Wishful thinking

While reading opinion essays on JWR, I ran into this

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Global Poverty
Sign the ONE Declaration today. Make Poverty History!
www.WorldVision.org

What's wrong with this picture?..
What do you sign? LINK
merely a petition saying ..."...WE RECOGNIZE that a pact including
such measures as fair trade, debt relief, fighting corruption and
directing additional support for basic needs — education, health,
clean water, food, and care for orphans — would transform the futures
and hopes of an entire generation in the poorest countries, at a cost
equal to just one percent more of the US budget...."

Ah yes. And of course, signing puts you on their donor list... (well, it might not end poverty, but it will make the NGO employees prosperous!)

But taking their agenda one suggestion at a time shows the problem:

Free Trade. I agree...but one reason our chicken farm never makes a profit is that under "free trade treaty" of ASEAN lets the lower cost chickens imported from Thailand and Viet Nam underprice our local industry. You see, they pay less there...and of course the farms are less clean farms--(bird flu anyone?)
There are similar underpricing of our local textile and shoe businesses...because fair trade means to allow China to underprice local factories and put Filipinos out of work...

Debt relief...yup. A lot of countries "borrowed" money for expensive projects...many of these projects worked, but a lot of corruption meant a lot were useless, and a lot of money "disappeared"...
So in reality, debt relief means that a US grandmom's Pension (i.e. investments) will be wiped out to repay money borrowed by a country that ended up in the politician's bank accounts (they're still trying to get back the $750 million in Marcos' bank account ..and no, it's not all from Yamashito's gold ).

Education, health clean water are government priorities. Fine. Help the locals do it, but don't just throw money into the funds, or they'll end up in the politicians' bank accounts too...
But doing so is a long term investment, not something you just throw money into and leave...

As for food: like the "free trade" you have to be careful. You will wipe out local farmers...
Ironically, World Vision does a lot of good.
So why don't they just say: The poor will always be with us, but we are doing our part to help? That would be much more accurate...


But, of course, don't worry about reality...just like wearing all those different ribbons to show you oppose breast cancer, HIV, heart disease etc. Similarly signing the petition shows you are against poverty is a bunch of crap.

It does only one thing: Boost your ego...See what a nice person you are?