There is Another Way

While listening to KFAI (community radio) something on the news headlines made me stop and listen again. (I was listening to an archive show from Tuesday so I could rewind).

The announcer said that the U.S. now supplies 1/2 of all new weapons orders for developing countries and it is the eighth year in a row we will lead the world in global arms deliveries.

#2486 - I am grateful to listen to a radio station that considers this important news.

#2487 - I am grateful for the google search it led to and though I had to go back to 2007 to find a prominent newspaper that thought this was important, I found an article in the NY Times.

#2488 - I am grateful that, according to the aforementioned article, the global weapon sales to developing nations was around $30 billion in 2005 and 2006. Okay right there are $30 dollars that could be used for education or health care. Wala. It's like magic!

#2489 - Then I looked up the world military spending - $1.5 trillion in 2009 according to the Christian Science Monitor. Right there, $1.5 trillion dollars (if say we just took one year off military spending). So I'm going to add the environment to my education and health care spending redirection list.

#2490 - Now I haven't tried to do a mathematical equation with the number 1 trillion for a long time, if ever. I wasn't even certain how many zeros to use. But based on my (please correct me if wrong) calculations, that is about $230 per person/per year (based on a population of 6.5 billion).

So I found the per capita income throughout the world, and in 2009, there were three countries where we could double their per capita income if we just gave them that $230 per person back.

There are 37 countries where people could get a raise of 25% or more for the year if we gave them each (averaged out) their $230 back.

This really could be quite a depressing issue but the fact of the matter is writing this completely energized me, our world is a big ship and it is not necessarily easy to steer it in another direction, but there is no way you can tell me there isn't somewhere else we could choose to go.

Amen.