Wealth Total of World + Darfur starvation: eno. $ to help them?

[oscar111]

I have a gut feeling that there is more than enough money in the world to rescue the thousands now starving in Darfur.

But i have no stats to back that up.

Anyone know the world's total wealth?

Nice, but not necessary would be a source, and nicer would be a link, but just tell me what you know, ...any info much appreciated.

Science's progress ought to be increasing our wealth with no limit - all the way to Utopia.

thanks!

[Maple]

1. The world spends

well over a billion a day on war.

The problem isn't lack of wealth, it's what we do with it.

[Massacure]

2. The U.S controls about 25% of the worlds weath, don't we?

So probably somewhere around 41-42 trillion dollars of GDP a year between all the countries.

[oscar111]

3. Wealth not = to income

hi,
thanks both.. and let me urge all to keep in mind that yearly income is GDP, while

amassed, stored in bank or stock etc, type of money is true meaning of WEALTH.

GDP flows yearly, while
WEALTH is static, mostly.

That said, i appreciate info on both world GDP and world WEALTH.

Both can be used to help in Darfur situations. It breaks my heart to see things like Darfur happen.

Massacure, i have seen your info other places, so you are probably right about GDP. Thanks!! Now, about wealth, anyone?

[Maple]

4. The US

is the biggest debtor nation in the world.

And actually the world has more than enough wealth to feed, clothe, house, educate, and provide healthcare to everyone on the planet.

We just don't do it.

[oscar111]

5. maple, thanks! and

wondering if you recall any good sources on that? Sounds just like what i would like to read. I searched google but oddly, came up with nothing on worlds wealth that was concrete.. just blogs where the writer spoke vaguely.
Such a basic, framework fact, you would think it would be in every college basic econ course.. but not in mine by Samuelson, the classic textbook.

Thank You again!
PS maple what is the sig photo on your posts? might want to caption it if possible.

[amazona]

6. too long since college but...

One of my professors in the 70s provided his own statistics from various sources which showed the amount of food that is produced and destroyed by insects, rots in "storage," spoiled by weather, etc. before it gets harvested and/or distributed was way more than the number of calories required by the hungry of the world. It seems there must be a way to re-calculate this information for today. The main jist of his argument was that the food is produced (especially, at the time, in America where a lot of excess food was produced because of subsidies and then warehoused or made into gov't cheese or spoiled) but we did not have a way to get the food to the hungry. Indeed, many gov't aid programs of the time ended with the food or money just going to the 3rd world nation's armies and actually helping to oppress the hungry instead of feed them.

The fact that my prof had to compile stats from a number of sources suggests to me that the argument wasn't popular or accepted enough to make it into the textbooks but I'm guessing he is correct...A lot of food does get spoiled instead of in the hands of the hungry. But it would take a bit of research to get hard numbers.

I don't doubt that Bill Gates' income alone would feed the folks in Africa but you have the issue of getting it away from Bill Gates and making sure it actually gets into the hands of the hungry and NOT into the hands of Al Qaeda, or corrupt gov't officials, or other terror mongers.

My prof witnessed a U.S. aid program to provide powdered milk to a village in Africa (don't recall the nation). The people could not digest the milk and therefore used it to whitewash their houses.

[oscar111]

7. milk..inability to digest milk is widespread

among africans. Wonder why the usa gov staffers did not know that? If you had not said the prof saw it in person, i would have said it all was a tale made up by the RW to sink aid programs.

I agree there is enough food for all, but want to know if there is enough money . Money is key because one would need to both buy the food AND do shippnig costs AND do refrigeration costs AND pay wharehousing costs AND pay for security.. in darfur, security would be costly.. an entire army needed.

So i still ask: what is the total wealth of our little world?

Seems such a foundation stone of economics would be the first fact in an ECON 101 text. Is there a CONSPIRACY by the Elders of Knight s Templar and Masons to hide this statistic? LOL.

[treepig]

8. there was an article in The Economist (a british publication, i believe)

a couple of weeks ago (sorry, no link, i was reading it on a plane) that was focusing on sudan but made the point that there has never been a famine in a country with a free media.

the point being, that even the poorest countries have the ability to feed their populations if they have the political will (and since hungry children are a sensationalist story everywheres, the media will report if they are allowed, and then the government is ultimately shamed into providing the needed resources).

the bottom line is that hunger and starvation are not a matter of resource availability, but of politics. darfur is surely yet another example of a completely avoidable tragedy.

[oscar111]

9. wealth total still needed

thanks for the economist views.

I would say to that, it is perilously close to the RW evasion of "blame the victim", and sit on our hands.

i challenge the econ. magazine to come up with a plan, given cases where good local politics do not exist.

Local harvest potential is fine, but not relevant when farmers cannot harvest

Is the econ. mag always so far to the RW?

I still need to learn the world's total wealth.

[oscar111]

10. still need total wealth: economist magazine RW?

anyone have the total wealth of the world? No one posted it so far.

The economist magazine... as i mull over their article, the less i like their viewpoint. Sounds like they want to put all responsibility for action on the bad local government... and slough off any need for them {british readers and editor} to act. Human needs are real, and national boundaries are sheer imagination. Show me a photo of a boundary line engraved in cosmos-old stone, endorsed by a Creator.

Again, what is the world's wealth total? Shame on Economics Departments who do not begin with this fact.

[oscar111]

11. No one knows the wealth? shame on you

folks, this is the most basic economics fact of all. Since no one seems to know it, i am concluding that our college Econ. Depts. are staffed by "experts" lost in a "culture" of looking at tiny details, unable to think outside of the box and ask the obvious questions.

[snowFLAKE]

13. It's not that difficult to search the web for statistics

So "Shame on You" right back at you!!

Going beyond that, the United States Census Bureau provides statistics on net household worth, which seems to be the type of "wealth" information you're looking for. They're not all that up-to-date, though:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/wealth/1998_2000/wlth98-5.html

Basically, the net household worth in 1998 was $136,171. According to a google search, this value had increased to $341,300 in 2002 (perhaps being greatly inflated by the stock market bubble and somewhat inflated by inflation itself).

Then, according to the TV Ratings People, there are about 101,000,000 households in the USA, giving the "wealth" of the USA as about $34 trillion dollars. If this value could be magically converted into food for the poor, that'd supply about $15 per person per day for each of this planet's people for a year, surely enough to feed them all. However, what about the second year when all the wealth is gone? Clearly, "wealth" as you define it is utterly irrelevant to considerations such as supplying food to the world's poor. After all, they can't eat diamonds, real estate, or even the $$'s themselves (or maybe they could, but the nutritional value is rather low and the net benefit would be abysmal). Consequently, the influx of all this "wealth" into the food system would do little or nothing to ensure the world's people get fed if there's an underlying food shortage. All that would happen is that the cost of a meal at McDonald's would incrase from $4.39 to $439 or $439,000 (or whatever).

The key parameter to consider is the ability to produce ample food for everyone without triggering bidding wars that will price out hundreds of millions of the poorest people. Believe it or not, every country on earth has this ability (of course, in some cases "Acts of God" cause local or short term crises that require international intervention) provided that the political situation makes it a priority that the poor get fed. Hunger is not a problem of wealth - the earth has plenty of wealth - and it is rarely a problem caused by Nature in a broad sense (at least in Modern Times when food from Afar can be easily supplied) - instead it is a problem specifically of Human Nature.

[snowFLAKE]

12. Perhaps a problem with The Left

Is that they reject the notion that a country should be Self-Sufficient wrt to food?

What's that Old Saying about giving someone a fish and they have lunch, but teach them to fish and they have a continued source of food . . .

Regardless, I have not seen The Economist's article, but it does appear to address your point about whether sufficient wealth exists to feed all the Hungry People, and the answer is Yes, even in the Poorest Countries. It's a totally different issue whether or not outside intervention is warranted when a local situation becomes all fucked up.