At church this morning we watched a video featuring U2’s Bono and Pastor Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church — the topic? The ONE campaign; chances are you’ve seen or heard of it. If you’ve seen the “Make Poverty History” banners & slogans, then you’ve seen it.
I thought the presentation was quite good, and certainly thought-provoking. Bono’s contention is that the church, as followers of Jesus Christ, ought to be at the forefront of any movement to alleviate poverty. It was a very passionate plea, very reasonable; and one with which I found myself in agreement.
This evening when I got home, I decided to take a closer look at one.org to see what it was they were really trying to get me — us — to do. At first glance, all they really want you to do is sign a petition and spread the word. Well, that doesn’t seem too hard; sign a petition and spread the word, and you have the instant satisfaction of knowing that you stood up in an attempt to end poverty. That’s very easy, and provides a nice warm fuzzy, but come on — a petition and a bracelet? — that can’t be all that it’s about. And of course it isn’t.
So what is it?
If you cut out all the statistics and colorful pleas for organization, it seems that what one.org really wants is to lobby the US government to give an additional $25 billion dollars to fight AIDS and extreme poverty. This figure, they say, amounts to just 1% of the US (gov’t) budget.
Let me stress again — I agree with Bono’s point that the church ought to be among the leaders in attempts to fight or aid against poverty.
Where I stop agreeing is in the idea that our action in this is simply to lobby the government to provide the money. Don’t get me wrong — it’s an attractive solution. It allows us to take action knowing that it will cost us, personally, nothing. After all, we’ve already paid our taxes, and the Lord only knows where they’re going anyways, so an additional 1% of them might as well go to fight poverty. Right? And that way, if the government decides to ignore the lobbying, it gives us the easy out of simply blaming Washington. Then it’s Washington that doesn’t care — not us. We care. We signed a petition. Tragically, it reminds one of the famous(?) Frog and Peach sketch (by Dudley Moore and Peter Cook):
SG: I believe it was shortly after World War Two. Do you remember that, the Second World War?
I: Certainly, yes.
SG: Ghastly business.
I: Oh yes.
SG: Absolutely ghastly business.
I: Yes, indeed…
SG: I was completely against it.
I: Well, I think we all were.
SG: Ah yes, but I wrote a letter.
So, if I agree that we should be helping — and I do — but I don’t think that lobbying the government is the right action, then what am I suggesting as an alternative? Do we just keep “waiting on the world to change,” like in the John Mayer song?
What I think is that it’s us who should be giving; not the government. I took the liberty of doing some brief research (a la Wikipedia — I told you it was “brief”) on US incomes, and did a little bit of math.
The nutshell version is that there are approximately 193 million “households” in the US, and that the median annual income of all US households is $42,326. So if the people — not the government — decided to give 1% of their income to fight AIDS & poverty, it would actually amount to a whopping 89 billion dollars. To be more realistic (or cynical, depending on your viewpoint), if only 30% of US households donated 1%, it would still be almost 30 billion dollars, more than we are being encouraged to lobby from Washington.
The immediate objection is that if you ask people to give personally, they won’t. To me, that’s something of a cop-out. This whole discussion started from the acknowledgment that we, the church, ought to be involving ourselves in efforts like this. If that’s the case, then it shouldn’t matter how many other people give or don’t — we’ll want to do what we can regardless.
The concern will be that if we just rely on individuals to give, to “do their part” as it were, that not everyone will, and that we won’t have the billions needed to make a meaningful difference. That’s a reasonable concern, but it doesn’t justify doing the wrong thing, and in my opinion, getting the government to give $25 billion dollars is the wrong thing to do. I would even go as far as to say that if the government actually has $25 billion in the budget to give away, then that just says that the American people should have been taxed $25 billion less the previous year.
I’m aware that this is going to sound callous to some people, unrealistic to others — despite the fact that I’m actually advocating giving, not inaction. I can’t help that — I just don’t believe that it is government’s job to provide charity on a global scale (or even a domestic scale, for that matter — but that’s another story). If that makes you mad, well, I’m curious as to why it should anger anyone. What is so unreasonable about suggesting that we, personally, give 1% of our budget, especially considering that this could add up to considerably more than the amount the ONE campaign wants the government to commit?
Or is just signing a petition and waiting for the government to act really the best we can do?
They’re asking the government for the money, because it’s the government that has (for the most part) caused the problem in the first place. Too many countries (whole countries) are crippled because they’re unable to pay back money that was loaned to them under completely ridiculous terms and conditions by the world bank. The ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign (known as ONE in the States, I believe) is working hard to end this cause of poverty, trying to write off some of the debt that has been caused by the west.
As you and I have both observed in the past, the whole strategy here is broken.
http://brianglass.wordpress.com/2005/07/06/live8/
Having spent quite a bit of time in Eastern Africa, I would say there is a greater need for us to give 1% of our time than 1% of our money. We were working with HIV clinics and educational programs that have decent funding, the real challenge was finding honest, capable people to take that money and put it to good use.
@mrBen: I want to disagree with you… at least in the assertion that poverty in the third world was “caused” by the west. I’d like to know a little more about the loans in question before I go off blustering about like a know-it-all, though, so I’ll see what I can find. I don’t expect to become an expert on global economics overnight, though. ;-)
The other problem is that there is very real disagreement among schools of economic thought as to what the “cause” of poverty is; neither side is “stupid,” they just disagree. Advocates of Keynes and Galbraith are going to disagree with advocates of Hayek, Milton Friedman, or Thomas Sowell; all those men are brilliant, they just happen to disagree on some very fundamental economic issues. I have a feeling that you and I, on the economic issue at least, are coming from similarly varying perspectives… it’s possible that we just won’t agree on this particular issue.
Also, you are quite correct; “The ONE campaign” is merely the US arm of the “Make Poverty History Campaign”. I had a feeling that it could not possibly be focused on the US alone, but for the purposes of this post, I hadn’t looked into that.
Echoing what Brian Glass said and linked back to, I have to say that I do agree that if all we do is debt relief, and no other changes are made in governments, I have my doubts how much real effect this would have on extreme poverty worldwide.
@Andrew: You’re probably right. I’d be tempted to say that both are necessary, especially considering that there are probably many who would be willing to go overseas to serve for a short time, but who can’t afford to. Even if workers from the west can pay their own way to get there, whatever organization(s) they work with will certainly need funding… That being said, it’s a very good point.
I definitely agree that both are needed, it just seems that all of us in the west tend to emphasize on financial giving and ignore the giving of our time.
OK - firstly I ought to state that my knowledge of this area is probably as vague as most of us. Having said that, a couple of extra points:
1. Yes, time is important. But at a governmental level it’s not really going to happen. That will happen at a personal and charitable organisation level.
2. I don’t know about the US, but in the UK we have a huge debt crisis, with people in huge amounts of debt on credit cards and loans. Most of them are only able to pay off their interest each month, without making a dent into the actual base debt. This is, AIUI, the same situations with many of the countries in Africa. People can sometimes declare bankruptcy and clear their debts; countries can’t. Without changes at governmental level (both in the western gov’ts and the african gov’ts) the time and money spent by relief agencies will have a far less long-lasting and far-reaching effect (IMHO).
3. The campaign to wipe clean their debts started years ago with the Jubilee 2000 campaign ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_2000 ) which was also supported by many of the same figures who then started Make Poverty History in 2005 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Poverty_History ). Those 2 articles on Wikipedia alone will provide enough reading on the pros and cons of debt relief ;)
4. It’s not about giving. It’s about clearing away debts so that we’re not giving with one hand, and taking away with the other.
Hope that helps.
I get what you’re saying, and sure — there’s a lot of people in perpetual debt in the US, too. And Canada… and probably in any place where it’s allowed.
I’m going to have to put it off till tomorrow, but I’ll read the debt-relief articles, certainly. I can understand how getting out of debt is a necessary hurdle before certain things can “get better” — for a person as well as a nation. I’m not completely convinced what the solution is, so I’ll reserve further comment; in general, though, I would favor private giving over government giving. If a government chooses to forgive, delay, or eschew interest on some or all of a nation’s debt, that may be fine also. I think there are economic ramifications to some of this that I’m not qualified to comment on.
Thanks for your reply, too. It is a distinct pleasure to know people with whom one can disagree without getting into an argument… :)
I’m enjoying the dialogue too :) We see eye-to-eye on most things, so it’s nice to be able to have a proper discussion once in a while :D