their quest to feed their own people, because it damages local markets. To get a grip on the problem, it is better to help poor farmers to feed their own people rather than have rich nations dump free food, which only deprives local farmers of a living.The Economist suggests that rich nations distribute cash and technology, rather than food, to poor nations to stimulate local food production. In any case, the era of cheap food is history, even in the United States.Ironically, our nation's quest for energy independence is a contributing factor. The ethanol we pump into our automobiles comes from grain, which could be put to better use to feed the poor.(David Yount's book, "Growing in Faith: A Guide for the Reluctant Christian" (Seabury), is in its second edition. Reach him at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount(at)erols.com.)
Feeding the multitudes
Paying taxes unites us. It also divides us. People can pay five and even six times more in state and local taxes than other folks in similar circumstances making similar incomes.
Who's got your number?
In one of the fastest-growing forms of identity theft, crooks are stealing tax refunds by swiping personal information and using it to trick the Internal Revenue Service.
Population Crisis
The wold population increases by 50 million per year regardless that 15 million starve to death each year. Contraception is cheap and available. There is no excuse.
Fifty cents a day buys two pounds of rice at the word price. You can get fat eating two pounds of rice per day unless you were so stupid that you tried to raise a family of twelve on fifty cents per day. Such endeavor is beneath contempt.