Limits to wealth

Millions who watched American Idol's Giving Back program were moved to donate to various causes, especially those intended to save the lives of children all over the world. Seeing how people's care, through donations, can translate into saving and changing lives affirms the belief and hope that there is still much more room for positive change all throughout the world. All that is needed is for one to start sharing whatever one can for the sake of another.

 In Africa, millions of children are dying of HIV-Aids or malaria, among other causes. Having an anti-malaria mosquito net has spared the lives of millions of children and their families in Africa. Donations have also been used to buy the necessary medicines to keep HIV-infected children alive.

Sadly though, there are still so many sick and the dying not only in Africa but all throughout the world. Even in the USA, one of the so-called richest countries in the world, there are so many poor without access to daily food and much-needed health care. Millions of our own people here in our country, as well, are not strangers to hunger, unemployment, and non-access to welfare services.

The increase in the number of the world's needy calls for a reevaluation of our present global system. If millions are unable even to survive and meet their most basic needs all throughout the world, it is time to pause and reflect on what needs to be done so that more, if not all, human beings in this world will be able to meet their basic needs for food and health, at the very least.

While there are millions of poor in this world, there are, on the other hand, just a handful of individuals who own millions and even billions. Poverty cannot be solved without wealth remaining unquestioned. If the present global system works very well for only a few individuals and groups but does not work for millions, then, the present global system where inequality exists and continues has to change, so millions more, especially the children, can live, and live longer, and live as human beings should.

Wealth is often viewed positively. Together with power, wealth has become the most attractive goal for millions all throughout the world. "Best to have much savings or much wealth so you are able to get what you want" has become an unchallenged view. But as wants can escalate beyond what human beings actually need, and as the wants of the wealthy are far outpacing the basic need of millions to stay alive, don't you think it is time to rethink this mantra of wealth-acquisition and rethink changing this world for the sake of the more numerous needy people?

Just how much does one individual need to live a full human life in this present world? Must one have to have a private plane or several? How many private cars must one have to be a human being? Are planes and cars related to being human?

How much and what kind of food does one have to eat per day? And how many and what types of clothes does one have to have as a human being?

 How much money or funds does an individual need? The way this present world operates, the more one has, there are millions of other people who belong to the have-nots. The haves own so much, far beyond what they will need within a day or their whole lifetime even. The have-nots, on the other hand, do not have anything at all, not even the chance to live and survive within a day!

Don't you think it is time to rethink wealth and how much wealth an individual or a family should be allowed to have locally and globally? Perhaps if we start this in our country, then those in power will concentrate on providing quality welfare service, not acquiring wealth, for our people.

The perspective of wanting to acquire more and more and more has led to so much inequality in this present world. The present economic crisis is a reflection of that unbridled, uncontrolled movement to produce and produce and profit and profit. Such a movement to acquire and profit has led to so much poverty and suffering not only of most of the world's people but of our Mother Earth as well.

Now is the time to seriously think about limits to wealth. Now is the time to seriously allow all, especially the children, to grow and develop as true, happy human beings in this world.

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