Poverty: what is to be done?

The Conservative press consultant Ellee Seymour, provides a good piece on what poverty is like in her neck of the woods, Norfolk, England.

As to the question of 'what is to be done'? It seems that many on the right in Britain haven't got the faintest idea. I argued that rapid and unprecedented economic growth should do the trick for the worst off in our society.

However, in the comments section, I thought it was rather worrying, that even amongst some Tories', who are normally pro-economic growth - there was a palatable air of disdain about the notion of rapid economic growth - what seems to me to be an obvious answer to poverty.

Corruption

Recently it was turned public the 2006Corruption Perceptions Index. From the results it is obvious the link between poverty and corruption. Like Huguette Labelle said “corruption traps millions in poverty”.

Once again (like in other development index) Scandinavian countries are on top of this index (Finland is the first) as countries with less perceived corruption.

Globally industrialized countries have less perceived corruption and the poorest countries have stronger perceived corruption. In terms of evolution Algeria, Czech Republic, India, Japan, Latvia, Lebanon, Mauritius, Paraguay, Slovenia, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uruguay had a significant improvement of this index and Brazil, Cuba, Israel, Jordan, Laos, Seychelles, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia and the United States had a significant worsening of this index. In the case of USA he is on the 20th place equal to Chile and Belgium.

When discussing development and inequality between countries we sometimes forget of the internal causes of poverty. Corruption acts as a break in the development of wealth permitting people to profit from unjustly acquired wealth. An example is Kenya. Bribery costs about US $1 billion each year to theirs population, but more than 50% live on less than US $2 per day.