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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 21, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
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10 billion is so little
The United States is now approaching a $10-trillion economy. Another way of saying 10 trillion is 10,000 billion. Every year this economy churns out close to $10,000 billion worth of goods and services.
Now consider the number 10 billion. Such a little number in comparison with 10,000 billion. If we had 10,000 apples, for example, and 10 were taken away, would anyone miss them?
Ten billion dollars is what the United Nations estimates it would take to provide clean drinking water for all the people in the world who today don't have it. In a Global Water Supply and Sanitation Assessment report issued Nov. 23, the world body said that 40 percent of the world's people lack sanitation, while a billion people drink contaminated water that can make them sick and even kill them.
But for only $10 billion the wells can be dug, the reservoirs can be constructed and the aqueducts can be built so that their water will be safe. What wouldn't even be missed in the U.S. economy could transform the lives of a billion people.
Life is miserable for almost half the human race. But it doesn't have to be that way. The problems of poverty and underdevelopment that seem so intractable could be quickly solved. That's been the desperate message each time international bodies like the United Nations Children's Fund or the World Health Organization put out reports. It would take so little, they say--compared to the overall wealth of the world--to end the poverty, illiteracy, infectious diseases, hunger and homelessness that now plague so many.
The problem is capitalism in its final stage--imperialism. Its efficiency in exploiting labor and resources has led to an obscene and irrational polarization of wealth in the world. How can poor countries even begin to solve their problems when they are dictated to by giant foreign corporations and banks whose assets are greater than their whole gross national product?
There are many deep cracks in the capitalist system, however. Financial crises are breaking out all over the world. The monumental injustices of today must give way to mass revolutionary upsurges tomorrow. And they may begin over issues as simple and basic as clean water.
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