poverty

Even if one doesn’t like industrialization and its consequences, one cannot escape the reality that what preceded modernity was materially, intellectually, and culturally close to zero for nearly everyone. Something is surely amiss when modern critics, enjoying all the material comforts and conveniences as well as the cultural amenities available at the push of a button, venture to dismiss modernity as if it were something even one in a thousand of them would give up.

After four years of socialist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil fell from “moderately free” to “mostly unfree” according to the Index of Economic Freedom. Out of 190 countries, it’s now ranked #140 in economic freedom, stuck right between Burundi (#139) and Pakistan (#141). As a place to be enterprising, Brazil can be downright inhospitable; the World Bank says it’s easier to do business in 122 other countries of the world than in Brazil. But good news may be on the way.

How is it possible that so many people still die from severe malnutrition and lack of access to basic resources in the 21st century? The time has come for a huge resurgence of the spirit that animated Occupy protests from 2011, but now focused on the worsening reality of mass starvation in the midst of plenty.
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Whether you've read A Tale of Two Cities or not, you know the French Revolution happened because the people were sick and tired of being sick and tired. Yes, the Revolution was about politics and religion and envy and many other things. But the spark was much more primal: hunger. Hunger based not on famine, but on the financial inability to provide food, because their money went to the building and upkeep of the palaces in whose shadows they lived.

A church in Davenport, Iowa, facing zoning restrictions related to its outreach program to feed the homeless, is appealing its local council and questioning the legality of the city’s regulations. This all stems from a cease and desist order they received — because feeding the homeless is not allowed when you’re zoned as a church.

Rather than creating a government-run microfinance platform and granting it a monopoly, we should simply change how microfinance is taxed.

In 100 countries, the government forbids women from working in certain professions. Husbands can deny their wife the right to work in 18 countries. Those countries could learn a lesson from Ethiopia.

Dr. Gus Abu-Sitta
Dr. Gus Abu-Sitta is the head of the Plastic Surgery Department at the AUB Medical Center in Lebanon. He specializes in: reconstructive surgery. What it means in this part of the world is clear: they bring you people from the war zones, torn to pieces, missing faces, burned beyond recognition, and you have to try to give them their life back.

Life is awesome. In fact, it's so awesome so constantly that we've gotten used to it, and whenever one thing goes wrong, we start complaining and thinking that everything is suddenly terrible. Thus we have the phrase "First World problems." Naturally we also complain about things that are genuinely bad, but often, those bad things are not as bad as we think they are, or as bad as they used to be.

Just before the Civil War, Issaquena County, Mississippi was the second richest county in America. That's because 92.5% of the inhabitants were slaves. 115 slave owners owned everyone else. They were rich because of the value of "slave property." Today Issaquena County has the 3rd lowest per capita income of any county in America-- $18,598 compared to $48,112 for the country as a whole.