Extreme Wealth and Extreme Poverty

Extreme wealth/inequality plus extreme armaments are the primary causes of extreme poverty/poverty.  Extreme armaments would be anything from AK-47s to nuclear weapons.

What are the primary solutions?  Extreme use of cooperatives such as Mondragon; high priority given to education with a strong emphasis on girls/women; crash program to expand the use of solar energy.  Or extreme coops, extreme education, extreme solar.

Key organizations:  World Bank, Oxfam, Bread for the World, Haiti Christian Development Fund, to name a few.

1.  World Bank, "Ending Extreme Poverty," June 2016, Christian Century:

"Inscribed in stone at the headquarters of World Bank in Washington, D.C., are these words:  'Our Dream is a World Free of Poverty.'  In recent years the world has made remarkable progress toward realizing that dream.  Last fall the World Bank projected that for the first time in history less than 10 percent of the world's population was living in extreme poverty---down from 37 percent in 1990 and 44 percent in 1981.  The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less that $1.90 person per day."  24 percent of Haiti's population living in extreme poverty.

2.  Oxfam  See articles "even it up" and "Extreme inequality and poverty"  It appears that most of the persons exiting extreme poverty have entered the ranks of those in poverty; the decline of those living in poverty have also declined but much more slowly.  They are only a few dollars away from falling back into extreme poverty.  According to Oxfam, the gap between the rich and poor has exploded in the last 30 years.  If extreme wealth were eliminated, the decline in both poverty and extreme poverty would increase rapidly.

There is a thriving Oxfam Haiti organization.