Poverty in the Debates

The second presidential debate is scheduled for Tuesday night, and I hope I will not be disappointed again. It was the candidates' answers that upset during the last debate. It was the lack of answers to the world's biggest problems. The moderator asked questions on foreign policy for an hour and a half and failed to mention global poverty once. The nearly one billion people living in extreme poverty did not seem to have made a dent on the candidates' agenda. And by extreme poverty I don't mean foreclosing on a house, I mean living on less than $1.25 a day, about the price of a quart of milk. It would have been nice to hear the candidates' plans for fighting the AIDS pandemic or alleviating the global food crisis or helping the eight million people trapped in modern-day slavery.

I hate to admit to agreeing with a rock star, but Bono has a point when he talks about our ability to eradicate "stupid poverty." Yes, providing AIDS medicine for people in dirt poor Sub-Sahara African countries is expensive, but providing vaccines for children is not. We have the technology to produce life-saving vaccines for pennies, and instead we spend the money on tax breaks for arrow-making companies. How many lives could be saved with investing $700 billions in foreign aid? I don't know, but I'm guessing a whole heck of a lot more than can be saved investing in investment banks.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not a hippie or anything, believing the world's problems can be solved by more hugs and less drugs. I am just finding it harder and harder to ignore the world's poor. Perhaps the old cliche is right: ignorance is bliss. I was a lot happier to live a comfortable middle class existence and strive to be rich before I knew there were 920 million people going to bed hungry every night. We may not think about these people everyday, but I hope McCain and Obama will bring them to our attention on Tuesday night.