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From: rab@well.UUCP (Bob Bickford)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Children, Hunger and School Lunches
Message-ID: <849@well.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Mar-86 06:51:35 EST
Article-I.D.: well.849
Posted: Thu Mar 27 06:51:35 1986
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> 
> >    We are not *SOLELY* responsibile for the poverty of the world, no.  We
> > cannot, however, abrogate the responsibility we do bear.
> > 
> > tom keller
> 
> If the United States put up a ten mile high wall around our country tomorrow,
> we would be poorer.  But the rest of the world would be VASTLY poorer.

  Thank you, Clayton, for wonderfully stating exactly what I wanted to say to
Tom, and people like him who suffer under the illusion that we are somehow
'ripping off' the rest of the world when we purchase resources from them.
We use those resources to produce products that these countries have no hope
of being able to produce themselves (yet), thus giving them the chance to
buy those products (whereas otherwise they would only have a relatively
useless resource laying around).

  And, about the "40%" number...... the USA has about 6% of the world's
population, and we produce about 55% of the world's wealth.  I don't see
anything wrong with using 40% of the resources to produce 55% of the
improvement in standard-of-living (not that I believe the 40% number for
one minute).  Countries that are so much "poorer" have simply to implement
a modern economic system (free-market) to catch up to our standard of living
*very quickly*.

-- 
Robert Bickford     {lll-crg,hplabs}!well!rab