Is The Worlds Wealth Unequally Distributed

. Essay, Research Paper

1. “The distribution of wealth and resources in the world is unequal”. Using a recent example which illustrates this inequality explain what Christians might do to support the victims of this situation. You should refer to the writing and thinking of the Roman Catholic tradition to illustrate and support what you say. If we look at our world we can see that there are two extremes. The extremely rich and the extremely poor. Luxembourg is the richest country in the world according to it’s Gross National Product. The average person in that country earns approximately $40,000 per year while in Sudan the average person earns $63. That is a colossal difference in wealth. If we look at a map of the world we can see that most of the world’s developed countries lie north of the equator while the majority of developing countries lie south. This can also be referred to at times as the ‘Physical Quality of Life Index Line’. If we look at the U.S.A. We can see that it possesses the most Billionaires with the figure reaching 145. This is a tremendous amount of money concentrated among a minute percentage of the world’s population. We would have to consider this as extreme inequality. Bill Gates the present owner of the Microsoft Coporation is the richest non-royal person in the world with assests estimated at $30 billion. If we took a number of developing countries and added up their present finances it would barely reach that figure. In the film industry collosal amounts of money are being payed to the actors and actresses. An example of this would be Arnold Swarzhenneger who pulled in approxiametly 74 million dollars for his role in the ‘Terminator’. Opera Whinfrey earned 171 million dollars for one show recently. This is really beyond my comprehension, no one deserves that amount of money for such a task as acting. Another way in which inequality can be shown is by looking at the ‘Per Capita Expenditure’ values. In the U.S.A. The average American would spend around $16,500 per annum, with a similar situation in Japan where the average citizen would spend $19,700 per year. Now looking at the values for some of the poorer countries in the world I can see that for Somalia their average expenditure for one year comes to a total of $17. A massive difference between the two. However in calling a country poor what exactly are we saying. The fianancial position of a country has to be compared to anothers in order to refer to it as poor. It would sometimes be called relative poverty. For example we could say that Great Britain is poor in comparison with a country such as Japan. By looking at the GNP and the PCE we could see once again a great difference in the two. Yet we know that the standard of living in GB is quite high. Poverty is only labelled upon a country through its relation with other countrie’s financial positions. By looking at the above facts and figures it becomes quite clear that the statement is quite correct in what it tells us. What is a developed and undeveloped country. From my own knowledge I would give the definition of a developed country as one which has established a stable financial situation, has good health-care, and possesses a fairly good educational system. Taking developing nations I would define these as countries which have no stable economy, poor sanitation and health-care, and a quite poor educational system. A lot of the countries in today’s world fit this description almost exactly while a good number of countries mainly above the PQLI line fit the first description. This definitely shows the inequality in modern day society. One quarter of the world’s population lives in the developed North and has four fifths of the world’s wealth at its disposal. In these developing countries there are a number of problems resulting from this great poverty: Firstly the poverty of the country itself is a great problem. Many nations spend their money on fairly silly items such as arms when it could be spent more suitably. The reason for their investment in arms is that a lot of developing countries have political problems and quite a number are at war. The world bank which provides loans to these countries expects it’s money returned along with interest charges and a lot of these countries can barely afford to repay just the money loaned. Therefore they borrow more money to pay off the first loan. It is a never-ending cycle which leaves these nations constantly in debt. An idea which has been suggested is to cancel all debts and begin again yet many are relunctant to do this. A lot of the money which people rightfully earn through production and exportation never reaches their pockets as retailers and transporters take the majority of the profit therefore the hard-working person in that country receives a very small amount of the profit. Secondly we have hunger and there are two forms of this. They include starvation and malnutrition. Starvation being where the people don’t have enough to eat. This is a problem which many organisations have tried to solve by actually giving food to the people and also by giving them the means to produce their own by providing seeds, tools etc. Malnutrition is where there is enough food but it doesn’t provide a balanced diet. There is very little that can be done about this as helping organisations do not have the means in which to meet every nutritional need. This can also be due to a shortage of water, but the people’s own