Jane Lake Makes a Mistake

"My blog is not the prettiest, and my posts are not the wittiest..."

It might not be all that.. but earnestly speaking I am enjoying your blog.. so please keep writing and I'll keep reading it.

World poverty and hunger are terrible problems, however this sort of solution is not effective. You need to go after the true causes. There really is plenty of food and wealth to go around. Poverty and hunger are caused by injustice and a lack of motivation. Some people are poor because they don't take advantage of the opportunities available, other's are poor because of injustice. In Africa for example, war is the primary cause of poverty, eliminating war is the key to reducing poverty there.

I am afraid that most of the people are suffering there because of corruption of their leaders.

I am afraid the tax you propose would go almost completely into their pockets, like most of our aid to Africa does.

So you would end up taking money from mostly hard working honest people and giving it to robber barons.

I appreciate the sentiment but I think any charity you do must be direct, not government or UN directed.

Well I really like the idea! Have you thought of submitting a 'would this work?' to www.yourquestion.org?
Give it a try, you never know what might happen.

Marie is right.
Corruption is the problem, not lack of money.
In theory your poverty tax is a great idea. Unfortunately there are evil people who will take advantage of your generosity.
That sounds negative and defeatist. But it is just reality.
I'd give you $100 a year if it would stop people from dying.

Corruption, Shmurruption!

A little money shouldn't stop people from helping other people. Who cares if a handful of bad apples runs off with a few million?

If thousands or tens of thousands of lives are saved it is well worth the price.

Now where's my $100?

I give all my funny money to an assistance dog training program. Helps provide trained assistance dogs to the blind and disabled. No $500,000 salaried CEO, and excellent ratio of money that actually goes to the program (versus fund-raising and "outreach" and all that hocus-pocus stuff). It's a great program.

I'm serious though. You come up with a real, genuine program that actually saves lives, and is not feeding some tinpot dictator's caviar habit, and I'll send you some money. You gotta make it real.

Do you know how a country is made? or for that matter an inhabitaion occurs. Humans move around and find place to inhabit. they flock at places where there is enough natural resource. Then they exploit those resources to feed themselves. If they cannot grow enough food, they create other commodities/services and trade for food. Now, if a country is formed at a place where there is no resource, that country is unsustainable and cannot survive. Just giving food/money to them is foolish. Either survey their lands and try to find out what they can exploit to produce something that can be traded for food. If that country has nothing at all, it does not deserve to be populated or remain as a seperate nation. It can then join with other country to form a bigger country. Thats the only possible solution.

In addition to my last post, I think that you are forgetting you are living in USA. 2 dollars per month is too much for people in developing nation. Obviously, the middle class will not starve if lost 2 dollars but they will have to compromise on several things. I would agree to charity only if I have enough money lying around. Why should a hard-working person sacrifice pay to feed some unknown person in some other country.