Would you give 1/2 of a percent of your income to a program to reduce extreme poverty by half in poor nations?

According to my rough calculations...1/2 of 1 percent of the Gross National Product comes to about 125 billion dollars.

Knock off at least 20% for administrative overhead and that gives you about 100 billion dollars.

There is about 300 billion people in the world. So lets assume that 10% are living in extreme poverty (that is probably a low guess).

So you have 30 billion poor people splitting 100 billion dollars.

That comes out to about 3 dollars and 33 cents per year per person.

I don't think that 1/2 of 1% of everyones income is gonna save em.

I would gladly do it if all the people in poor nations, that we helped, realized we are the ones making a sacrifice to really help them to help themselves. The government cannot be so corrupt that it cannot foster a wholesome environment.

If there was no long term appreciation of us and their new level of living, I am not for it.

I have talked to people here in the U.S. that grew up in the great depression. Many of them have told me that they were not unhappy because most everybody around them was in the same condition.

They did not lock their doors. They appreciated what they had because they earned it.

Sometimes I wonder who is more unhappy: The people who are in poverty or the people who see the discrepancy.

I have never seen so many people who have plenty be so unhappy, such as in our country now.

Yes, I would but I would like the same done for the poor in our own country. True they may not be as poor, or we are led to belive that it is not serious, but there are children in our own country that are no better fed than those in the third world and have nutritional deficiencies.

I know people who travel to foreign countries to build housing while people living in our ghettos are fighting giant rats at night. And people in New Orleans are living in trailors that are killing them slowely. While St. Bernard Parish has put up barriers so difficult that those trying to build rental units are fighting them tooth and nail. Why? They probably only want "certain" classes of citizens to rent there. In my own parish they passed laws making it difficult to put up a trailor after Katrina, because they wanted to keep certain 'types",

out.

Sorry, but I think if we help other, and we should, then we need to help our own too.

I'll do you one better, I already give 10% of my income to charitable giving. It is a priority for my wife and myself to live generously and give when we see needs.

However from a strictly economic perspective, the best way to alleviate worldwide poverty is to continue the policies of expanding worldwide free trade, allowing profit motives to guide economic expansion and development, and maintaining moderate, stable, and understandable tax rates.

Hope this helps,

Good luck!

No.

The US is the biggest aid donor in the world, we give enough.

There is something called self-responsibility and all the money in the world cannot force people to change.

Most of the poverty in the world is a result of a tribe mentality that perpetuates violence, government corruption and over population (resulting from a refusal to use birth control).

Yes but beginning with my own nation since we are the most in need right now of our own compassion. Once we have compassion for our people we can then help the world. We cannot help the world until we help ourselves. The US is a sinking ship right now because we are a nation divided hating one another.

No,because it won't work.

The poorest nations breed like rats,beyond what the land will support.

2/3 of the money will be swallowed up in administrative costs or stolen.

Yes, but only if the organization helping reduce poverty did it the right way. First by fighting against the warlords who made it that way, taking an aggressive policy on AIDS education and delivering food directly to the hungry while teaching them how to build and sustain their own economy and protect themselves so they can become independent.

Yes. It would be well worth it.

As long as I could monitor the money to ensure that it would get to the people who need it.

Administrators of such programs usually take a huge cut off of the top for themselves and very little makes it to the people who truly needs it.

Yes, but like others said, only if it went towards poverty in THIS country (as well as other countries seen as "wealthy," ie Britain, Canada, etc) as well.