"The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through 'compassion' is a cruel and inhuman society." (Pope Benedict XVI in his second encyclical Spe salvi, "On Christian Hope", n.38)
Not unlike the human population debate and many other world problems, poverty is another issue that has divided humanity into roughly two main groups:
- Left-wing (L-wing) people described as more R-brain in their thinking.
- Right-wing (R-wing) people described as more L-brain in their thinking.
The essential problem as seen by each group
The L-wing view
This is one of acknowledgement of the issue followed by an argument that the problem lies in the current economic Westernised system where wealth and consequently power is distributed to a minority and the rest of the population must "fight it out" so to speak for the remaining resources (food, jobs etc).
The R-wing view
This is one of either not seeing a problem, or seeing the issue as insignificant. If arguing on the former, R-wing people claim it is a personal choice people make of whether they want to be in poverty or not. If the poor say they are not able to change themselves, it is because they are too lazy, don't have a hard working attitude, and therefore don't deserve to be helped or assisted in any way.
How do each group view the solution?
The L-wing view
If the system is to be maintained, the solution would require people to give more money, free services, and be more creative and humane in their approach to helping the poor. For example, L-wing people propose we should constantly have advertisements and programs emphasising the importance of giving to charities that do work for the poor, followed by access to free education, low-cost or free public housing, regular encouragment to try something they can do and build up from this position through the development of increasingly useful skills, give the poor more confidence in themselves and so on. If, on the other hand, money is scarce (unlikely in a wealthy developed nation), the only other alternative is for people to provide free or very low-cost assistance.
Advantage: Less people will turn to crime as they would have money and/or assistance to survive.
Disadvantage: If poor people are not encouraged to try something to earn a living, it can potentially make them lazy by not setting goals and working towards them (ie. contributing to society in some way). If everything is provided on a platter, there is no incentive to find work. Also there is no clear vision as to how the money should be spent to be most effective to solving the poverty issue.
The R-wing view
The solution, according to R-wing types, is essentially to spend no money on social support or put a high enough cost on everything so that hopefully it will encourage people to find work in order to help pay for things and get the support they need. And if that doesn't work, R-wing people think the poor are probably more useful as human fodder for the military engaged in overseas conflicts. For example, R-wing people have proposed the tough American-style of welfare and social support system where the absolute minimum money is provided for survival before it is cut-off altogether after 6 months. The aim in taking this tough social stance is primarily to force people into survival mode after 6 months so that hopefully they will do the right thing and find a job (irrespective of population levels, limited training and resources, and the number and type of jobs available).
A supporter of this hardline view is Associate Professor Peter Saunders at Macquarie University's Department of Sociology.
Working with Kayoko Tsumori—a PhD student in political science and international relations from the Australian National University (ANU)—Saunders said in his one-sided report issued by the R-wing think-tank of the Centre for Independent Studies on 27 November 2002 titled Poverty in Australia - Beyond the Rhetoric:
'The American system has time limits for eligibility to welfare and in some sense is more stick than carrot...but it has had some amazing successes [and amazing failures too].
'If giving people more money were the solution to poverty, poverty would have disappeared by now, yet the number of people requiring support has been growing not shrinking.' (1)
Advantage: People in poverty may be forced to accept any kind of job when pushed to the survival extreme of not having money.
Disadvantage: There is a big risk people placed in survival mode may choose negative goal(s) to deal with a harsh and incompassionate R-wing society leading to higher levels of crime such as terrorism and a greater cost to the community through law enforcement and military spending. Jobs chosen or created in such a harsh system will include a range of immoral or controversial areas such as child pornography — hence the reason for having increased law enforcement. In the final analysis, poor people driven to this extreme may eventually maintain and support the current system, but no one would be obliged to do the right thing for the environment and other people. People will even be clever enough to find ways to get around legislation if they are forced to survive.
How do each group get their point across?
L-wing people (mainly found in the average middle-income areas of society) are acutely aware of various social problems of the day including poverty. So much so that sometimes it is possible for L-wing people to exaggerate the numbers of people in poverty as a way of highlighting the problem. They may also try to simplify the definition of poverty to one based on income only.
Whatever the methods used and explanations given to get the point across, most L-wing people are expecting to see some kind of change in the current Westernised system as if the problem lies with society, not the individual.
On the other hand, R-wing people (generally the richer and more powerful types having control of key positions in the current economic Western system) may try to underestimate the number of people in poverty in order to make the problem seem insignificant and so justify maintaining the current Westernised and capitalist system. They will try methods of complicating the definition of poverty to cover a whole range of issues to the point where it is easier to ignore the problem instead of facing up to the reality of what must be done.
Whatever the explanations given by R-wing people for poverty, these types of people are almost always expecting to see some kind of change in the individual and not society.
In essence, R-wing types believe society has no problems and therefore should be maintained, which is understandable as society has treated R-wing types well through the income they have earned from their businesses and leadership roles.
The problem with the R-wing solution
R-wing people have a particularly good understanding of the limited resources created by the current economic system. Whether it is because many R-wing people are wealthy and have hoarded many of the resources for their own purposes (eg. make a profit, enjoy life's luxuries etc), or whether there are simply too many people in the world, is hard to tell at the moment. Or perhaps they have not understood the importance of recycling everything we produce.
It may also be because there is a need to maintain the "status quo" as a result of some great secret being kept by the US military and government (ie. the "conspiracy theory").
Whatever the truth, if we implemented this purely R-wing solution to the problem of poverty, the aim would be to push people into survival mode in the hope that everyone will do the right thing in the eyes of the R-wing people. Unfortunately there are risks to society through this incompassionate approach. For example, when people are forced into survival mode, all kinds of immoral activities including the illegal stuff (eg. drugs, child pornography, terrorism, murder, theft etc) will take place. The risks to society is potentially so great, it could eventually lead to civil wars, if not wars with other nations thinking in a similar way as people find ways to get what they want, legally or otherwise.
At the end of the day, stopping illegal acts is going to cost society enormous amounts of money and time and will take greater effort to maintain social order through law enforcement, the legal system, extra military spending to handle terrorism and invading nations that may be thinking in a similar L-brain (or R-wing) manner as other countries, and building more and more prisons and mental institutions to house the increasing numbers of people classified by R-wing people as misfits who refuse, or are unable, to find work or fit in with the current Western system and thus unable to earn enough money to survive properly.
To put it in a nutshell, the issue of poverty is currently seen by R-wing people as either not a problem when people are forced to do the right thing, or is such a difficult problem (or choose to make it difficult in order to protect a big secret or other hidden agenda) that they prefer to reduce the size and extent of the problem through whatever means possible (eg. selecting biased statistics from R-wing thinking sources). And if there is a problem to be confronted, R-wing people prefer to let people in poverty fight it out among themselves or train them to fight wars or lock them up in prisons as the only solution.
All this is seen as normal for R-wing people, especially while they continue to maximise their own superannuation payouts, business profits, celebrity status, position of power and so on. Ironically, if R-wing people think denying support would get people to do the right thing and won't heighten crimes in society, strangely these people choose to stay in what are described as luxury prison homes and at work and get transported from place to place with the help of security guards and so on. This is what R-wing people believe living is all about!
The problem with the L-wing solution
Now if we took the L-wing solution to the problem, a consideraby more compassionate and humane approach would be taken. But given the difficulty and size of the problem and how entrenched it is in modern society, it is considered best to give away resources by way of money and other support to the poor.
If this approach succeeds with enough poor people, it will solve poverty and eliminate all possible forms of crime so long as everyone has the same things as everyone else has (already a problem in itself since rich, mostly R-wing people continue to acquire more and more things that others don't have for whatever reason).
However the risk to society is that we may create a group of people who are neither willing to work for society nor do they care whether the environment and other people are being deprived of resources when helping them.
So while it is important to give people support, constantly giving with no obvious signs of something in return could cause problems to a world that has finite resources and there is not enough recycling of those resources taking place.
Add to this the problem of how many poor people are deprived of love and encouragement, and any money we provide to these people as support may end up being spent by the individuals on drugs and drinking alcohol. This is the sort of thing that will create a certain amount of resentment in society among the people giving the support.
So while we have a handful of L-wing people practising the principle of recycling in the bush on a limited scale (which in itself can form a potentially viable or permanent solution to the problem of poverty and all other world problems from a L-wing perspective) and other L-wing people living in the cities are able to open their eyes and highlight the social problems and know there must be a positive and humane solution, there is not enough unity among all L-wing people to come up with a coherent and realistic solution to the serious issue of poverty.
The difference between the groups
To put it in a nutshell, the L-wing position is really based on a belief that the current Western economic system needs to change to let individuals do their thing in a balanced way. But finding the better balanced position for the current system to bring greater equality while letting a minority continue to get rich and powerful is extremely difficult to visualise and reach for in the real world. So instead it is best to give to the poor as much as possible either through money or other means without getting to the fundamental issues of modern society such as the wealth accumulated by rich people and the way they control the available resources.
And one of the critical problems is how many rich people don't implement sufficient recycling measures to ensure the resources are available to all at a low cost.
Whereas the R-wing's hardline stance is based on the belief that the current Western economic system is balanced and is going to remain this way forever. Only the individuals themselves have to change to fit the system or be forced to change by others.
What's in common between the groups
Despite the seemingly entrenched nature of this world problem in modern Western society and how it has divided people into basically two groups with seemingly different views, both L- and R-wing people do agree on certain key points: poverty exists, it is affecting some people, and both groups of people would like to see some of the benefits of the current system in helping to find a solution.
Well, at least acknowledging the existence of this world problem is an important start, even if grudgingly so for R-wing people. We can see this acknowledgment in statements such as the following from Professor Jake Najman of the University of Queensland's Schools of Social Sciences and Population Health in relation to the important landmark Australian study into the health of children based on the socio-economic status of Australian families:
'Our research shows that by age 14 some children from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds have already had the basis of their future health compromised.
'Children from lower socio-economic backgrounds by 14 have poorer mental health and poorer abilities to learn, affecting them at school and later in work. And by the time they are 14 they are more likely to have adopted an unhealthy lifestyle such as taking up risky behaviours like smoking.
'The research also suggests the health inequalities being seen in children are not only a consequence of their own economic circumstances but also that of their grandparents.
'Intervening, even during pregnancy, can make a difference.
'On one level it is a matter of simple social justice that we do something about this but, on the other hand, it just makes economic sense to target the problem at its source. The cost of targeting those at risk while they are young is considerably less than dealing with the problems that can develop later in their lives.' (2)
This study was one of its kind in Australia and one of the few to be conducted anywhere in the world. It began in 1981 by the University of Queensland and Mater Hospital.
Now all we need is to make the final step of implementing a unified solution.
How do we create a more balanced solution?
To bring greater balance for society and the people living in that society, we have to do three things:
1. Learn to recycle all essential items needed for human survival. In particular, food and shelter.
2. The production of essential items for survival must involve a reduction in the cost of those items to the point where they become easily affordable to anyone who needs them.
3. We must all live within our means.
4. We must encourage and give plenty of opportunities for people to find any worthwhile and positive goal to work towards of benefit or potential benefit to society.
What can we do to solve the problem?
The solution must lie somewhere between these two extremes. Balance is the key to solving the problem of poverty.
Let us start from the fact that both acknowledge poverty exists. Yes, we know how much R-wing people would prefer not to acknowledge it if they can. But whether we like it or not, while the current system is maintained, poverty is here to stay. Remember, because some people are called "right-wing" does not mean they are "right". It just means they have an extreme point-of-view important to highlighting certain issues. But at the end of the day, such views need to be balanced.
So the next question becomes, what can we do about it?
While one can sympathise with L-wing people in finding a more compassionate approach to the problem, there is a need to give incentives to the disadvantaged people in poverty to try something with their lives in return for extra support of some kind beyond the minimum level of support we should all provide to guarantee everyone's survival.
On the other hand, it is heartless and socially destructive to totally accept the R-wing solution of giving absolutely no support and letting people fight and die in society or expect them to join the Army if they can't do the right thing. There is always a reason for the situation people find themselves in and it is our duty to find out what that is and be positive about a solution.
And knowing there will be a humane solution to all problems should be enough to ensure we provide at least the minimum level of support for everyone in order to survive.
Unfortunately R-wing people would prefer to keep quiet or impose a certain way they want to see (which they are most familiar with) and so ignore the underlying problem. This is how R-wing people make life easier for themselves (ie. save money so they can be richer themselves) by saying "We don't want to know your problem." or "The problem really doesn't exist" and then cut off all forms of support.
About the only time R-wing people may choose to show some compassion and do the right thing by the people is around election time when the polls show they are seriously lagging behind the opposition. For example, after being in government for over 10 years, Australian Prime Minister John Howard decides in mid-October 2007 (within weeks of the election day) and after realising he is way behind in the polls to announce he would show reconciliation to the poorer Aboriginal communities.
This is a government that believes in christian values and follows the commandments in the Bible.
This is not the purpose of why we are here.
People should be showing love all the time without being dictated by political events or anything else. You do the right thing everyday the moment you wake up in the morning.
Control our desire to have what we want
Another factor considered crucial to helping solve poverty is controlling our desire to have what we want.
For example, in the 2007 election year for Australia, we hear how the Federal (Howard) Government have approved all politicians to have a 6.7 per cent pay rise. It is not clear the reason for the increase, but one would believe it is because Federal Ministers have to be rewarded for creating a healthy economy and to prepare for their own future of pay higher costs in making the move to a renewable-energy-based and more environmentally-friendly economy.
As G. Chalmers or Jerrabomberra in NSW said:
'...there are at least 1200 homeless people sleeping out in the cold in Canberra.
'While graduates of the Department of Education, Science and Training raised $700 from donations during their Happy Hour to give to St Vinnies, our politicians gave themselves a 6.7 per cent pay rise. John Howard is to benefit by an increase of $21,000 a year and Kevin Rudd by $15,000, which they don't need. To the graduates, very well done, and shame on you to the pollies.' (The Canberra Times (Letters to the Editor): Indulgent pay rise. 23 June 2007, p.B6.)
More examples of having what we want can be read here.
To solve poverty, everyone must learn to be satisfied with what they already have and to live on the things we need to survive, especially those they can be recycled 100 per cent.
