Why am I content to spend $143 on things I don’t need when 25 million people starve to death every day?

Poverty just doesn't break people's hearts like it used to. Everyone knows that "you can't throw that out, there are starving kids in Africa!" and sees commercials for ChildFund. We know that there are people on the other side of the world who need us. Statistics can surprise people and photos can cause them to take pity on those suffering in our world, but does anyone really care?

A while ago, we talked about how after you are exposed to something more and more, you become desensitized to it and are no longer as affected by at as you were upon first seeing it. I think the main reason people can bear to live with knowing that other people are starving to death is that we are too used to it. We can hear the same facts over and over again, see pictures of starving children, and realize that there is suffering in our world, but everything is too easily ignored. The people become objectified in our minds. We can zone out during a commercial or turn off the television. These people who need us can be put away and forgotten about.

In class, we talked about how Mrs. Knittel would turn off the television when ChildFund commercials came on when her son was little so he would not become comfortable with or desensitized to them. I think this is the right thing to do, and for our country to wake up and start to help others, we need to take poverty seriously and remember that the poor are people who cannot be ignored.

Spending Log

What Abby Kayser Spent in One Week:
Friday - Nothing

Saturday -
Movie ticket $9
Half the price of an iPod for mother’s day $90

Sunday - Nothing

Monday -
Salad $4
Water $1

Tuesday -
Muffins $3
Iced tea $2

Wednesday -
Gas $28

Thursday -
$10 French club shirt

Over one week, I spent $143 (excluding things like food from home and bills my parents pay). That averages out to around twenty dollars every day--twenty times the amount average human being on Earth lives on. Looking back on my spending log, I can see that I bought lots of things I don't really need. The things I bought don't seem too frivolous, though, and I would imagine that lots of other American teenagers spend similar amounts or even more daily. According to a nifty Bureau of Labor Statistics chart I found online (http://www.visualeconomics.com/how-the-average-us-consumer-spends-their-paycheck/), the average American adult spends $135 daily.

Why do we have so much when so many other people die without enough to survive? People say that poverty has been around forever, so does that mean there is no solution? I don't think so. There is enough food for everyone in the world, so why do people go hungry? In my opinion, the reason poverty exists in our world today is the same reason I was so shocked to find out that people live on one-twentieth of the amount I spend daily. We are trained by our culture to believe that we have to spend money to be happy, and told to buy into the "rat race" and only care about ourselves and how much wealth or fame we can attain before death. We put the poor in our world out of our minds and convince ourselves that there is nothing we can do to help them, or that their situation is a product of their own bad choices, and that our own good fortune is isolated from their lives, but this is not the case. One essay I read while researching for this project made a point about the link between wealthy people and those living in poverty that really stood out to me: "In the end, the likelihood of living in extreme poverty increases the more distanced one is from those living in extreme wealth. The two conditions are not, however, unlinked. One is directly dependent on the other. If you are a poor black female child starving to death in Kenya, your misery is contingent on the material advantages of a wealthy white middle-aged man living in America, and vice versa. "

Although it seems to idealistic to ever be realized, I honestly believe that the only way to eradicate extreme poverty is to give up on the "rat race" and see all other people on earth as what they are: valuable human beings created by God who deserve equal opportunities to live.

One Dollar a Day

Did you know that at one in every seven people on Earth lives on under one dollar a day?

It can be hard to think of and relate to the poor in our world from our perspective in the United States. Although there is certainly poverty here, the U.S. is so much more developed and prosperous than the truly disadvantaged nations that need our help most. The issue of poverty is a serious case of distributive injustice--the richest 20 percent of the world's countries (including the United States) accounts for three-quarters of world income while 24,000 children die every day due to poverty.

These statistics are just some of the many shocking facts I have learned so far working on my Catholic Social Justice project. They offer an intense wake-up call if you really consider how many people suffer in our world while we have so much. I was particularly alarmed by the fact that so many people live on just one dollar every day--I spend so much more than that on the most unnecessary things! It's so wrong. For the next week, I am going to keep a record of all of the money I spend and compare my "weekly budget" to the rest of the world's to make the message sink in even more... I probably won't like what I learn.