the poverty of riches
By Marta Monsó
Reach equality. We’re living in a world where the rules are rigged in favour of the few and at the expense of the others. This is because we lived in an inequality word where the gap between poor and rich people is increasing every day more and this it’s on the rise as we live in an increasingly individualistic, selfish society that cares only about personal happiness. This is the consequence of political and economic choices and it is hurting all of us. Less equal societies have less stable economies and produces high levels of income inequality are linked to economic instability, financial crisis, debt and inflation, it also have less social mobility and lower scores and more property crime and violent crime. As a human being, all this, can affect how you see those around you and your level of happiness and health.
Part of our community are thousands upon thousands of homeless people. Cold, hungry, sad, lonely, hopeless, in pain. The vast majority of our society, as we live in a developed country, in our daily routine we don't concern about poverty. We tend to think that it doesn't affect to the persons around us but the true is that in the streets there are homeless persons and in our country there are also people living in extreme poverty. The poverty doesn’t exist only in undeveloped countries, it’s present in all the entire world. This image is a clear and a great example of a poor man living in a wealth society. We can see him sitting down in the street, in a dirty pavement. He is in a defeat position, with his head looking down, his legs fold, with a hunched back and wearing old clothes. The most important of the photo is that he's holding with his hands a small piece of cardboard with the phrase "I used to be your neighbour" written in it.
He's there, in the street, for the first day? I don't think so. This street must be one of a developed city, while he's suffering and he thinks about what he can do to get out of his situation, around him is a nonstop. He’s surrounded of families, of people going to work, of elderly talking quietly, of smiles, of screams, of crying, of nonsense complains, of shops, of cafes, of enterprises, of schools, of houses - he's in the middle of a big moving city-. There he must feel small, lonely, and sad. He must be concern to know what he will do after, what he will eat, where he will sleep this night. Years before he might be a man with a family, living in a house, having resources, alimentation, healthy, with a good quality of life. But unfortunately one day he must be dismissed of his work, maybe he divorced and finally he find himself without any income, without a shelter and concerned for the basic needs that he doesn't realize since then how important they are.I think that with the message he wants to say that you can be living a good economic live, but you never know if one day the live that you tend to live nowadays will disappear like his life. He used to be the neighbour of somebody and know he’s the neighbour of the streets.
Poverty is the incapacity of living in a normal way, the incapacity of participating in the society, of having opportunities to improve one’s quality of life and of having the means to cover one’s basic needs. The separation of countries and the superiority of some people over others causes inequality and leads to poverty. People leaving a wealth life doesn’t really concerned about the poverty, we search for our own satisfactions, opportunities, for our happiness but we doesn’t interest for that people around us that they are living without knowing if one day they will live without worry about having the basic need - food, a shelter, clothing, the chance to have a job, of having sanity, running water and electricity in reach-. We are selfish, ambitious, we don’t have empathy, we lack togetherness and it is precisely what we need to fight against poverty and against the enormous gap between poor and rich people.