Economic Reform for Poverty Eradication
By Kamala Sarup
I always use the expression "economic reform policy". Apparently, someone wanted to distinguish between the ancient
Greek economic system, which was not very pro poor, since only a select few could benefit, and the current economic
policy, where much more of the population can benefit.
It is a useful phrase to me, since everyone knows what current economic reforms are all about.
In fact, economic reform policy can satisfy both the rich and poor because there are lots of goods and services from
which the rich and poor can share. There are lots of different investments from which the rich and poor can choose.
For example, If this year in the US the rich and poor people want to buy more vacations instead of cars, then some cars
might go unsold until they are unloaded at a low price, which may be less than the cost. In this case, the car
manufacturer guessed poorly on the market for cars and suffers the consequences. The investors in his company suffer
too.
If the vacationers are in larger numbers than usual, the hotel rooms might be filled, so the people with money cannot
obtain vacation accommodations and have to use it to buy other goods and services maybe cars or invest it maybe in
vacation hotels. However, the economy always buy consumer or producer goods and services that are available to be sold.
On the other side, we should remember that there is a huge amount of poverty in the world today.
Even if redistributing income from the rich to the poor, this does not close the inequality gap sufficiently to prevent
poverty.
And also, the poor buy less expensive things and invest less.
But, economic reforms policy always develop to produce valuable goods and services.
We should remember, if the average real wage declines, the lowest jobs receiving less. And if their money goes to
foreign workers and to the upper economic classes, than it will cause suffering for the poorer people.
We also have to remember that some countries cannot benefit much from economy if they have no ocean shores from which
they can send goods to other parts of the world cheaply.
Why is this?
There is much talk but only a little action to reduce global poverty.
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Journalist and Story Writer Kamala Sarup is an editor of peacejournalism.com. Some of the main focus of the e-magazine
have been on disarmament, conflict resolution, nonviolent sanctions, conflicts and crises. Its activities include
training,research and supports peace, democracy and development in societies undergoing crisis and change. Kamala Sarup
is specialising in in-depth reporting and writing on Peace Resolutions, Anti war, Women, Terrorism, Anti Fascism,
Democracy, and Development.