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Why do we treat Third world poverty differently than poverty in "Industrialized" nations?
It's been getting my goat lately... Everyone seems so concerned about fighting poverty in India or Africa, but when we see poverty here in the western world, we look at the "beggar" (Otherwise known as "panhandlers") with disgust, and either ignore them, or spit on them, or yell at them to get a job. When 20% of full time jobs in the west pay less than a standard living wage, and over half of all available employment is part-time work, why do we treat western poverty as though it were "unworthy" of our attention, and the poor so... well... poorly?
asked by Jane Taxpayer 3 months ago
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Nathaniel Wright says
Poverty no matter where it is is terrible. But the poverty in countries such as India and Africa is a different kind of poverty. For the most part the media has done a good job in exposing people to the plight of people in the third world. Also poverty in these countries are often unavoidable. The governments in some of these third world countries won't let their people gain access to the food and water that's available to them.
Poverty in the western world is a different story. According to most people poverty should not exist in such an affluent country. So the thinking of most people is that those who are poor or particulary those who beg; their poverty must be of their own doing.
As the ecomomic situation worsens more and more people in the western world wil find themselves losing their jobs and thus in poverty.
Jane Taxpayer says
Nathaniel... The problem is (at least in my part of the western world) the government doesn't let people gain access to their basic needs... The non-profits are the only ones who are allowed to provide for the poor, and quite frankly, the non-profits don't have enough. Where I live, welfare was specifically designed to deny services to the one's who need them most, and social workers have become a greater waste of tax money than welfare. Not because they don't help, but because they're not allowed to help.
Perhaps another question that needs to be asked is WHY DOES poverty even exist in affluent countries such as Canada, U.S.A., and Great Britain?
O B One says
This is a sorry state of mind.The westerners are too egoistic to admit that they have poor and beggers in thier country too. They paint a very rosy picture in the movies and media.And it has become a tendency to get angry on the poor begger on the street of NY or LA.They just cannot accept them.
Where as in the developing countries people have accepted these beggers as their own.They are alreay open to the world and the mind-set already has been achived that they exist in these countries.So there are hoards of people helping them and grabbing media attention and so on.
See the saying goes
GRASS IS ALWAYS GREEN ER ON THE OTHER SIDE. Similarly THEY HAVE MORE BEGGERS THEN US.
It is all in the mind.
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