Today’s diary is a little different. It’s a list of simple statistics and facts. Draw your own conclusions.
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Number of people that starve each day: 20,000 (from The Hunger Project)
1.2 billion suffer from obesity (GlobalIssues.org)
Number of people suffering from malnutrition to the point where their health, productivity and life expectancy are impaired: 852 million (UN Food and Agriculture Organization)
In the US, 40 to 50 percent of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten. (GlobalIssues.org)
Estimated cost to feed all the world’s hungry and give them basic health care: $13 billion above current expenditure. (UN Development Program 1998)
Total estimated cost of Iraq war: about $700 billion (Institute for Policy Studies)
More below.
Estimated cost to provide clean water and sanitation for all who don’t have it: $9 billion above current expenditure. (UN Development Program 1998)
US military spending for 2005: $277 billion (CIA World Fact Book)
Number of people living on less than $2 per day: 1.4 billion (International Labor Office)
The cost of the Iraq war so far broken down per person in the United States: $727 (Institute for Policy Studies)
Number of children dying from hunger every year: 5 million (UN Food and Agriculture Agency)
Cost of contracts awarded to Halliburton: over $10 billion (Institute for Policy Studies)
Maximum amount of a Kiva micro-loan provided to a businessperson in Uganda: $500 (Kiva)
Amount Halliburton failed to account for feeding and housing troops: $1.8 billion (Institute for Policy Studies)
17.8% of children under 18 in the US live in poverty (U.S. Bureau of the Census).
The Iraq War is the most expensive military effort in the last 60 years. (Institute for Policy Studies)
The $204.4 billion appropriated thus far for the war in Iraq could have purchased any of the following desperately needed services in our country: 46,458,805 uninsured people receiving health care or 3,545,016 elementary school teachers or 27,093,473 Head Start places for children or 1,841,833 affordable housing units or 24,072 new elementary schools or 39,665,748 scholarships for university students or 3,204,265 port container inspectors. (Institute for Policy Studies)
20 million people have died from AIDS since 1981. There are the 12 million AIDS orphans in Africa. (The Day)
Necessary resources to slow down or stop HIV/AIDS: $55 billion over the next three years (UN)
US intelligence budget over three years: about $120 billion (UPI)
Deaths from malaria each year: 1.3 million (Wikipedia)
Amount needed for malaria treatment, prevention, and research: 1 billion per year (Malaria Foundation International)
Cost of one Virginia class attack submarine: 2.6 Billion (Wikipedia)
Poverty is twice as prevalent as 20 years ago on the [African] continent, and 300 million people live with less than a dollar a day. (Paul Wolfowitz, via Jerome a Paris)
Exxon’s third quarter profit was $9.92 billion (International Herald Tribune).
If you were fortunate enough to be born in an industrialized country, your chance of living to age 5 are 99.3 percent. However if you were born in one of the least developed countries, your chance of dying before the age of 5 soars to as much as 31.6 percent! (National Association for the Prevention of Starvation)
The total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world “rose 8.2 percent to $30.8 trillion in 2004, giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets.” In other words, about 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s assets in 2004. (GlobalIssues.org)
Cross posted on European Tribune.
