2, From "Welfare State" to "Welfare World"

(Ansolute poverty on a global scale)
     But when we turn to the global situation, there is far less evidence of a commitment to welfare statism.  There remains enormous absolute poverty on the earth.  The Pre-Conference Report of UN World Summit 1995 makes the following points:

     The 1.3 billion absolute poor live in conditions that Robert S. McNamara, president of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981, described in 1978 as so limited by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality, and low life expectancy as to the beneath any reasonable definition of human decency`.
     Among all people, 1.5 billion have no source of clean drinking water or access to sanitation.  Most go to bed hungry.
     They are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters such as drought, floods and storms, having little or no margin for survival when their housing, possessions and means of production are destroyed.

A startlingly disproportionate number of these people are women.  The largest number of poor people about half of the total eke out existences in the countries of South Asia.  One quarter live in East Asia.

 Out of the world labor force of 2.8 billion, there are 120 million people who are actively looking for work, but without result.
     The vast majority of absolute poor 700 million people are classified as under-employed, working long hours, often at backbreaking jobs that don't come close to covering their most basic needs. 

 Eighty percent of the poor live in rural areas, with the great majority in Asia and Africa.  But the rural poor are mostly landless, or have farms that are too small to yield adequate income.
     Extreme poverty is most concentrated in Africa, particularly in the band of countries south of Sahara Desert.  Africa has 16 percent of the world's total but fully half of all Africans are impoverished.

 

Peter Townsend explained present world poverty situation in his lecture at the Shukutoku University, Tokyo, November 1995 ("Global Poverty: Is the Problem Becoming Impossible to Solve?").  He summarizes his lecture as follows:

At the copenhagen summit the signatories agreed to draw up national plans to eliminate "absolute" and diminish "over all" poverty.  Despite successive economic reform programs advocated and applied since the 1960s, the increasing number of governments, NGOs and scientists believe that: serious problems not only remain, but are getting worse. 

This paper calls attention to the fundamental contemporary global problems of social polarization.  There is an undeniable trend within many countries as well as between rich and poor countries for inequality to widen and poverty to worsen.  This paper attempt to explain how inequality, and poverty, within countries is related to inequality between countries.  First, avoidance of scientific or international measure of poverty has not server international community. 

 

 

 

Second, irresolute comparative analysis of conditions in unstable as well as stable regions of the world is leading to misplaced theory and social development policies.  World Bank stratifies, for example, are not really derived from hard-headed analysis of the reasons for continuing, and even deepening, mass poverty.  Finally, the chief problem is a refusal on the part of governments and international agencies to face up to the international hierarchy of power and to address the dominant structural problems not only of the labour market but multinational cor

(Idea of "Welfare World" and its necessity)
     When the "welfare state" idea is extended to a definition of "Welfare World" (Gnnar Myrdal proposed the term in 1960) it must be taken to imply that every person who is born on the earth has a right to enjoy a minimum level of guaranteed subsistence (world citizenship).

     There will be at least two factors relevant to the creation of welfare world: ethical motives and the process of globalization.

(An ethical motive; social conscience [Beveridge])
     William Beveridge who planned the social security scheme which is the core of the welfare state system mentioned in his third report, Voluntary Action 1948, that: porate power, international organization and democratic expression.

 

 

 

 

 

   (the motive) springs from what is described in my report on Social Insurance as social conscience, the feeling which makes men who are material comfortable, mentally uncomfortable so long as their neighbours are materially uncomfortable: to have social conscience is to be unwilling to make separate peace with the giant social evils of Want, Disease, Squalor, Ignorance, Idleness, escaping into personal prosperity oneself, while leaving one's fellows in their clutches (p. 9).

     It is necessary to extend the cosensus of our social conscience to the whole world.