Thursday, September 29, 2011

Blog Entry #1

Hey everyone,
It's that time of the night....  I got a choppa in the car, and I'm ready to write about poverty!

To first write about this... you first need to understand what exactly it means to be 'in poverty'. The poverty threshold for persons, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/11poverty.shtml) it's a little over $5,000 per person per year up to families of 8, until it drops off to be just over $4,000 per person per year.
With that basic understanding of what poverty is, it's quite amazing to really just conceptualize what those numbers mean... it would mean for a family of four ( Two parents and two children ) to make about $22,000 a year to live. That means total spending money, a fraction of this number is going to the government, another fraction to rent/mortgages, car insurance, health insurance, school, internet/phones, credit cards, and the essentials (food, water, and in Florida, air conditioning). If you take a real look at those numbers.. imagine how much you need to spend on each of those.. how 'necessary' some of those really are.. and the quality of living with that kind of money.
But on a worse note... think of countries that aren't America. The two countries with the lowest GDP (PPP) and GDP (nominal) are The (Democratic) Republic of Congo as well as Burundi with an average national income per year being around if not less than, $300 (U.S. Dollars). Just think about that for a second... really try to think what you and your family would do if you were provided with just $300 dollars to live for a whole year... I can almost guarantee that off of the list provided above, the only things your money will be used for are just food and water.
In the world, there is a total of 1.7 billion persons living below the poverty level (for each respective country). That means every single day 21,000 children our age (50,000 persons total per day) die from poverty related causes... anything from starvation, dehydration, to disease are the causes for these deaths. The third largest reason for deaths in the world currently is poverty, just behind heart disease, and cancer.

Now after writing about a bunch of sad stuff... I wanna be like Mrs. Basi and put something semi-random yet interesting (if that's what you'd like to call vegetarian recipes). So I'm gonna include some of the songs I listened to whilst writing this paper (now mind you, my iTunes was on shuffle so try to be nice).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NDyn0dvQ8M&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XYbSYLarU4&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjNhOQqq9Zg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MCMicgOcOc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyHzh735uEw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bparw9Jo3dk
(also, I was shuffling on my 'Recently Added' Playlist... there's a lot more to my music than techno, and obscure rap... maybe..)

Thanks for bearing with me. I'll try to add some new music each time if anyone cares, if not I'll try to switch to something new.... maybe take pictures of my cat like a loser or something.

- Raul






10 comments:

  1. I wrote about this topic too. And I found your semi-random thing funny. I did not recognize any of those songs.

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  2. Nice. Very informative and LOVEEEEE THE SONGS. Hahaha good post, good post. :D

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  3. This is a very cool and entertaining post, but I think that you should have included your opinion on poverty. That was my constructive criticism :)
    (don't Take it too hard)

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  4. PPssh.. Andree... you can't have an opinion when it comes to poverty. It sucks. People need to do something about it... but you really can't have an opinion about something that's so black and white.

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  5. I love how you included music. XD
    Anyways, yeah poverty is bad. Too bad there isn't a way to completely solve the problem. :(

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  6. I like how you included facts to back up your opinion also I love your introduction :)

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  7. Hard to believe 21,000 kids like me die every day, while I munch on candy all the time. Makes you appreciate stuff a bit more. Very informative blog.

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  8. Thank you for not posting pics of your cat. Ironically, they disgust me.

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  9. Well Raul, you should have tried to write a solution to the problem or something.

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  10. Although that would have been fun and a good idea, there are too many logical ones that I would feel pointless to write in a blog... easiest way to end poverty : Adopt a Malthusian framework for viewing the lower class whilst transitioning towards a more socialist form of governance.

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