The challenges facing the future of survival.
- China has a massive economic engine and much fuel.
- The haves are increasing arithmetically, the have-nots are increasing geometrically.
- China elevated 500 million people from poverty to the middle class.
- China can elevate one billion people from poverty to the middle class globally.
If four people share one chicken a week, that is one billion
chickens a month. That is twelve billion chickens a year. Plus corn.
When 1 billion haves and 6 billion have-nots become 2
billion haves and 4 billion have-nots, global demand will double.
The first 1 billion haves will have to make due with less.
And the 4 billion have-nots will also have to make due with less. This, to accommodate the 1 billion newly
minted haves.
If one billion newly minted middle-classers bread down into
250 million families of four and have only one automobile each, that will be
250, million cars on the few roads that exist in already over-crowded and,
by-and-large, impoverished countries.
And that does not count corn—whether to eat, feed the chickens, or fuel
the cars.
Now, these are of course metaphors. While chickens, cars, and corn will be
involved in the economics of people rising to the ranks of the middle class,
the issue is rising consumption, which means increasing supply and greater
employment.
However, as with all things, there are two factors to be
considered.
The leading and the lagging will, as supply and demand
fluctuate, create a discordance.
The tipping point.
The tipping point is the point at which those rising from poverty
to the middle class begin pushing those in the middle class back into
poverty. Also, there is the point at
which those in poverty rebel.
“The multitude may oppress the few, but the few may not
oppress the multitude. Not for very long, anyway.” ~ Slim Fairview. From, The
Quotations of Slim Fairview © 2014.
A soupรงon of
history.
- In American Colonial Lore—The shot heard round the world.
- Russia’s Decembrist Revolution
- Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
- The Watts “kitchen table” riots.
- The tearing down of The Berlin Wall.
- The Arab Spring/Facebook Revolution.
Recently, the technology in the information age has done for
emerging nations what television did for America’s Civil Rights Movement.
Television brought the visual images of
injustice to both the oppressors and to the oppressed.
Television made two things possible.
It showed the nation the injustices inflicted on African
Americans
It showed African Americans the abundance available White
people.
Now, Internet Technology is
Showing the suffering of those in Emerging Nations to those
living in Industrialized Nations.
Showing people in Emerging Nations the abundance available
in Industrialized Nations.
My Dad always suggested that I think about what I am going
to say before I say it. Now, I say,
think about what other people are doing to hear before you say it.
When we say, Childhood obesity in America is caused by
poverty, they hear, “In America, even the poor children are fat.”
When we say, One in three children in America goes hungry,
they say, “If America does not feed her own starving children, they will not
help to feed our starving children.”
It is very hard to argue with that when:
We are the ones saying one in three children in America goes
to bed hungry.
&
They can plainly see and are surrounded by their own
starving children.
Regards,
Slim
Additional reading below.
Additional reading:
Copyright © 2014 Bob Asken as Slim Fairview.
All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment