To feel really angry that Petra Eccleston is buying a £98 million pound housewhile while people are starving?

[mightybright]

I am completely judging her for buying a £98,000,000 second home, her first cost £56,000,000.

I'm not jealous, it just makes me feel quite sick that people are dying of starvation and that amount of money would go a long way towards making the world a better place IMO, aibu?

Very interesting. My dh worked with the farmers issue. Sorry can't say more on that.

"It would be more realistic to admit that debt is not a passport to wealth in Bangladesh, India or inner London."

I found this sentence particularly telling, and the observation that microfinancing is working as an injection of wealth rather than an investment. Not in substance, as an injection of aid "wealth", but with an extremely high interest rate, and thus an injection of personal as opposed to state debt. It seems to have worked to transfer state aid debt to personal aid debt.

This is where personal debt relief would be more useful than state debt relief, which would simply result in the further enriching of state heads.

It also seems to imply, though shies away from saying so, that societal change is required, rather than just "more money". The problem is that in a country such as India, the laws for societal change have been passed. There is little left to campaign for, in a way. Discrimination on the grounds of caste is illegal. Dowry is illegal. Honour and dowry crime, obviously, illegal. But they are embedded in a way that it is not anyone's job outside the country to change.

Thus there is a dichotomy: where aid and investment comes from outside, it is embarrassing and difficult to admit there are oversight and societal issues involved with its internal distribution.

In south Asia there seems to be little scruple about the very, very, very rich taking from the very, very, very, very poor. When they ran out of money for the Commonwealth Games, largely due to corruption and poor oversight, extra money - millions of pounds - was found from a fund set aside for the scheduled castes, ie the Dalits. The news of this transfer was covered in maybe four paragraphs in one newspaper.

"I'm not jealous, it just makes me feel quite sick that people are dying of starvation and that amount of money would go a long way towards making the world a better place IMO, aibu?"

YANBU only if you give all of your disposeable income to people who are starving. If you don't YABU to judge how others spend their money. People are also right when they say that thart sort of money would not end up going to the needy it would end up in their corrupt governments pockets. So what's the point.

Can I just say SQ -your posts on here have been very interesting and thought provoking.

Yours too Gooseberry.

Made me think about issues I wouldn't have considered otherwise (one of the reasons I like MN so much).

As SQ says most of us even UK benefit claimants have more than they "need" and could give a lot away. The old Christian tradition was 10% - the tithe in the days before you gave much away in taxes. We now have a 2 or 4 or x 5 tithe - called tax much of which goes to help the less fortunate on benefits, the disabled, those needing state schooling, health, never mind helping those abroad.

If people do well and earn a lot of money they do mostly tend to give quite a bit away but should be under no legal obligation to do so. Generally private donations tend to be more effective than donations by the state. Cameron is not doing very well at the moment with foreign aid issues.

I agree with Xenia. 40% and partially 50% tax on income alone is quite a large contribution imo even if you don't pay a penny to charity (and of course most people do).

whatever happened to SQ

I am here! Trying to digest your post gooseberry. I think I understand the point but what then is the answer? And I know that is what the big conversations between you and sakura were about but I'm a bit out of my depth TBH

I don't know what the answer is. Really good work is done by large internal south Asian philathropic organisations, a la Ford Foundation etc. So many bloody others spend a fortune ferrying staff business class around the world to poverty conferences etc. Yes that was interesting stuff with Sakura.