POVERTY IN THE FIRST WORLD. BRYAN

We are so self centered that sometimes we don’t even realize what surrounds us, we live in our nice trendy neighbourhoods, we take the car without even looking around us, go to work and then back home where kids, wife and a nice dinner await us. What if we step out of that bubble someday and take a quick ride to the suburbs? We’ll discover an entirely different world, no beautiful 19th century houses and buildings, no well-cared for pavement, no clean streets, no pretty, shiny cars riding around. It’s crazy how big the differences can be between the city and the suburbs, huh?

In the developed, first world, like Europe and the US, you have different types of poverty: Those who voluntarily choose to live on the streets and make the best of every day without having to work, support a family,etc.

And then those who are put in the position of poverty because they had no other choice.This might be because of educational reasons ( like not finishing high school), social reasons (family problems, teenage pregnancy) and economic reasons ( money problems, unemployement).

We also call this kind of poverty, silent poverty as we can’t see this physically. The people in these situations live in very bad conditions, they barely have enough money for normal food, putting their kids in good schools, the rent of their house, health facilities,etc. This causes a bad future for the young generation because this poverty is the main reason why young people resort to taking drugs, stealing and prostitution. It has also been proved that poor people live less than the rich one because those that are poor don’t have enough money to buy medicine, go to the hospital, have routine medical check ups or operations, etc. We live in a pretty tough world nowadays, if you don’t have enough money for good health care that’s your problem, you can die on the street, no one will care.

The question now is : Can we change this ?

Of course we can change it, but this isn’t something we can do from one day to the next, we need time, a lot of effort, cooperation and mutual solidarity.

Where do we begin ?

We have to search for the cause of this poverty. I personally think it’s the fault of the society we live in, it’s not equal, unfair, and it only benefits those that are rich. Although there are Human Rights and according to the law everybody is equal, there still is a lot of discrimination happening today. It’s more difficult for a coloured person to get a job than for a white one, the same happens with women, besides the fact that they are paid less than men. Because of this the people who suffer from discrimination have bad jobs, they work hard and they get paid the minimum wage. If we were to live in a society where everybody had the same rights and were treated the same way, maybe we could get past poverty. I’m not saying we should create a communist society, that might be too intense, but a society where people can get a good, free education that provides a decent set of ethics and values to all, and provides equal opportunities, then at least we would be off to a good start for the next generation.

Bryan