Brigada participant, Larry, wrote this past week, wondering “where we can find stats that say what percentage of poverty is caused by corruption and what percentage is caused by human actions and what percentage is caused by “acts of god.” Can you help us find a study on that? For background, see pages like…
http://www.statista.com/chart/2493/detroit-comes-first-for-poverty-in-the-united-states/
It’s a great but impossible question. Just think about the status of your own finances, nutrition, safety, material comfort, transportation, communications, education, relationships, wealth, water supply, political power and income. Then calculate how much each of those personal elements of status were impacted by corruption of some form. e.g. How much did the financial crisis driven by corruption in the sub-prime home mortgage business–resulting in a global financial crisis impact your own status. When you consider the impossibility of calculating the impact of one factor on one person it becomes evident how impossible it would be to ask the question on the macro level.