Back in 1970 all the rich Nations promised that from 1975 they would be giving 0.7% of their annual wealth to help those who were suffering from extreme poverty in the world.
By 2008 they had managed to reach 0.3%.
So that’s like saying if you had 100 apples and there was a family dying of poverty next door to you, you would go round and give them a third of one apple and keep the other 99.66 apples for yourself.
In 2005 Jeffrey Sachs the Economic Advisor to the UN, led a team of International Economists to work out how much it would actually cost to give everyone on the planet enough to survive on.
That’s not how much it would cost to make everybody rich – just to make sure that nobody has to die from lack of clean water, enough food or basic medicine.
They worked out it would cost £120 billion a year until 2025 and then, after that, it would start to decrease. Of this £120 billion, they said £50.29 billion should go to the poorest countries in the world, the ones who have the least prospect of pulling themselves up out of the pit of poverty without help from outside.
Us rich Nations all promised to sort it and by 2009 we had managed to reach £72.3 billion a year, of which only a third, £23.84 billion, goes to the countries who need it the most – the poorest countries in the world.
Therefore there is a shortfall for the poorest people in the poorest countries and that shortfall comes to £26.45 billion.
Which equates to a 5% increase in Income Tax in the UK.
Which means that if we wanted it, if we were prepared to vote for it, we could solve it.
We could make sure that everyone in the world gets enough to live on.
That’s like saying if we had 100 apples and there was a family dying of poverty next door to us, we would give them 5 apples.
Why is it called 5 Apples?
Back in 1970 all the rich Nations promised that from 1975 they would be giving 0.7% of their annual wealth to help those who were suffering from extreme poverty in the world.
By 2008 they had managed to reach 0.3%.
So that’s like saying if you had 100 apples and there was a family dying of poverty next door to you, you would go round and give them a third of one apple and keep the other 99.66 apples for yourself.
In 2005 Jeffrey Sachs the Economic Advisor to the UN, led a team of International Economists to work out how much it would actually cost to give everyone on the planet enough to survive on.
That’s not how much it would cost to make everybody rich – just to make sure that nobody has to die from lack of clean water, enough food or basic medicine.
They worked out it would cost £120 billion a year until 2025 and then, after that, it would start to decrease. Of this £120 billion, they said £50.29 billion should go to the poorest countries in the world, the ones who have the least prospect of pulling themselves up out of the pit of poverty without help from outside.
Us rich Nations all promised to sort it and by 2009 we had managed to reach £72.3 billion a year, of which only a third, £23.84 billion, goes to the countries who need it the most – the poorest countries in the world.
Therefore there is a shortfall for the poorest people in the poorest countries and that shortfall comes to £26.45 billion.
Which equates to a 5% increase in Income Tax in the UK.
Which means that if we wanted it, if we were prepared to vote for it, we could solve it.
We could make sure that everyone in the world gets enough to live on.
That’s like saying if we had 100 apples and there was a family dying of poverty next door to us, we would give them 5 apples.
That’s not really too much is it?