(continued from above.)

Because the figures upon which PS relies (from the same ABS which tells us that anyone who works for more than 1 hour in a week is 'employed') are clearly inadequate, they just cannot be used as a useful measure of the improvement in quality of life. My own experience, nothwithstanding the wonders of modern technology, is that my material quality of life has got substantially worse in the last 30 years and this is confirmed in Elisabeth Wynhausen's "Dirt Cheap". Howard's welfare and IR 'reforms', both championed by Saunders, will, if they get through, soon make an already bad situation a good deal worse.

Saunders maintains that critics of neo-liberal capitalism would make everyone poorer if they got their way. The situation is the reverse. It is neo-liberal globalised capitalism which is not only impoverishing our society today, but threatening our very survival.

Due to the spectacular inefficiencies and scandalous waste in our economy, which are concealed from us by the GDP measure, the additional material benefits that should have ensued (but, at the expense of future generations) from our increases in the consumption of non-renewable resources, have not been realised. Instead they have been largely wasted as, in the most obvious of many examples, hundreds of millions around the world have been forced to buy additonal cars and waste scarce petroleum to get around their cities through largely gridlocked traffic.

For decades, many of us have accepted the strident assertions made by neo-liberals that the market, will be able to solve all the threatened problems of energy scarcity, global warming etc, etc.

Soon, but perhaps, when it is almost too late, as the price of petroleum surges beyond its current record of $US67 per barrel, it will be undeniable that the Cargo cultists of New Guinea, who worshipped the gods, who they thought, delivered, from the sky, the material supplies used by Australians and Americans in the Second World War, were incomparably more intelligent than Saunders' neo-liberal co-thinkers, who evidently believe that energy and other natural resources are infinite.

Overcoming-Poverty Mugabe-style!
President Robert Mugabe has unleashed a tsunami-like wave of destruction upon Zimbabwe’s urban poor, who also happen to be those who generally do not support his ruling Zanu-PF.

The demolitions commenced on 23 May under the auspices of “Operation Murambasvina” (Restore Order). About 300,000 homes have been demolished leaving 1.5 million homeless. Three children died after being crushed in their homes. Others have died from exposure. 30,000 people have been arrested.

The world was quite oblivious to this tragedy until images of bulldozers, security police, burning homes, and mothers and children sitting amid rubble were secretly recorded and smuggled out of Zimbabwe.

The extent of the devastation is now well known. What is still unclear is what is really happening in Zimbabwe, for other details indicate that this operation is indeed much more than a badly handled urban renewal project and really is a Mugabe/Zanu-PF war against opponents. It appears that, in the light of the recent Velvet, Rose, Orange and Cedar “revolutions”, Mugabe and his Zanu-PF are merely engaging in a little “revolution prevention” by shattering, impoverishing, dispersing and possibly even killing the opposition before it can get organised.

Three years ago, when Didymus Mutasa was Zanu-PF’s Secretary for Administration and in charge of food distribution, he commented regarding food distribution to the opposition, “We would be better off with only 6 million, with our own people who support the liberation struggle. We don’t want all these extra people.”

In April 2005, after his election victory, Mugabe appointed Didymus Mutasa to be his Minister for State Security. This role puts Mutasa in charge of the Central Intelligence Organization (secret police) and in charge of Operation Murambasvina.

On top of this, Mutasa’s Ministry for State Security is now in charge of food distribution, although Mutasa claims that there are no food shortages in Zimbabwe. When a journalist challenged Mutasa with reports from Zimbabwean Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube that people are starving to death in Bulawayo, Mutasa replied, “The cleric [Ncube] has a psychological disease and he needs to have his head examined because he is a liar.”
[Cont]

Defining poverty - oh so boring

Rather than define what people would presumably strive to escape - let us, instead, define "wealth" - that would at least define a "goal" and something to persue and strive for.

Wealth is not a mono-dimensional quality.

"Wealth" is more a state of mind than a full larder.
"Wealth" is a sense of peace more than a piece of gold.
"Wealth" it the attitude which accompanies us in all our endeavours.
"Wealth" is making ethical choices rather than expedient ones.

Thus, defining "poverty" is as pointless as trying to define "Wealth"
and those who would attempt to "define" it in economic terms merely illustrate their own deficiency and blindness in not seeing beyond the immediate / material.

I would futher suggest "Wealth" is a state of being in which one is reliant upon ones own effort and not the hand-outs of the state for ones sustinence.

As Peter Saunders suggests
"One of the greatest ironies of the poverty debate in this country is that the activists and academics who keep insisting that poverty is a huge and growing problem also argue for more welfare spending to solve it"

- long term, wide based welfare schemes entrench and institutionalise poverty on the generations of recipients who grow up in a culture of not needing to bother for themselves - because the state will provide everything for them.

Col, brilliant post. Thanks.

R0bert

The point here is to respond to Peter Saunders 'agenda' in his article - not to argue what poverty and wealth are. What is poor and what is wealth are things that we can decide for ourselves if we understand the available alternatives.

What Peter wants to argue is that it doesn’t matter how large the gap between rich and poor grows (and it is growing larger), as long as the poor are ‘better-off’.

I would say that the problem is that Peter is not poor and although his father was, this does not qualify him to understand poverty now. Although his figures indicate that low income earners have more money coming in, many of us do not feel better off.

The fact is that although we seem to have more money and more things, health (psychological and physical) problems are increasing at the same time. Many of the posters here have described aspects of the things that capitalism has brought us that have not made us 'better-off'.

There seems to be some sort of correlation here between more wealth and less health that neither the welfare lobby or the CIS are able to explain.

Mollydukes wrote : "The fact is that although we seem to have more money and more things, health (psychological and physical) problems are increasing at the same time."

The problem is that this does not seem, to me, to be a sufficiently compelling argument against neo-liberalism, and I would suggest that over-reliance on this sort of argument has allowed neo-liberalism to grow to overwhelmingly predominate over our political agenda since the 1970's when, rightly, it should have been confined permanently to the dustbins of history after the crash of 1929.

I believe it is possible, although, perhaps not altogether easy, to measure the values on all the things that used to be virtually free and which we now pay through our noses for, but which have not been accounted for in either GDP or inflation figures.

A six week holiday in Maroochydore, right beside its magnificent beach in my Gradfather's large marquee tent was practically free due to the very low camping charges in the 1960's. Even those few people who are lucky enough to be able would still have to pay much much more for the same privilege.

I believe that neo-liberalism is impoverishing us on two levels. On one level there can be no dispute. That is the level of the unsustainable destruction of our natural captital (e.g. energy stocks, fresh water, global warming etc.). No-one who relies on, for example, on income generated from a bank deposit alone, can survive indefintely if they draw more than the interest earned.

Yet economists (and unfortunately, not only neo-liberals) seem to believe that our civilisation can go on indefinitely if it consumes both the interest on our natural capital as well as the principle itself.

On the other level, over which we have been arguing, it may be possible to argue that our greater consumption of non-renewable resources has improved our objective material well-being, if only in the short term, but I would dispute even this.

The only chance we stand is to ditch the baggage of economic so-called 'rationalism' as soon as possible.