Can poverty ever be eradicated?

Looking at the billions of people around the world living in abject poverty and having to be content with their squalid living conditions, one cannot help but wonder what is the cause of this enigma and whether there is any action that can be taken to eradicate it. In my opinion, there are things that we can do to lessen poverty but there is no way to eradicate it completely.

Kamala Sarup blamed poor geographical location of a country, political and social issues, as well as feudal cultural ideologies as the root causes for poverty in his article "Can a poor country become rich?", dated March 16,2007.

Poor geographical location means that the country is generally inaccessible, making it extremely difficult to transport goods and services within the country and across other countries. As such, people do not have the necessities they need while the country's economy takes a beating when trading cannot be completed between countries. Bad economy means that many people become unemployed and without work, these people cannot support their families. They are also deprived of the daily necessities, and hence have to suffer poor living conditions as they slump deeper into the mire of poverty. According to the U.N list of country's GDP, countries which are surrounded by high mountains and have few water ways always linger at the bottom, with the exception of Switzerland. A way to help these countries pull themselves out of poverty is to introduce technology to the people. Better technology helps build up an effective transport network even in rough terrains, allowing vehicles to manouevre their way through and improving transportation and trading. However, this will require a lot of funds which without the largesse of other countries, cannot be materialised and thus poverty cannot be eradicated.

Political and social issues also contribute to poverty in a country. In totalitarian societies such as China of the past and North Korea, people do not have any incentive to work hard to climb up the social ladder because there isn't one. Classless societies derived from political ideologies of communism and socialism make everyone equal regardless of what they do and only the government is given the authority to have a say in everything. As such, there is no improvement in the countries and people have to support themselves with the pittance they are given while having to struggle with the rising inflation in the price of goods due to development in other countries. In addition, different ideologies between these countries and the richer ones mean that the richer countries are reluctant to provide aid, leaving the poorer countries to struggle on their own. For example, America, a country based on democratic principles, was unwilling to provide aid to China, a communist country, in the mid-20th century. Only after much negotiation did America pledged to help China, albeit reluctantly. Even today, aid is only given to North Korea to thwart its nuclear ambition, which the hermit nation constantly uses it as a leverage during negotiations. Steps should be taken to improve bilateral ties between countries so as to improve the chances of aid provision to these poor countries. However I cannot see how poverty is going to be eradicated because leaders of such nations just do not seem to be keen on moving in this direction.

Culture is also a cause of poverty, so says Kamala Sarup. Certain cultures emphasise religious values more than pragmatic survival tips. Thus, schools focus more on religion than mainstream education. As such, people who go through such education are poorly skilled and are mostly unable to gain employment with their skills. More attention has been called for on this issue, and Kamala thinks that the way to solve poverty is to change the way schools teach. I am in favour of that. Not that I am casting the importance of religion aside. What I am saying is that schools should strike a balance between life skills and religious values. Only through this can these people find their place in society and gain employment to support their families and get out of poverty.Again, it is unlikely that focus in school curriculum will shift immediately. Hence poverty cannot be eradicated completed in the short run.

Jeffrey Sachs, on the other hand, blames gender discrimination, poor health and bad weather for poverty.

Many countries, particularly those in the Middle-east, forbid females from getting the education they need. As such, more than half of the population of some of these countries are illiterate and this is taking a toll on the economies of these countries. This is especially when potential investors face many problems in communication and written agreements. As such, the nations can only rely on themselves for survival and the lack of education among the people means that these countries are unlikely to prosper on their own. Thus, many human rights organisations have pushed for more education opportunities for women in these countries, but looking at the how these oppressive governments work, it is unlikely literacy rate will rise in the near future.

Another reason for poverty is the bad weather in some countries. Extreme weather conditions such as droughts and floods damage everything a country has, from farms to plantations, from houses to the cities' infrastructure. People are living in poverty because they do not even have enough food for subsistence, let alone things that they can trade to earn money. Some also do not have proper accomodation as their houses get destroyed from time to time. Steps can be taken to help these people. Jeffery Sachs is calling for countries to pledge a small percentage of their national income to help provide the poor with fertilisers and irrigation techniques so that they can plant new crops even in adverse weather. In my opinion, the money can also be used to built dams to prevent floods and to induce artificial rain to solve problems caused by droughts. However, many countries are not fulfilling their pledge to help and this proves to be a stumbling block for countries affected in their bid to get out of poverty.

Extreme weather also exposes people to diseases and epidemics easily occur in these poor countries. As a result, many people are too sick to work and therefore do not have the money to support themselves, let alone get out of poverty. Malaria for example, is widespread in these countries and to solve the problem, countries have pledged to send bed nets to keep the mosquitos away. Cholera and Typhoid are also common diseases among the people because of consumption of unclean water. These poor countries should consider using the Newater technology used in Singapore or use the Pur powder, a powder that can separate water from its sediments, to purify the water so as to allow more people to have access to clean water. As a result, less people will be down with such diseases, and countries can look forward to a heathier workforce. However as said earlier, such technology will be expensive and countries will have to rely on foreign aid.

Even if all the above problems were solved, it is still unlikely that poverty can be eradicated completely. This is because there are other reasons such as racial discrimination and corruption in governments that are not taken into account.

Racial discrimination can occur in any part of the world. In certain countries, some races are not given equal employment opportunities because they are deemed inferior by the rest. Even in today's America, some Afro-Americans are marginalised from the mainstream society and because they are unable to gain employment, they live in poverty. This is despite the fact that America is the world's richest country. This shows that poverty do not have to occur in poor countries and only when racial discrimination is eradicated will these people be emancipated from poverty.

Corrupt regimes are also another source of poverty. In countries such as China and Vietnam where corruption is rife, many people are suffering. Despite having vast natural resources that can be tapped on as well as enjoying booming trades, commoners in these countries do not see any improvement in their pathetic lives. This is because most, if not all, of the revenue earned from these economic activities are not returned to the people. Instead, they are kept by high ranking officials. As a result, there is a concentration of wealth at the top of the level while everyone else lives in poverty. Given the oppressive nature of these governments and their refusal to open up for monitoring by international watchdogs, it will be extremely difficult to curb corruption within these governments unless the leaders themselves take action.

As shown above, despite having so many solutions to solve poverty, there is no guarantee that they will work. In addition, there are also many problems that will most probably remain unsolved. Therefore, it is a foregone conclusion that poverty can never be eradicated completely.

Death Penalty

Many countries in the world still practise the death penalty and Singapore is one of them. Over the years there have been controversies over the use of death penalty with its supporters claiming that it deters crime while its detractors critising it for being immoral and ignoring human rights. I, for the record, is in support of the death penalty, having witnessed the low crime rates in Singapore as compared to many other countries which do not pracise the death penalty. In fact, Singapore has the lowest murder rate per capita in the world, according to wikipedia and I am convinced that the death penalty has the ability to deter crime.

In "The Morality of Capital Punishment" by Gary S. Becker, the death penalty is said to have a deterrent effect because humans have a natural horror for death and therefore will resist the notion pf committing crimes that warrants the death penalty. However, the author did admit that the death penalty has its weaknesses. For example, it will make murderers more determined to escape detection and thus take drastic actions to prevent being caught, such a killing a rape victim. I think that this should not be a point that opponents of the death penalty should capitalise on because as correctly pointed out by the author, advanced forensic technology and knowledge of DNA through various samples should be enough to nab the criminals. Just like in Singapore, where criminal cases are more often than not solved within 24 hours using such advanced technological equipments to capture criminals. In addition, the author also pointed out another limitation of the death penalty, that is it might possibly kill innocent people wrongly convicted of crimes that warrants the death penalty. There might be such a possibility in actual fact but I staunchly believe that the legal system of today protects the rights of criminal suspects and there are many avenues for appeal if the verdict do not go the convicts' way. Therefore, such a possibility of wrong judgements is extremely rare and thus should not be a reason to argue for the abolition of the death penalty.

In "Beyond The Death Penalty Debate" by Antonio Cassese, the author states that the death penalty is against human rights as no one has the moral authority to take the life of another person. I personally believe that people should be responsible for what they do and should accept the penalty if they flout the rules, be it death or not. Besides, the author also said that convicts might receive degrading treatments and other acts of inhumanity in prison. Wouldn't it be better for the convicts to be put to death rather than make them suffer more pain? The death penalty would be a more humane choice in this case as the pain of the convicts is shortened.

There is only one conclusion to this issue. The death penalty should not be abolished because it plays a big part in deterring crime rate and as argued above, all the limitations and criticisms of the death penalty have been duly addressed and it seems that they can be easily overcome. Hence, I am in favour of the death penalty.

Are career demands killing marriages in Singapore?

That's the question for the people living in the highly competitive society of Singapore where good jobs opportunities up for grabs are far and few. There have been many reports of Singaporeans succumbing to unreasonable career demands such as spending more than 12 hours a day at work and force themselves to undergo streneous programmes to upgrade their skills while struggling to juggle with their already heavy workload. As a result, these people get so stressed out from work that they have little or no energy left for their marriage and family, eventually leading to breakdowns in marriage and communication problems within the family.

For a small country like ours, divorce rates are already at alarming altitudes. According to a government report, divorce cases have tripled over the past two decades, from 2313 in 1983 to 6561 in 2003 and it is still growing at a alarming rate. In the past few years after the Asian ecomonic crisis struck, people were clinging on ferociously to their iron-turned-styrofoam rice bowls as if a gust of wind has threatened to blow them away. All attention was placed on jobs security such that everything else automatically became secondary. People started to shift their time spent with family to office matters in a desperate bid to save their jobs and the outcome was predictable.

Of course there are still cases where couples managed to pull through everything, but it has to be agreed that career demands have take a toll on marriages, in one way or another and to different degrees. I guess that the government understands the repurcussions of the increasing divorce rates to our already ageing-population as high divorce rates mean less families and less children. Therefore the government should take the first step to save marriages by doing something to the unreasonable career demands that compel people to put their jobs in front of their families.

To do this, it is important for the government to impose laws and regulations banning employers from making their employees work unreasonably long hours and make sure that there are duly compensated for the extra work they have done. In addition, it is also a feasible idea that companies organise more family day activities so as to improve family ties while not neglecting work. Lastly, it will also be good that employees be given the liberty to choose a flexible working schedule, so as to ensure that employees strike a balance between work and family so that neither one is chugged aside while the other gets all the attention.

We have to realise that human resource is the only resource that we have. If we cannot protect the communion between two human beings when we put the significance of occupation above that of family, then it will be an inevitable fact that Singapore will eventually lose out in terms of its global competiveness. This, the government has to think about it carefully and consider the above suggestions.