NAME: ANGELA LAI CHIEN LAN CLASS: 08/07

Friday, August 17, 2007

Can poverty ever be eradicated?

The stand I’m going to take is no. Poverty will never be eradicated. The major factor to eliminate poverty is to improve the level of technology in the society.
However, the poor will always be trapped in a vicious poverty cycle. They cannot afford to upgrade themselves. There is no way we can solve this problem. To give them loans may end up causing them to be burdened with a bigger sum of unpaid debts. Subsidies and incentives are not practical, as it is not possible for any country or any organization to come up with such a huge amount of money to help all of them. One example, is the high yielding varieties (HYVs), which only benefited the rich, widening the income gap as the rich get richer and earns more profit from it while the poor are forever trapped in the poverty cycle, with no money to pay for the crops, land, fertilizers etc. In the passage it also mentioned that “
As an alternative, a poor country that wants to be richer cannot expect to develop its own technology. Therefore, a poor country must import technology that produces more and better goods and services for its own people and for producing goods and services for trade with foreigners”. Whatever said might be hard to put into action. As stated, it is a poor country. Where will they get the money to import technologies and upgrade themselves?

Some others can argue that when there is an overall increase in absolute wealth, it is inevitable that some will spill over from the rich to the poor, via trade and globalization. The government can play a part by strongly encouraging the people to work harder, hence generate more income for the country to get richer. Well, making use of the limited natural resources a country have may also be one of the choice to take. But, my question is, how far can all this bring us? Can it really make us richer? Will it eradicate poverty?

The scope of discussion should be wider. Education is another factor. Also, its not all about technological advancement. We have to take cultures into account. Here comes the problem. Culture is not something that can be changed in a day or two. It requires constant effort and careful actions of the government. We need a competent and honest government to bring us through this progress. The point I’m trying to bring across is, no matter what, poverty will remain a concern in our society. We’ll try our best to solve it, but to completely eliminate it, is not possible.

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NAME: ANGELA LAI CHIEN LAN CLASS: 08/07