Poverty?

Below is copied in full a short write up I turned in for my Intro to Sociology class Thursday morning. Here is the link to the same article on Google Docs.

Warren, Christopher M
Dr. Johnson, Tim
SOC151 T/Th 0930 – 1045
September 13, 2007
Q: Poverty?

Q: If poverty exists, does it have a positive effect on society?

Poverty does exist in our world today, its effects are undeniable. What if your newspaper headlines read “15,000 dead in one day,” what if they read “30,000 in one day?” The startling truth is, these headlines could appear in your paper today. Its saddening that they do not. In the second paragraph of his introduction Dr. Jeffery Sachs writes that: “Every morning our newspapers could report, 'More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty'” (Sachs 1).

But, our question today is not just, “Does poverty exist?” It is “If poverty exists, does it have a positive effect on society?” This is hard. Identifying poverty is simple enough, data from the World Bank shows us that there are many places in the world that live in “Extreme Poverty” on less than $2 a day (less than 750 $/yr). The majority of poor people live in three regions East Asia, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. (Sachs 21). Does it have a positive effect on society?

Without a doubt, the existence of developing nations helps under gird the economy of the United States of America. The US has increasingly been involved in the world economy since the end of WWII, and the end of an era of isolationalism. Southeast Asia is the primary location of textile factories, the cheap labor in this area directly translates into a lower price point for imported clothing. Check your t-shirt, where does it come from? Many have campaigned against these aptly named “sweat shops,” but Sachs instead says that these jobs offer an important step in the economic ladder out of poverty. Instead of closing down the sweat shops, we should campaign for better wages and benefits for these workers. As the world explores Globalization more and more everyday, we see the positive effects that poverty has on the world economy. It is cheaper for workers in Mexico to manufacture cars than it is to pay a union worker in Detroit. It is cheaper for Swiss Air to send all their paper documents to India, have them sorted and translated into spreadsheets then sent electronically back to Zurich, than it is to pay a worker in Switzerland to do a simple data entry job (Sachs 179).

Poverty creates the existence of social classes by forcing divisions along economic lines, is it right that we exploit these differences? I think one could argue 'yes' if he says that we are bringing the economically lagging societies along. But I resolutely say 'no' if they are being left behind, as this only perpetuates the existence of poverty.

Cited: Sachs, Dr. Jeffery D; The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. The Penguin Press, New York, 2005.