Gratitude
Gregory K. Moffatt, Ph.D.
We have heard a lot about our troubled economy in the past few months as the stock market has bounced up and down, fuel prices have reached an historic high, and banks are foreclosing on homes. But in the context of the rest of the world, we have it pretty good. Here are reasons to be grateful that you might want to mention to your family as you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner.
The majority of the world's population lives in poverty. Not poverty
as defined in the U.S. as earning less than about $17,500 a year
for a 4-person household. This is true poverty where 80% of the
worlds' population lives on less than $10 a day, one in four people
in the world live on less than $1 a day, and 15 million children
die each year of hunger. Even in our current economy, we spend
approximately $17 billion each year on pet food, $8 billion on
cosmetics, and $11 billion on ice cream, all the while complaining
about being "financially strapped."
Every year over 1 million people die of malaria, 242,000
die of measles, two million children die of pneumonia, and 1.6
million die of diarrheal disease. In sum, 10 million children
globally die every year from preventable or treatable disease.
That is roughly the entire population of the state of Georgia
- every year.
One quarter of the people in the world live without electricity
and two thirds of the people around the world do not have access
to clean water. Many of the people who do have access to clean
water have to carry it in buckets to their homes. Try going one
day without water in your home and you will realize the luxury
of clean running water. Yet, we are affluent enough to spend $15
billion a year on bottled water when we have access to clean,
dependable water right from any tap.
In the past decade, over two million children worldwide
have been killed in war, 4-5 million have been disabled, one million
have been orphaned, and ten million have been psychologically
traumatized by the war they have witnessed. Over one billion people
in the world cannot even sign their names or read a book and if
we spent just 1% of what we spent on weapons, we could educate
every one of these 1 billion people.
In 2007, the U.S. gross national income per capita was approximately
$46, 000 a year. Compare that to Uganda ($340), Rwanda ($320),
Ethiopia ($180), Liberia ($150), and Burundi ($110). Many of us
will spend more money on Thanksgiving dinner than people in these
countries make in an entire year and for Christmas, many Americans
will spend more money on presents for their children than the
gross national income per capita of all five of these countries
combined.
Overall, we have it pretty good. Less than 5% of people
who own homes in the U.S. are directly affected by the mortgage
"crisis." That means 95% of us (statistically, almost
everyone) who own a home are getting along OK. Even for those
who are affected by foreclosure, most of them do not end up homeless.
Compare that to over 1 billion people worldwide who do not have
a home of any kind and there are no social services to which they
can turn for help.
It is true that home prices in the U.S. have fallen, but
that has very little real dollar effect on the homeowner unless
he is selling. Housing prices always rebound and even though this
is an economic slump, homeowners (and stockholders as well) are
still expected to come out ahead in the long run. Our unemployment
rate is around 6%, not a great number, but again this means that
94% of those who are employable are working and unlike most workers
in the world, we like our jobs. About half of all workers in the
U.S. say they are either satisfied with their jobs or extremely
satisfied with their jobs.
Our children are healthy, we have jobs we like, we have
homes, electricity, a clean and dependable source of water, relatively
dependable healthcare, education, and we earn lots of money -
enough to have the luxury to complain about high prices for tickets
to athletic events and movies. These truths should give us plenty
of reasons to be grateful.