whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1.
(Comments)

...o entrenched models of wealth/power distribution by those already in power. If so, it makes the resulting poverty doubly tragic....

2.
(Comments)

Walton, you\'ll find no disagreement from me that poverty is outrageous. That 60% of the world\'s population, 4 billion people, are poor, is disgusting. What makes it more disgusting is how easy it

3.
(Comments)

.... As regards your question: \"if capitalism is so great ... why do 20% of the world live in absolute poverty?\" The US has 95% employment and very limited amounts of poverty with virtually no...

4.
(Comments)

...ld that produces enough food for everyone - so many are starving? Why do 20% of the world live in absolute poverty? As for starting a political party, you can\'t change society through parliament. ...

5.
(Comments)

...stment back and forth across the two markets. Only then will we \"discover how to address the problems of poverty\"....

6.
(Comments)

...e learn to value wealth as a creator of wealth, the sooner we will discover how to address the problems of poverty....

7. When no-one is held accountable, everyone suffers
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e and Botswana – countries that were hoping to grow their economies and push their own people out of poverty. Collectivism is the source of the thinking behind forcing entire nations to be puni...

8. Of Chiefs and Presidents
(Analysis/Analysis)

...eight years on, the man has become his people's worst enemy. The economy is virtually non-existent and poverty levels are high. 1990 saw his best friend Edgar Tekere stand against him in the pres...

9. Jacob Zuma, Inflation Denialist?
(Analysis/Analysis)

The queues in Zimbabwe, that shopper's paradise, were extra long this Christmas. Ordinary people were withdrawing their maximum daily allowance of Z$ 50 million while business owners were shunted

10. Higher food prices mean downgrading that Turkey to a Chicken
(Analysis/Analysis)

...hanges in the nature of demand. The long boom internationally has seen almost a billion people come out of poverty across Asia and Latin America over the past decade. As people become wealthier their...

11. Of Capitalism, Socialist Greed, Poverty and Remaining Silent
(Analysis/Analysis)

It is rare that major businesses dare to stick their necks out and object to government policy. Mostly they're too busy keeping their heads down to avoid all the shrapnel sent their way. "

12. 100 Days of Sodom
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e population earns less than US$ 1 per day. Nigeria's is 5.8% but 60% of the population are below the poverty line. China's unemployment is 4.2% and only 10% of the population is below the p...

13. China, Toys And The Tragedy of Xenophobia
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e of the most dramatic transformations in human history, shifting an astonishing 350 million people out of poverty. The fact that Chinese manufacturing is still very rudimentary, environmentally haza...

14. Black Economic Empowerment, like charity, is not investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...n, we hear about the problems of the “second economy” and how we must bridge people out of the poverty of the informal sector and into the wealth of the “first economy”.  ...

15. Ending poverty means abandoning charity and accepting reality
(Analysis/Analysis)

...r should it be how to cater to the informal sector?" This in an excursion into the morass of African poverty and development. The short answer is: neither; ending poverty has nothing to do wi...

16. Zimbabwe: the Hollow State
(Analysis/Analysis)

...d almost have to be a tax-free haven with a minimal state. Many may argue that this will not address the poverty of the masses, but investors have lost more than enough in Zimbabwe already. Much of ...

17. South Africa's two tiers
(Analysis/Analysis)

...though we talk of the "informal sector" as if it were a seamless homogenous unity. The relative poverty of the majority, and the expense of joining the formal sector, has led to dramatic in...

18. How every day on strike left civil servants permanently worse-off
(Analysis/Analysis)

Striking civil servants have, today, agreed on a wage increase with their boss, the South African Government. The 7.5% was the final offer tabled last week by government and rejected by COSATU, the Co

19. Suburbanise! How aid and trade obliterate unique cultures
(Analysis/Analysis)

Poverty will end. Despite all the screaming, all the noise, all the stone throwing. Despite "Make Poverty History" and billions of Dollars in aid and opposition to capitalism. Poverty wil

20. Two Frontiers: wars of liberation and of determination
(Analysis/Analysis)

... offers a glimpse into the heroic past of newspapers. Where journalists knew more than their public. Where poverty and fear and malnutrition left the downtrodden masses incapable of self-reflection. W...

21. The efficiency of markets and how protectionism leaves the poor behind
(Analysis/Analysis)

...llowed US manufacturers to stay substantially ahead of their competitors despite lower wages in Asia. The poverty of choice The impact on the poor is barely understood. Many US and EU protectionis...

22. When equality becomes unfair: South Africa's two economies
(Analysis/Analysis)

...n the impoverished part.  The business rules in both are the same, but the costs are not.  "Poverty breeds crime," according to Amartya Sen, one of the world's foremost economi...

23. Do you hate the poor enough to be charitable?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...than be exploited by capitalist corporations who only seek profits." Striking for jobs; marching for poverty It is the South African union movement who came up with a unique mechanism for job ...

24. Nigeria, or the idiots guide to stealing an election
(Analysis/Analysis)

...alth. They are one of the largest producers in the world yet more than half of Nigerians live in absolute poverty, below the UN's measure of US$1 per day. Saro-wiwa created the Movement for the ...

25. Sarkozy's French Election: when elephants fight only the grass gets trampled
(Analysis/Analysis)

... the agenda. Africa, let’s face it, is a mess of conflicting ideologies, bad governments and hideous poverty.  Some is the fault of outside meddling, some is self-inflicted, and some arises...

26. Have you paid your car guard today?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...quo;  And done quickly or there will be letter writing and waving of forefingers. A simple symptom of poverty in any developing country is that labour, which is mobile, moves from areas where the...

27. One Laptop Per Child, now costing 75% more ...
(Analysis/Analysis)

... Technology has produced so many wonders that it is easy, and lazy, to get into the habit of thinking that poverty is caused by a lack of things.  It isn't. The premise for needing such a sop...

28. Jobs are from Mars, Business is from Venus
(Analysis/Analysis)

...s' organisations. There is no other way for most of our countries to make headway in the fight against poverty than making it possible for our citizens to be engaged in productive work, which woul...

29. Unlearning helplessness: how donors reinforce poverty and dependency
(Analysis/Analysis)

"Well, something is better than nothing," said the well-dressed man at the charity launch function. "No it isn't. You're making the assumption that the recipients of corporate

30. What market is worth R 100 billion a year and is growing at 10.9%?
(Analysis/Analysis)

Strategies for Businesses reaching out to Informal Markets In 1997, as part of the conditions they agreed upon for getting their cellular licence, Vodacom developed a sophisticated telephone call-cent

31. From Linux to Mozilla: donations mean that open-source isn't really free
(Analysis/Analysis)

...d talks over the video, "The poor are prepared to pay for services and products. They want to. Real poverty is relying on permanent donations and handouts." A world away, across Europe an...

32. The US$ 5 trillion market at the bottom of the pyramid
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ld, ‘Eat your veggies, there are starving people in Ethiopia!’ and so they grow up associating poverty with starvation and impossible despair,” says Prahalad.  “It is very...

33. Development organisations need to engage with ratings agencies
(Analysis/Analysis)

...tion in winning the Nobel Peace Prize has dramatically increased the interest in microfinance solutions to poverty.  Organisations across the globe are reinventing themselves as banks to catch so...

34. Racial arguments muddy human rights and the ending of poverty
(Analysis/Analysis)

Race is not South Africa’s problem.  Poverty is South Africa’s problem. It just so happens that the majority of people who are poor in South Africa are also black.  That should

35. Aggregation and collaboration: a guide to making money and doing good in poor nations
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ne at the Bottom of the Pyramid”.  With its mix of world-class infrastructure and gut-wrenching poverty it is significantly easier to develop products aimed at the poor and test them, than ...

36. Making money, doing good
(Analysis/Analysis)

...d cellphone. Prahalad certainly didn’t originate the idea of letting market conditions take care of poverty.  Adam Smith in 1776 coined the phrase, “the invisible hand” to desc...

37. Rating to create a market; questions and answers
(Analysis/Analysis)

...h these results are delivered, but to analyse the final results achieved in an objective and uniform way. Poverty only becomes entrenched when you genuinely don’t care what you give away to tho...

38. The best bridge out of poverty is over the future of cash
(Analysis/Analysis)

... South Africans.  Fraud and corruption at the highest levels are often blamed for the perpetuation of poverty and it is useful to have these exposed. As wealth generation moves ever further into...

39. The Cold War, Global Warming and the War on Ideas
(Analysis/Analysis)

...everyone how we should respond. On the other side are China and India; two nations with massive levels of poverty and astonishing levels of economic growth.  Neither are going to declare to thei...

40. The redistribution of poverty
(Analysis/Analysis)

...; They are wrong. Just as a runny nose, sore muscles and a cough are indications of a viral infection, so poverty is an indication of an economy that is ill. Your flu could be caused by a variety of...

41. A story of an African Orphan
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ldren who have been affected by AIDS. AIDS has come to South Africa on the back of high unemployment and poverty levels. The double effect on children is devastating. Generally, the consensus is tha...

42. "On your left is an Orc fighting a Troll" - travels in hyper-reality offer lessons for the poor
(Analysis/Analysis)

...of desperately poor places do not want these things?  If that were true then they cannot be poor, for poverty is defined as being unwillingly without.  If they do want it and it is not there...

43. The 'War Against Corruption' starts with ending the 'Culture of Entitlement'
(Analysis/Analysis)

“Everybody knows that any war on poverty would start with a successful war on corruption. The grotesque disparity between the rich and poor is maintained and exacerbated by uncontrolled greed at

44. We're from Mars and we want to help: four lessons in development
(Analysis/Analysis)

... on unpredictable subsistence farming.  If development organisations are really serious about ending poverty then we recommend the following approach: Infrastructure development: ensure that lo...

45. Coffee, the miracle of poverty, and other wonders
(Analysis/Analysis)

... if all you want is an alcoholic wine-flavoured beverage. Poor people have no money.  The measure of poverty is defined in terms of dollars-a-day earned.  So we hear about “the number...

46. South Africa and China, or why democracy isn't connected to economic growth
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ing statement that there are now only about 85 million Chinese who may be considered as living beneath the poverty line.  This means that China, a nation of over 1.2 billion people, has reduced t...

47. The Martians Really Care: four points to govern development
(Analysis/Ideas and Challenges)

...pendent on their technology to trade with them.  Overnight we would recognise our own inferiority and poverty relative to the opulence and grandeur present in our new visitors.  We would be ...

48. So how exactly do you invest in the Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid?
(Analysis/Analysis)

From the Davos Summit, to the World Social Forum, to where-ever Bono is burbling on, poverty is hot stuff on the international social circuit.  We are excoriated for ignoring the “Fortunate

49. Is the ownership of property at odds with the needs of the poor?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e most basic ownership of your own life and liberty. Too many countries, in an effort to reduce very real poverty, abandon property rights and take wealth away from people who have it.  Wealth g...

50. Africa falling ever further behind, says UN
(Analysis/Analysis)

...eaves Africa significantly short of making a stab at meeting its Millennium Development Goals for halving poverty. "((Africa))'s growth remains insufficient to achieve development goals tha...