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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (830)	6/17/2005 1:10:57 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 544178

We talk about minimum wage and living wage and we never talk directly about how we want to treat poverty. Absolutely. Poverty in America (perhaps in the industrialized West) has a whole different meaning from what it does elsewhere in the world. What we define as a living wage in America would be luxury living elsewhere in the world. A living wage in America as most adherents use the term includes only one family (or single person) in a heated, weathertight dwelling with hot and cold running water, full kitchen facilities, an indoor bathroom, a car, a color TV, a stereo, varied, convenient, and nutritionally balanced food, a variety of wardrobes, good shoes and warm coats, air conditioning in certain climates, quality medical crea, and many other things that millions of people elsewhere in the world will have even a remote hope of enjoying. Worldwide poverty will never be eliminated because the world simply can't afford the resources to raise even a substantial portion of the world to our standard of poverty. I'm not suggesting that poverty is good, or that we shouldn't strive to improve people's lives. We should. But we should also not make policy decisions on the basis of goals that are totally unachievable.