Increasing Poverty In Today's Technological World?
The poor continue to lag behind the spiraling pace of technology.
by Fred Nance
The rich get richer and the poor
get poorer," says an old depression-era song and it still rings true
today. It seems hard to believe in this world of computers, technology
and information that there could also exist an age-old problem: poverty.
And the irony of this proliferating problem is that poverty is increasing
in the world amid abundance. The gap is widening between rich and poor.
Poverty is nothing new to the world.
The Bible prophesies in Deuteronomy 15:11, "For the poor
will never cease from the land." Jesus Christ repeats and confirms
the prophecy in Matthew 26:11: "For you have the poor with you always." As
long as the governments of this world exist, the alarming rapid growth
of poverty poses a grave threat to the Western Hemisphere and the world.
But why the sudden increase in the last part of this decade?
Global Financial Crisis
The financial crisis that began
in Asia in 1997 has been a huge factor in the increase of poverty from
Asia to Africa and to Latin America. James Speth, an administrator
of the United Nations Development Program, reports on this trend in Foreign
Affairs. In an article titled "The Plight of the Poor," he says "if
current recessionary trends continue, the number of poor in East Asia
will increase sharply in the next two years from 40 million to more
than 100 million." He continues with the sobering statistic that "the
number of Indonesians living on less than a $1 a day will jump from
13 million in 1997 to 34 million in 1999." The article adds that "among
the 4.4 billion people in developing countries around the world, three-fifths
live in communities lacking basic sanitation; one-third go without
safe drinking water; one-quarter lack adequate housing; one-fifth are
undernourished; and 1.3 billion live on less than a dollar a day."
