Millions of Americans get by on Social Security alone

[Lazarus]

Caroline, Its as your said. I have been to Africa and most Americans would not beleve what I saw. We are rich beyond imaginaton to most people in the world. How many times in America have your seen people stepping over a dead body in the street? I have seen it in Africa. Crippled children begging, pressed up against my car window. Young girls holding a baby begging for food. You step over them on the way to the restrauant. They are waiting when you come out. Hand them some money? Just pissing in the Ocean. I still am shaken by it. Millions of people living like this. Much need to be done. It will not be easy. Where do you start. Lagos Nigeria is a city of aprox. 10 Million, no traffic lights, no reliable power. When you leave the Airport you see campfires all along the road, no electric lights, the copper has already been sold.

[retire@40]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Caroline If you don't trust that organization's agenda, retire@40, then trust my firsthand account.* We Americans are rich indeed, and in ways we can't even imagine or appreciate.

I believe you more because you didn't put a donation box next to your post.

[Michael]

Quote:

Where do you start.

With decent government. The sensible people cannot build a decent country if the bad guys can take their property away from them any time they want to. A country either controls the bad guys, or it turns into a horrible mess. Same situation to a lesser degree in many of our urban neighborhoods. The bad guys are not under control, so the sensible people flee to the suburbs. The inner city turns into a crime infested slum.

Stop the bad guys from harming the sensible people, and the sensible people will build a decent place to live. That is the only way to fix a broken place.

[Eagle43]

For a perspective on Africa, suggest Paul Theroux: "Dark Star Safari"

http://www.paultheroux.com/nonfictio...tar.safari.htm

He found it worse than 40 years ago when he went as a young man.
quote:

This is travel as discovery and also, in part, a sentimental journey. Almost forty years ago, Theroux first went to Africa as a teacher in the Malawi bush. Now he stops at his old school, sees former students, revisits his African friends. He finds astonishing, devastating changes wherever he goes. "Africa is materially more decrepit than it was when I first knew it," he writes, "hungrier, poorer, less educated, more pessimistic, more corrupt, and you can"t tell the politicians from the witch doctors. Not that Africa is one place. It is an assortment of motley republics and seedy chiefdoms. I got sick, I got stranded, but I was never bored. In fact, my trip was a delight and a revelation." Unquote

[SteveR]

You don't have to go as far away as Africa to see people starving and living in squalor. Go to Hati, Dominical Republic ( you have to leave the resort areas first), and many many other places in South or Central America, and most of the Arab world. People live without any running water in "houses" made of whatever they can find for a roof. Where livestock (if they can "find" any,) live under the same roof. There is no hygiene and food is contaminated and infested. Jobs, if they can find them are menial and backbreaking. Families tend to be large because of religious beliefs and lack of money for birth control. Education is non-existant beyond what can be learned through other family members or other tribe members.

There are many people in America who do not have adequate resources to provide for their daily life but with a few exceptions (yes I have lived in the deep south and inner cities and I have seen shacks and shanty towns) most are living a lifestyle far above the rest of the world's poor. I have no solutions and I have no mission to save the world. The world is what it is, I can only change my very small part of it.

There are times when I believe that doing nothing would be the best solution as evolution would take care of the situation in a generation or two but my moral side has a hard time not wanting to assist them knowing full well that in most cases the help would only provide a means to create even more children who will continue to cycle.

[ganda]

"I want to live in America, where the poor people are fat" - some 3rd world dude I've forgotten the name of.

Superb book!* He starts in Cairo and somehow wills his way down to Johanesburg.* Some of his experiences are terrifying.* His take on the international charity relief workers efforts is eye-opening.* Theroux is the best travel writer out there today.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eagle43 For a perspective on Africa, suggest Paul Theroux:* "Dark Star Safari"

[haha]

Theroux is great writer. I recommend his book that chronicles his earlier African stay-"My Secret Life." He describes how he slept with practically every young female for miles around.

His timing was good --the only diseases he caught were crabs and clap.

Ha