Anti-Poverty Policies and Anti-Poor Philosophies
Related: The Power of Ideas
Anti-Poor Policies & Anti-Poor Philosophies
See also: Ed Dodson's Lecture Notes on: A History of Economic Theory and Policy
QUOTE from Lars Syll on RWER Blog:
The 85 richest people on the planet have accumulated as much wealth between them as half of the world’s population, political and financial leaders have been warned ahead of their annual gathering in the Swiss resort of Davos.
The tiny elite of multibillionaires, who could fit into a double-decker bus, have piled up fortunes equivalent to the wealth of the world’s poorest 3.5bn people, according to a new analysis by Oxfam. The charity condemned the “pernicious” impact of the steadily growing gap between a small group of the super-rich and hundreds of millions of their fellow citizens, arguing it could trigger social unrest.
Published in:
Journal of Business and Economics Vol 2 Number 2 July-December 2010 p.127-137
Modern defense of wealthy against poor, actually defines a new type of morality:
David Gauthier. The latter writes in his Morals by Agreement:
The rich man may feast on caviar and champagne, while the poor woman starves at his gate. And she may not even take the crumbs from his table, if that would deprive him of his pleasure in feeding them to his birds.
I missed the following Malthus Quote, which is a VERY strong anti poor sentiment:
Malthus wrote in his, Essays on the Principle of Population (1826):
".. we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavouring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread too infrequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use.
Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns, we should make the street narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague...
But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of of particular disorders"
[reproduced in Allan Chase, The Legacy of Malthus:The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism (University of Illinois Press, 1980). (p.6)]
For more material on the overpopulation myth, see: [link]
In this essay, we will discuss the many policies, philosophies, and theories which claim to help the poor, but actually hurt them. The most prominent recent example is that of the SAP’s. According to an independent evaluation by Mr. Fantu Cheru (2001), the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP’s) of the IMF and the World Bank designed to generate growth and alleviate poverty have had the opposite effect:
To appear in Journal of Business and Economics ISSN: 2075-6909 of Air University,
Your article is included in JBE vol2, no. 2, JUL-DEC 2010 issue p127-137
vol2, no2, is available online at the following link.
Published version is also attached below:A1-Assad-Zaman.pdf <
Farooq Rasheed <farooqeco@yahoo.com>
Air University