The elimination of global poverty is an extremely difficult subject to tackle because of its decentralization. There are, of course, several countries that are especially in need of assistance and regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia, but due to the nature of the global economy poverty necessarily exists in even the most wealthy countries. We need to find a solution that ends global poverty everywhere rather than just propping up a wealthy class in countries that are lacking capital. The UNDP needs to promote an economic system that allows for economic mobility without the wealth flowing only to the already wealthy nations. The Kingdom of Thailand currently shares the problem with many countries of the “Middle-income trap” where our country is unable to keep up with the prices in the global marketplace because of high wages and lower economies of scale.
The United Nations has been consistently dedicated to ending poverty, but have fallen short. The sustainable development goal of ending poverty by the year 2030 is projected to be a failure with an estimated 6% still living in extreme poverty and 8% of workers in extreme poverty. Extreme poverty has also had a direct connection with the lack of disaster relief with nearly 3 trillion dollars spent on recovering from disasters from 1998 to 2017. The framework is here for substantive change, but currently, there is little to no incentive for countries to follow plans like the Education 2030 framework for action and the Sendai framework for disaster relief that would help our cause.
The way to truly end poverty is to empower the workers in our society. If we ensure that all workers are being paid a fair wage productivity will shoot up and global poverty can be ended. The problem is that nation-states must act together or else private companies will simply move to the nation that has the lowest wages. So, the nation-states that form the United Nations should act together in forming a pact for a global minimum wage by regions. We should also provide incentives for some of the programs we currently have such as providing incentives for businesses to move to impoverished countries and providing incentives for countries with the lowest unemployment rate. As well it is important to also prioritize the huge amount of the nations of the world that are stuck in that middle-income trap. Poland is a nation that recently escaped this middle-income trap, and a large portion of the reason was because of the global integration of domestic markets. We need to foster trade in middle-income countries by modernizing the trade to ensure the efficiency of the markets and while massive economies right now without the unfair competition of larger economies. We should form a promise between middle and low-income countries to trade amongst ourselves to boost production and wages among our people.
Works Cited:
Aldaz-Carroll, Enrique, et al. “How to Avoid the Middle-Income Trap: Lessons from Poland, a European Tiger.” Brookings, Brookings, 18 Dec. 2018, www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2018/12/17/how-to-avoid-the-middle-income-trap-lessons-from-poland-a-european-tiger/.
Baunach, Leo, et al. “The Time Has Come for a Global Minimum Wage.” Inequality.org, inequality.org/research/ilo-global-minimum-wage/.
“Minimum Wage By Country 2019.” World Population Review, worldpopulationreview.com/countries/minimum-wage-by-country/.
- Jackson Bell
