Social Justice

[cadfael]

Last night at my Toastmasters Club one of the speakers promised to give us seven numbers that we would be able to remember, not only until today, but for a lifetime.

The numbers were:

18,800
4
13
½
2
1.3 billion
1

Their explanation follows:

$18,800 is the poverty level. Anyone earning less that that in the United States, with a family of four is living in poverty, and each of the family members must survive on $13 per day.

One half of the world's population earns less than $2 per day. 1.3 billion people on this planet must survive on about $1 per day.

Where do we begin?

Comments

[hypanebliss.livejournal.com]

Depending upon where you live it's possible to live with less though. (Obviously not *that* much less). I found it interesting that one of my coworkers said where they are from in Pennsylvania that $9 for two haircuts is a lot of money. I can't even get A's hair cut for that amount. Our prices even for cutting hair are almost double here as opposed to the East Coast. While there is no way that a person can live on a $1 a day it's also true that my wage would garnish much more if I lived in a different place.

One could even say I could live on less and not have to put up with so much stress too. Just a thought. Perhaps if we didn't allow corporations to dictate our standard of living we could spread the collective wealth out more.

[krkhst.livejournal.com]

Ding! What I mean, corporations are not our friends...

Where does your co-worker get his hair cut?

[elphaba-of-oz.livejournal.com]

I can't get 2 haircuts in PA for 9$. I expected the cost of living to be a lot cheaper here but I've been dissappointed. It's major, national chains as far as the eye can see. Local businesses have just folded and gotten out of the way.

Of course, you can still get a massive, juicy egg sammich at the local auction house for less than a dollar. But haircuts seem to have standardized prices dictated by supercutz and fantastic sams.