Quote Originally Posted by MMI View Post
Well, you're right. I did say that. A bad choice of words on my part. I accept I was wrong and apologise for my slipshod writing.

I don't like resorting to statistics, because laymen such as we are likely to get them wrong. We've seen examples of statistics being presented on these threads before, distorted out of recognition in order to bolster an argument. However, the following statistics do represent my understanding of the problem and if they are wrong, then so am I.

Europe represents 15% of the world's population. It owns just under 30% of the whole planet's net worth.

USA and Canada represent just 5% of the world's population. Between them, they own almost 35% of the world's net worth.

(Source: UN-WIDER report on worldwide distribution of household wealth as quoted in Wikipedia).

Simple arithmetic tells me that this means 1 person in 5 owns 65% of the world's net worth while 4 people in 5 have to share a meagre 35%. Now, I don't know how much is necessary to raise the standard of living of the world's most impoverished people above subsistence level, but I am convinced that the wealthiest 20% can afford to give whatever is needed and still have copious amounts of wealth left to indulge their selfishness.
How do they define wealth? Monetary value? If so, then I have a secret for you: the majority of wealth in modern countries is not transportable/transferable in any reasonable sense of the term. Instead, it is tied up in capital and debt. Secondly, the fact which you seem to gloss over, is that the countries which are still seriously impoverished almost always are that way for a reason. Wealth does not happen by accident and transferring it isn't as simple as handing some tribesman a $100 bill.

Drop the high-and-mighty "selfishness" crap. Without the concept of personal property, of ownership, we would all be dirt poor.

So I was wrong to say giving large amounts of aid would impoverish us: it wouldn't hurt us at all! Why, US and Canada could probably do it by themselves, and still only fall to Europe's standard of living. Fat chance of it happening though.
Accepting for a second that this idea of yours is even viable; we have a great case study of what happens when you suddenly dump a crap-ton wealth onto an impoverished region. It's called the Middle East. Less than 100 years ago, the whole region was little more than sand dunes. Then with our demand for oil and their supply, we have poured wealth into a region that was little more than nomadic tribes. That worked out swell, don't you think? Some of the reasons that wealth turned the region into to the Middle East we know and loath are the same reasons that it will fail pretty much everywhere else.

As for the charge of arrogance, maybe I am. But not in this case.
Actually you are quite arrogant to think that you know how to eradicate poverty when you have done little to no research on it.