You think you have it bad? Unless you cannot afford to eat, you are still in the lap of luxury.
I urge you to support this group, as we do. Whatever you can spare... it will help SO much!

Mercy Corps - Global Food Crisis Spreads

Reports from our staff around the world confirm that the situation is dire — and has the potential to grow much worse.


If you've been paying attention to the news, you know that a "perfect storm" of factors — including soaring fuel prices, erratic weather and growing demand for biofuels — is pushing global food prices up dramatically.

• In Niger, prices of bread, powdered milk and wheat flour have spiked, exacerbating the West African nation's precarious food situation. Last December, more than three million Nigeriens didn't have enough food to meet their minimum nutritional needs; today, shortages are pushing the country closer to famine.
• In Syria, spiraling food prices have forced Mercy Corps to cut back on the amount of food we can buy and distribute to hundreds of Iraqi refugee families.
• In Tajikistan, where we recently distributed blankets and generators to help residents keep warm during an unusually harsh winter, about 40 percent of households are down to no more than one warm meal a day. Neighboring Kazakhstan has suspended wheat exports — shutting off Tajikistan's primary supply of the grain.

But I thought wonderful capitalism brings wonders to the third world, and the ever-beneficent invisible hand constantly raises the standard of living!

The wonderful hand of capitalism brings plenty of aid to impoverished African countries. Unfortunately, all this aid ends up in the pockets of some fat, sweaty, corrupt dictator to fund the construction of his new palace.

You are correct here, PN; but it is also correct that much of this money and aid gets pilfered here in America before it even gets the chance to leave the country. Charity fraud is an abomination towards all humanity. Unfortunately, here in America; we term this as "white-collar crime". The perpetrators rarely if ever serve time in jail.

The wonderful hand of capitalism hasn't brought plenty of aid, but on the other hand exploits third world countries to the effect that the global income share of the poorest people in the world has actually dropped since the great capitalistic export of globalization (i.e., just since the early 90's).

What aid does come to third world countries (through charities, etc.) not only is putting a band-aid on a severed limb but as you accurately point out, can be corrupted. The fat sweaty corrupt dictators of third wold nations are often opportunistic capitalists themselves leeching off of the exploited labor and socio-political indignation of the masses. In their accumulation of exploited labor they create obscene social inequalities only paralleled by their ideological parents in the west.

Clearly these examples, and the events of rising food costs underline the root of the problem which is clearly systemic.