Meet Justice

“The gap between the rich and the poor is increasing!” decry various articles, activists, organizations, and a few brave politicians.

Yes indeed, this is an issue. Not just one for the impassioned do-gooders either.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution stated that there was a $600,000 million surplus in the budget for this term. Two popular options as to what to do with this money is to knock a few cents of gas prices for a time or pour it into the public education system. While it would be earth-shaking to give our SUV’s more bang for their buck, there are other alternatives.

It would be easy for me to criticize the selfish spending and money hoarding of a handful of corporate behemoths. I could just as easily complain about the internal, selfish tendencies of the “American dream” and suburbia robots and their white picket castles. Then there is always the legalistic nature of Christianity and the squandering of money on seeker-friendly mega-churches or exclusively Christian clothing lines or What Would Jesus Eat diets and the like.

Criticism comes easy. See?

However, I am not a fan of criticism if there isn’t any positive action backing it up. There is far too much criticism and far too little action.

Part of our goal at the Passport is to expose the truth and educate others on it. Here are some of the hard facts; some reasons why we do what we do:

• Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than $2 a day.
• The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined.
• Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
• Less than 1% of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn't happen.
• The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation.
• The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money.
• 20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the world’s goods.
• The top fifth of the world’s people in the richest countries enjoy 82% of the expanding export trade and 68% of foreign direct investment — the bottom fifth, barely more than 1%.
• According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.” That is about 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under five years of age, each year.
• A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people.
• “The combined wealth of the world’s 200 richest people hit $1 trillion in 1999; the combined incomes of the 582 million people living in the 43 least developed countries is $146 billion.”

(information from http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp)

While the truth is that there will still be poverty, abuse, exploitation, and all sorts of horrors that occur, the truth is that something can be done about it. Education is vital, but action even more so. Through personal choices, social responsibility, and purposed action towards the issues, then this world will begin to change.

Capture, Cultivate, and Connect.

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