2030

The Globe & Mail reported today that the World Bank has targeted the year 2030 to end poverty. World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim made the announcement at a Washington news conference by holding up a piece of paper with the date scrawled across it.

The world's finance ministers and central bankers have all apparently signed off on extreme poverty's end, 17 years from now. Extreme poverty, according to the Globe's report, is "subsistence on less than $1.25 (U.S.) a day."

Dr. Kim is quoted as saying that the World Bank has "huge aspirations for the poor." That may be true, but the reality is that such poverty could end immediately.  There is enough money globally to end poverty today.  That to me is a "huge aspiration."

I guess it will take our "ambitious" central bankers and finance ministers  till 2030 to cough up the cash that is currently going into arms – $1.7 trillion a year.

(Quick: what's 17 times $1.7 trillion? Anyone...)

Obviously, we will require more and more guns to protect us from those in extreme poverty.

Some days it feels like our world is taking far too long to grow up.

© Patrick O’Neill 2013. All rights reserved.