Can I drink to that?

Sadly, the real problem that is never addressed is not the West giving them more, but stopping their own governments from stealing from them.

Very few of the famines in Africa are the result of people not being able to grow enough food. Most of them are the result of the local governments using Stalin's tactics of agricultural punishment on their enemies.

But since most of the musicians are at the very least, socia-lists, this problem is almost never recognized by the "elites". All they want is everyone else to give more money.

The poor will always be with us, as someone once said.

Live 8 was also a great opportunity for The Scissor Sisters to plug their soon to be released single. Well, they could hardly have played their version of "Comfortably Numb". They would have been booed offstage by the people there to see Floyd!

You had me.
Then You lost me.
Then you got me again.
But in the end, alas, it was not to be.

I have to disagree with you Harvey.

Poverty is not an absolute like gravity.
Circumstance, however, might be.

What you haven't done here, is the math.

I'm guessing that you have an idea of poverty, but you haven't really read any of the research on the subject.

This is way more complicated than the simple heartless far right answer "the poor just need to work harder and/or learn new skills".
And I think you've already covered the fact that the "just give them more money" theory
is also seriously flawed.

Check out the numbers over the last 40 years and you'll find out that the game is (slightly) rigged.
Once you hit a certain level, only a windfall is going to improve your situation.
If you are sleeping on the street, you can't lower your housing cost.

But I have a plan to solve this.

First, all of the rich far left idiots have to adopt as many poor people as they can. Any of the poor who are not adopted may be hunted for sport (after they have been converted to christianity of course) by the far right.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Great essay, Harv.

Sarah, were you trying to be ironic? And I really don't see how "reading research" on poverty is at all useful. Why do people research something? For the funding, of course. As long as there is a problem, there will be funding to research it, and therefore researchers who won't have to get "real" jobs.

Have you ever gone up to a panhandler and offered them a job? They won't take it, because panhandling IS their job...

And none of that has anything to do with poverty in Africa, or the fact that Live 8 will just make rich people feel good about themselves while actually solving nothing, which was Harv's point...

In answer to Susie...

Irony? Yes, have some!
There was some irony in my comment...and some hard facts as well.
The "research" I'm refering to is from the IRS and the US Census as well as the Departments of Education, Commerce, State, Labor and Housing and Urban Development under 5 different Presidents (Carter - G.W. Bush).
Their "funding" has nothing to do with the reports they write. It would be in their best interest to write a report that says "poor people just need to work harder".

Unless you want to argue that President Bush wouldn't get a huge lift in his poll numbers if he was able to come on TV and say that no American Soldiers will ever need food stamps to help feed their families ever again.

As for the people who panhandle for a living...they are cons, there are cons of all shapes and sizes. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the people I met when I was helping out at our local food bank. These people don't ask for a thing. They get food and diapers for their children but will take nothing for themselves. They would take any job you offered them if the job paid enough for them to put their kids in daycare and pay for bus fare (or if you had some other way to make sure they made it to work everyday.)

Circumstance is a bitch and it can kick anyone down into the gutter.

Bad things happen to good people all the time.

And there are more of them now than there used to be.

PS People do research to learn...not because it's a cushy job. Everything from the invention of the airplane to work on the cure for cancer is based on research.
I'm stunned that you implied that it's worthless.

(If my tone sounds overly agressive it's because I haven't slept more than 3 hours a night for the past 2 weeks - it's not intentional.)

But Harvey, [begin whine]it's not FAIR[/end whine]!

Sarah, America has the richest poor people in the world. And government agencies especially benefit from research that tells everyone they are needed. Also, while I have never worked at a food bank, I have sat in one waiting while the person I drove there collected her sad little allotment and most of the people coming in drove themselves in better cars than I have. None of this has anything to do with the problems of African poverty, and no amount of aid is going to help as long as it's not getting to the people who really need it. Give a man a fish.....

Good job, Harvey!