By way of The View from Seymour:
If you’re feeling down at heel today, drop by Global Rich List to see where your income stacks up against the rest of the world’s.
It’s a clever idea from the BAFTA-winning folks at Poke. The link to make a donation to CARE International is a thoughtful touch, and I’m happy they’ve done it.
(Cue curmudgeonly lefty.)
But there isn’t a lot of context here beyond “You’re actually stinking rich compared to most of the world’s population,” and nothing to say to a visitor who says, “Funny. Between paying my rent and feeding my kids, I don’t feel very rich.”
And there’s no real attempt to answer the obvious questions: why are there such huge disparities in income? And apart from the suggestion of donating an hour’s wage to CARE, what can I do about it? (You can start finding some of the answers if you click the (subtle) link to CARE International UK.)
Now, whether acknowledging those questions helps drive potential donors to click the “donate” button is a legitimate question. But it would be nice to try to move folks who are shocked by their place in the world not just to give money, but to effect some kind of more lasting change.
I like your closing point. Someone (can’t recall who) recently observed that citizenship comes in three forms: people who donate to food banks, people who set up and run food banks, and people who wonder why food banks are necessary in the first place.
This site (the rich list) starts people on the third option, Crawford, and I think it does it well. I’ve always known that I grew up (and still am) poor – but Canadian poor, not all the world poor, or even US poor. I still had glass in my windows. Some panes cracked, sure, but it was there.
What the someone you’re quoting seems to have forgotten is that someone can do any two or all three of those things at once. I have the most fun reminding people that “socialist” isn’t a dirty word.