An Excellent critique of superficial campaigns like the one the author focuses on. The trouble with all such exercises in empathy is that they take the context for granted and immutable, even as the best of all possible worlds. Poverty per se is not the problem, but a human world that produces, exacerbates and fails to address the causes of poverty. The causes are of course historical and complex, but whatever their divers genesis, in the modern world poverty is more or less the obverse and outcome of obscene wealth, and of the abstraction of surpluses as profit. The populations of wealthy countries have recourse to savings and credit (indeed consumers are a secondary mode of wealth production and redistribution; they are thus optimally preserved by welfare as fundamental to the system), and as these diminish, losses are felt in ephemeral ways, which may be designated "compromised lifestyle", long before they're felt as genuine poverty. In poor countries where life is precarious, fluctuations in income is felt directly and immediately as dire poverty. But these poor countries are no longer beholden unto themselves, but are subject to the same rubric as the wealthy, whereby their production is exploited and the surplus is abstracted. They are part of the same global system and their poverty maintains Western lifestyles. What we need is a campaign that somehow highlights that link--that wealthy nations and their people are "responsible" for poverty. Once such awareness is achieved we could then have a different kind of campaign; rather than one that played on the obscenity of extreme poverty, one that played on its direct and culpable obverse: obscene wealth.
Poverty is not the problem in itself; in our global yet still "contained" economy, poverty is the by-product of wealth--its complement and and how it's maintained. The only way to address extreme poverty is to address extreme wealth; in fact to address the insane logic of converting surpluses from sustenance into profit--thus driving both the disparity and its ongoing propagation.

<< The campaign aimed to help people “better understand the daily challenges faced by those trapped in the cycle of extreme poverty” and to build “a movement of passionate people willing and able to make a meaningful difference to those who need it most.”>>

Thinking we at last had someone concerned about Australian social equity and justice, another Professor Fiona Stanley perhaps, I started to warm to your article. Then we got to the bit about the World Bank and AUD$2 a day for food or its more complex equivalents, shattered my little illusionary moment.

It’s all just another campaign slogan to extract more money from vulnerable, over sensitive people by guilt. (Your target market).

It seems incredible to me that the hypocrisy and double dealing by such as the World Bank is granted absolution from their role in driving the peoples of oppressed nations, into the “cycle of extreme poverty” to which you refer. It matters not how you measure this poverty or embrace the galaxy of factors, they are the peoples of failed states, mostly living under the shadow of one or other form of despotic dictatorships.

If they were a company, a Bank would do what they always do to protect the stakeholders, foreclose and bring in the receivers.

So many in our developed world live with the illusion that somehow, creating greater awareness, to extract a dollar or two to sponsor Aid Organisations, will provide structural reforms, increase food production, education, health and future prospects. When in fact all we do is maintain the status quo. We relieve these dictators of the cost of their own mismanagement, so that they can get on with the business of oppression, buying RPG’s, AK 47’s and light tanks, with any surplus going to their Swiss Bank accounts.

When are you going to develop an understanding of how the world really works, rather than how you ideologically wish it to be

You obviously failed at marketing.

Normally I could admire such pedantry, but I'm getting pretty sick of people being so negative and picking holes in worthwhile causes. So what if it's not accurate, do you think you'll get more donors via a thesis on the complexity of poverty? I notice no alternitive campaign was offered.

Of course spindoc is right, but maybe if 10% gets through to 1 kid it may be worth it, and what really, aside from invading each country in a war against poverty, are we to do instead?

These things don't need to be either/or. We can prop up an unsustainable and disempowering overseas aid system saving a few starving kiddies while we work on a propper solution.

Although the author's article means well I cannot see the campaign as being useful.

For starters the participants are trying to live in $2 a day in Australia, where the purchasing power for the $2 is quite different to its power in impoverished nations. This may explain why extra money is used for tobacco and CDs, a point which the author finds puzzling.

Another problem is that this seems to an exercise in raising money to help alieviate poverty and, as is now widely known, the old aid model of handing out money, or food, or whatever, to the impoverished, is out of favour. Targeted aid is now the go, but to make that work the aid origanisation has to get down and dirty and understand the culture they are trying to help. This do not involve simply understanding that they are poor.

Don't think the article or the fund raising exercise helps very much.

Houelle’s, you are right that the author offered no alternative campaign but your real gem was your comment, “what if 10% gets through to 1 kid it may be worth it”?

This seems such a trivial target and I began to wonder why we even need to consider such a low success rate for aid programs?

Being a thinking mans idiot I decided to try to design a program that might increase the penetration of aid, either based upon current aid program formats or even new ones.

Those needing aid are the populations of third world or developing nations, often run by some form of dictatorship. To raise themselves from poverty, they need infrastructure, logistics, banking, legal, education, health and so on. Developed nations take these for granted because without these we would not be developed nations. Even if we in the West were to trade with these nations, the lack of infrastructure is an inhibitor to progress and their “rulers” will end up the primary beneficiary.

Aid programs are mostly designed to bypass this problem by going directly to those in need. This also creates problems because even something for free needs to be “delivered”, which requires infrastructure. In the absence of this we take our infrastructure with the Aid or rent it when we get there. This all costs money and attracts Mr. Ten Percent. The NGO or Aid organization also has operational and administrative costs. The net result is that only a very small portion of what was available makes it. Aid organisations then need a new slogan, a new program and new ways to extract more money. So the circle is complete and we start again with the same problems.

So why can’t we design something that is entirely self sufficient with its own infrastructure within a third world nation. Negotiate “independence” (temporary pseudo sovereignty) for a town or village, fund it through Aid programs and administer it with our expertise and infrastructure? After a few years they propagate this themselves to the next village/town and so on.

Seems like a win/win. Might this work?

Seems like a win/win. Might this work?
Spindoc,
of course it would work but bureaucracy won't permit it. We could start counting the poor by starting with small populated countries like Australia. It would come as a real surprise to beer drinkers & pie munchers how many poor people there are here because of the indifference to the feet up on the coffee table sporting enthusiasts.

I agree with Squeers. The poverty of the poor is caused by the richness of the rich. What stops people from getting their fair share of the western standard of living is only an exploitative system based on profits diverted to the obscenely wealthy. If the West did not exist, the Kalahari bushmen would be enjoying the internet broadband which is their natural birthright.

Since the definitive difference between rich and poor is capital, we may identify the existence of this evil institution as the source of the problem. Instead of foregoing consumption earlier to produce goods which may enable increased production later of outputs per unit of inputs, how much better off the world would be if, warbling our woodnotes wild, we consumed all we produce without inequitable capital, i.e. with our bare hands.

We need to start again with an economic system that’s not based on profit. Therefore any finished product must never be worth more than the factors of production that went into making it. That should do the job! Instead of digging ore out of the earth, smelting metals, and using them to make stuff, we should dig it out and re-bury it somewhere else equally difficult to extract again. The more things are done at a loss, the more we could ensure the elimination of accursed profits and the world would be better off.

Our ideal economic system also needs to cut back on economic growth, which does not result from people exchanging goods and services to satisfy their wants for life, family, and enjoyment, but from evil exploitative capitalist bastards running a neoliberal ideology based on bourgeois rationalism. Therefore all computers must be replaced with quill-pens, and all internal combustion engines with horses. Where crops are harvested with combines, their tyres should be let down, and where harvested with sickles, everyone should be issued with a smaller sickle. Then what an earthly paradise we would enjoy!

I really enjoyed that, Peter, especially the first and last paragraphs--honestly, laugh out loud funny!

When I talk about the abstraction of profit I mean in terms of the conversion of surplus into capital; that doesn't mean I'm against the idea of surplus production--qualitatively very different to profit! Since humans are not predators, like the great cats at the top of the food chain, we can't afford to live claw to mouth the way they do, we have to hive some away. This survival technique has been superseded by capitalism. Rather than living sustainably, social groups on the breadline preserve their surplus in "virtual" or "futures" terms: as labour dependent on staple markets; putting their faith in them, as the ancients did in the annual flooding of the Nile, indeed increasing capacity (ergo dependency) according to demand. But markets are fickle and relying on them, or a stable currency, for prosperity is foolhardy. Better to have several irons in the fire. But many poor societies have little else to sell (which makes for cheap prostitutes!). In this vulnerable position the capitalist is at liberty to exercise his God-given right to minimise costs and maximise profit (to screw his dependents. The pursuit of profit transcends morality)--i.e. to lower wages according to surplus labour requirements (driven by optimism), brought about by improved yield, efficiency, mechanisation etc. The capitalist is at the top of the food chain and is as merciless as a ravenous lion.
A similar system prevails in the West, since consumption is much easier to cultivate on a grand scale that way. Wealthy people tend to get delusions about all sorts of things that we can conveniently label "aesthetics"; as soon necessities are taken care of, they resort to a peculiarly human penchant for novelty in hopes of distinguishing themselves. There does seem to be a competitive drive in humans, Man does not live on bread alone. Unfortunately, this predilection has long-since been divined and is readily exploited. Indeed the taste for luxury goods has led to their mass-production, so that we can all feel we're somehow, special.

It never ceases to amaze me, when supposedly learned individuals make outrages claims, and strikingly avoid mundane, home truths. Without doubt, this gracious author oversubscribes to : " Live Below the Line " Foundation, and grotesquely undermines the pressing issues of Global Poverty.

Apparently, the legendary World Bank, aka IMF, colludes - many millions subsist on only $ 2.00 / day, with CPI ( food, accommodation, transport, inflation etc ) factored in ??
Where: in LaLa Land. No less.

ACOSS. Aust Council for Social Services, have this to say :

* 2.2 million Aussies are estimated to be living in Poverty.
* 75 % of these people are in a Household, where no one has paid work.
* 25 % of single adults are living in Parks and cars.
* 1.1 million families are suffering Housing stress.
* Long term unemployment is increasing.
* Gaps between the Rich and Poor, is rising.
* Cost of Living, measured by CPI, has increased 34%, since 2000.
* Number of people being turned away for services, increased 12 %.
* Community Services, currently employs 500,00o.
* Voluntary workers are twice that number.

The plight of our fellow citizens, is downright appalling. The Gillard / Swan Budget takes as much as it gives.

Poor fella, my Country.

Squeers
I admit I can’t understand what you’re saying, but it seems to show a confusion about the economics.

By capital I mean the produced means of further production.

On one hand you seem to understand that, if we are not to live – and die - like animals, we need capital goods, even if they are only spears and stone tools. And in order to produce these capital goods, we need to consume less than we produce, and devote time and saved resources to making them, and take a risk about the uncertain future. And you laugh with my caricature at the idea that capital causes the poverty of the poor; and that a system opposed to capital or profit could be more humane or productive.

But on the other hand, you seem to think that “capitalism” changes the basic economic principles by which capital goods enable people to produce more for given inputs; that it is responsible for the poverty of the poor; that it undermines sustainable living; that it makes life more precarious; that the owner of capital exploits those whom he employs; that profit is an immoral quantity; that it makes the workers poorer. So we are back to the idea that capital and profit make people poorer.

These two belief systems are inconsistent.

Nature, not capital, causes the original problem of scarcity. All economic goods have to be produced using labour, time, land, and enterprise. People co-operate in production because it is more productive, and mutually beneficial.

You have often asserted, but never explained why you think that capitalism is exploitative. You imply that employment is intrinsically unfair. The reason Marx thought so was because his economic theory imputed the whole value of all production ultimately back to the labour factors of production, and only the labour factors. Thus he reasoned that the workers as a class were getting ripped off – of the so-called “surplus” to which you refer.

But then you either need to assert and defend the labour theory of value, or concede that voluntary and mutually beneficial relations are not exploitative.

In Australia, the absolute minimum income is $35 a day, on the DOLE. There is almost unlimited free food available
all round the Country, from St. Vinnies, and The Salvoes.
There are mobile "Coffee" and "Food Vans"
There are numerous "Food Banks" where people can just drive up and get their car-boot filled with vegetables and bread.
In the Inner City Brisbane alone there is over fifty (50) venues for free, nourishing food including barbecues hot meals and sandwiches. There are organisations and services that will assist with most bills including Gas, Phone and Electricity.
Yet people still insist that many of us are “Living in Poverty” !!
If this is so, how does our lifestyle compare with the one hundred and forty million ( 140,000,000 ) people in India
“existing” on “Less” than one dollar ( $1 ) a day ?
Is it all "Just A Big Joke” !?,

Peter,
by capital I mean that which is invested and reinvested, ad nauseam, in hopes of perpetual increase.
I understand that we are social animals in response to harsh natural conditions, and that our survival techniques apropos nature derive from our collective strengths. We've transcended habitat as something fortuitous or inevitable, and treat it as exploitable and malleable to our needs--which it is to some extent. But there are thresholds, just as in any closed system, which when crossed can radically alter the dynamics of the system. Capitalism has NO respect for thresholds, profit is the only consideration--is this not so?
Governments try to put a halter on this manic drive to some extent, but their power to restrain is weakening at the same time as thresholds are crossed.
It's not just capitalism as an irredeemably inequitable economic system; it's industrialised, adaptive, technocratic, exploitative, amoral, global capitalism, that can adapt quickly to obstacles, even pre-empt them--thus neoliberalism prepares its own way before-hand with a perpetual ideological offensive.
Once the system gets enough momentum in it, ideological and material, there's no stopping it, and that's where we are now. It's a bit like global warming in that once established it provides its own positive feedback and is unstoppable until the dynamic is naturally depleted by the limits that were always there--to the point where another dynamic takes over, systematic collapse.
So putting aside the ethical concerns for the moment, what I'm against here is the whole notion of dependency on any "system", especially one so profoundly irrational that it pays no heed even to its of its own natural limits--as if it had none!
In a closed system unsustainable wealth on one side can only be maintained (for a time) by complementary poverty on the other.
I think we've come to the point where no "system" can be trusted in to preserve our best interests--if it ever could!
We've reached the point where we have to be responsible and live according to a budget.
I've now said this to you in so many ways, I don't know how to rephrase it..

“by capital I mean that which is invested and reinvested, ad nauseam, in hopes of perpetual increase.”

Ad nauseam? To the point of wanting to vomit? That’s a strange definition of capital.