In response to Lorraine's post: "Is it crazy to think we can eradicate poverty?"

I really enjoyed reading Lorraine’s post on the article “Is It Crazy To Think We Can Eradicate Poverty?” The comment on how this goal of everyone living above $1.25 per day is “too little a goal” was most interesting to me. I before never questioned whether that was a reasonable goal. Even if a family does live above $1.25 per day it does not mean they are in a living condition one would deem as not living in poverty. Or as Pritchett who was interviewed in for this article commented on that it just meant they are “ barely getting by”. Thinking back on the article I wondered if it is even fair to say that once everyone does achieve living on $1.25 or more per day, poverty has been eradicated. It makes me wonder if this standard was made just to make developed countries feel better about their efforts and also keep those efforts to a minimum while they attend to their other responsibilities? Was it more out of convenience and making this goal more manageable for developing countries. There is probably already much debate about this but these are just my own after-thoughts from reading the article and blog post. I guess I have become more skeptical about why this goal was created if it is known that living on that amount does not significantly improve one’s life. Of course little improvement is always better than no improvement but if living at or just above $1.25 per day is considered eradicating poverty then I am not so confident that poverty can really be eradicated when goals are set so low. Not to say this should not be a goal but that it should not be the mark of ending poverty. I would consider this goal to be more of a step in the process of eradicating poverty. I guess this is where the idea of romanticism of poverty from GPP 115 comes into play. To think that living above $1.25 a day is not living in poverty is like thinking that if you only smoke 2 cigarettes a day instead of a pack then you will not get lung cancer. Though we know that it may be that you have a lesser risk of developing cancer compared to someone who smokes a pack a day. In the end both are still at a very high risk of getting lung cancer because they are still smoking. The problem of lung cancer has not gone away and neither is poverty if living on $1.25 or more per day is considered not living in poverty.  It would only mean that the risk of an individual not able to getting three meals a day is less than for someone who is living on a lesser amount. And to add another point, once this WB goal is met what will happen next or will anything happen at all after that? So I guess my response to the article’s title would be, “yes”, if we keep handling poverty alleviation in this way and not making those drastic changes needed and if developing countries “don’t get their act together”.