SPIRITUALITY, FAIR TRADE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
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17	September 2013

Blog Post Ni: FTRN Booklet & Arithmetic of Passion

Text 1: "The retail price of roasted coffee dropped only 15% from 1999 to 2003, while prices paid to farmers fell by about 50%"
"A wage of $1 [per day], common in factories producing for U.S. corporations, provides less than 25% of the minimum needs of a family of five".

Text 1 Response: Although this article was thoroughly interesting, i think the second page although not particularly shocking was quite interesting. I've never actually seen the statistics and although it was not surprising just hearing how much the producers of the raw products of factories are paid was just heart breaking. I mean the face that 20% of the worlds richest people consume 75% of the world resources and that 20% of the worlds poorest people consume only 1.5% is ridiculous. Furthermore the face that more than one billion people live on less than one dollar a day with a lack of clean water, health care, education, and other basic social services is crazy. I mean being raised in a predominantly well off family was a complete blessing for me and being able to live in the U.S. and have enough money to have a great education is incredible, and it is just wretched to hear how so many people are living in such a dire situation. Just hearing the numbers makes me shudder, and yet for a while i have known that the world outside the bubble of wealthy society is quite a desolate place.

Text 2: "Ever since i was a child, I have been searching for a certain number: namely, the figure for the annual Gross World Product (GWP)... I was searching for this numbeer... [because] I wanted to take it and divide it by the number of people in the world, so that i would know what each human being was actually entitled to if the world's resources were divided fairly equitably".

Text 2 Response: This article struck me pretty hard. Throughout high school economics has been my best and my favorite subject and this article being strongly emphasized on economics and mathematics really spoke to me. David Ulansey's first paragraph was just so inspirational, and although i can agree that a world that is completely equal in terms of world resources would be great i don't think it will ever be possible. Ulansey's approach to solving this problem although just theoretical is too simple of an answer to a problem that is so complicated and intricate. Even though half the world lives on a yearly budget of $900 and ethically it sounds right, the possibilities of limiting everyone's budget to 6,000 dollars a year is nil. Furthermore, even if this happened in a way we would have to become a utopian society. A society where each nation is in complete and utter compliance with each other, and where everything is set to a price where 6,000 dollars is enough to afford the lifestyles of everyone across the world. There is just no way this is possible and although it may make me sound like a terrible person i don't think that by creating a perfect world we will solve the world's problems. Perfection itself in my own opinion is a problem, a problem worse than those that inflict our world now.