UN Report highlights global inequality The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, December 9th, 1998. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Fax: (612) 9281 5795. Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.peg.apc.org/~guardian Subscription rates on request. ****************************** The United Nations Human Development Report once again highlights the gross inequality in the world's wealth and the exploitation of the majority of the world's population for the benefit of a small minority of people. For an extra US$6 billion a year, basic education could be provided for "everyone in the world". But the money supposedly cannot be found. In the US, however, in an economy geared to wasteful consumption and the looting of the wealth of the Third World, people are encouraged to spend US$8 billion a year on cosmetics. It is estimated that an extra annual expenditure of US$13 billion is all that would be needed to provide basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world. That's significantly "less" than Americans and Europeans spend each year on pet food ($17 billion a year). The estimated annual total needed to provide clean water and safe sewers for the world's population is US$9 billion. Europeans spend more than that a year on ice cream alone. The three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries. The 60 richest Americans have total assets of US$311 billion. The world's 225 richest individuals have a combined wealth of over US$1 trillion--equal to the annual income of the poorest 47 percent of the entire world's population. The overdeveloped capitalist countries are continuing to consume the earth's precious resources at the expense of the 4.4 billion people in so-called "developing" countries, where nearly three- fifths of the people lack access to safe sewers, a third have no access to clean water, a quarter do not have adequate housing and a fifth have no access to modern health services of any kind. The richest fifth of the world's people consumes 86 per cent of all goods and services while the poorest fifth consumes just 1.3 percent. The richest fifth owns 87 percent of all vehicles and consumes 84 percent of all paper. Afghanistan, Cambodia, Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have only one telephone line per 1,000 people. Sweden has 681 and the United States has 626 lines per 1,000 people. The average African household today consumes 20 per cent "less" than it did 25 years ago. People in Bangladesh consume an average of six and a half pounds of meat a year. In the USA, the average is 260 pounds each. An estimated 2.2 million people die each year from "indoor" air pollution. Eighty percent of the victims are rural poor in developing countries, who die from the effects of breathing air filled with smoke from dung and wood burned as fuel which is more harmful than tobacco smoke. By 2050, 8 billion of the world's projected 9.5 billion people will be living in these "developing" countries. It is estimated that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all and clean water and safe sewers for all is roughly US$40 billion a year -- or less than four percent of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people in the world. The Guardian 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. 2010 Australia. Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Website: http://www.peg.apc.org/~guardian end ============== Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List As vilified, slandered and attacked by One Nation mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
