World to Poor: Drop Dead Posted: 12/04/2013 1:29 pm Follow Philanthropy, Poverty , Global Fund, Global Fund To Fight AIDS TB And Malaria, World News . 18Share 30Tweet 0Email 0Comment Get World Newsletters: Subscribe . The spin-masters are already at work putting all of the sugar coating on it, but the reality is shocking and revealing. The world as a whole didnt come up with a measly $5 billion a year for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. $5 billion was a bare minimum needed to maintain momentum in the fight against these diseases. Yet the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Japan, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, China, Singapore, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, John Paulson, Barack Obama, Stephen Harper, 1,600 billionaires (with combined net worth of at least $5.5 trillion), and the rest of humanity couldnt find the money. They came up with $4 billion instead, $1 billion short. The world has told the poor and dying to drop dead. Oh, sure not in so many words. More like, just go away. Of course it doesnt work like that. Nobody has to tell the poor anything. Their deaths are silent and unremarked. Local clinics in rural villages will simply stock out of medicines. Health workers will lack equipment. Training programs wont occur. Outreach to the villages wont take place. The poor will die silently, without protest. Their families will be consoled that its gods will. But it isnt. Its the willful neglect by men (women play very little role in this). The world came up $1 billion short and the powers that be are calling the outcome just great. Yet anybody in finance, macroeconomics, corporate or national budgets, or just about any big business knows how absurd it is that the world as a whole cant manage to find the $5 billion. Its not that anybody claimed that the Global Fund isnt doing its job, saving millions of lives each year. Its not that anybody claimed that the money is just not needed. They just claimed that its not a convenient time, tight budgets and all the rest. Whats an extra $1 billion among friends? Let me suggest some of the things that that extra $1 billion represents. • Its $1 from each person in the rich world • Its about 1 days worth of oil exports of Saudi Arabia • Its roughly 14 hours of Pentagon spending • Its less than the $1.3 billion 2012 paycheck of hedge fund owner and inside-trader Steve Cohen • Its 7.7 percent of the recent fine paid by JP Morgan for financial fraud • Its 0.019 percent of the wealth of the worlds 1,426 billionaires • Its 5 percent of the Christmas bonuses on Wall Street • Its far less than the taxes evaded annually by Amazon, Google, and Facebook Merry Christmas.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 19:43:00 +0000
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