How do they define wealth? No idea - and probably wouldn't understand it if I tried. But here's a secret for you, even if the property in question isn't physically transferrable, ownership is. The west "owns" much of the wealth that is rooted in the third world. Next, there's an awful lot of wealth that is physically movable. That's how the West got it: digging it out of African soil and shipping it back where they could "deal" in it.

The reasons impoverished countries are that way are (1) they are underdeveloped (2) they are/have been exploited and/or (3) they are badly governed.

It is within our power to address each of those reasons if we want to, and it is appalling to realise how many people here consider their fellow man is not worth getting off their fat arses for, and who resent my pointing this out. If that makes me high and mighty, then, good!

And the acquisition of wealth did happen by chance. Oil in the Middle East wasn't put there by design. South Africa's gold wasn't the result of someone's careful planning. Zimbabwe's diamonds weren't left there as a present for Robert Mugabe. America's wealth was due to its natural resources first of all - to wheat, tobacco, and timber, to coal, iron and so on, not its "work ethic". That came later, when people like that Mr Ford introduced mass production on an industrial scale. It also came when commodity dealers started buying and selling those raw materials dug out of African soils even while they were still lying in some ship's hold awaiting embarcation, and sold over and over again before they arrived. "Wealth" was created that way too, but it didn't go back to Africa. It stayed in the West.

As for your example of the Middle East, I would make these points: the Middle East has not suffered as a result of oil discoveries, it has become enormously wealthy. As a result, a number of emirates have grown up which are highly stable and which enjoy a very high standard of living in a physically hostile environment. Many public and social services are available there which are the equal of those in America, or are better, even. Given a stable and peacful political environment, they would assuredly and rapidly develop into western-style economies; they would gradually redistribute their wealth as a middle class grew up, and they would deal with their own poverty problems. This would be to everyone's benefit.

However, the political environment is not peaceful. There is Israel, which seems to be permanently at war with its neightbours, there is Palestine, whose rulers are bent on the destruction of Israel. There is Syria, once in line for an American invasion, but luckily escaped because the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan turned out to be more protracted affairs than Bush planned. My point is, the troubles in the Middle East are not due to the fact that Arab states are massively rich or are still poor, they are due to political reasons which the West is responsible for.


Actually you are quite arrogant to think that you know how to eradicate poverty when you have done little to no research on it.
Pardon me! My field of expertise is in another area entirely. I should have realised I have no right to form an opinion based on other people's research.

But, then, your reseach seems to be no better than mine ...