The documentary titled “Living On One Dollar” was an emotional piece that demonstrated how humans in impoverish countries manage to survive with very little income. What was amazing about the film, is the fact that these four college students named Zach, Chris, Sean, and Ryan just didn’t read facts and talk about the problems in our society, instead they gave the audience an first-view perspective, by placing themselves in the poverty-stricken country of Guatemala, as they attempted to live off one dollar a day for 56 days.
The reason they decided to live off just a dollar a day is due to many residents being informally employed, therefore their pay is very unpredictable. Zach and Chris imitated this scenario by drawing a number of 0-9 from a hat each morning. In addition to managing off a small amount of money a day, they also had to pay on a loan for a place to live, every 15 days. One of the questions that Chris and Zach wanted to know was if the natives were actually budgeting their money or if they were living life on the fly daily. They met a 12 year old boy named Chino, who came from a family of eight, in which all of them lived in a single room.
Chinos father works as a day laborer, and Chino works in the field. Chris and Zach eventually develop a good relationship with them. The natives were able to assist them with building a better fire, how to get the best deals in town on food items, most importantly how to survive. In exchange Chris and Zach would teach educate them on English, and other things. As Chris and Zach spent more time with Chino and his family, they was able to discover that the people were loyal, very generous, and had much ambition.
Chris stated ” It’s the situation they are in that is holding them back, not who they are. The one thing that Chris and Zach was able to understand more is that there are some people that were willing to help people in poverty, but the vast majority would turn their backs on them. They stated there is the power of partial solutions. Individuals can affect a change in poverty and change the world. Studies say that approximately 1. 1 billion people around the world live on less than one dollar a day. This fact expresses that many countries all over the world are in the lower-income status. If we refer to Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs we will realize that many of the physiological levels aren’t being met adequately across the world.
Food and water is one of the three essentials to living, along with breathing. In these lower-income countries these items are scarce and many humans wound up dying from starvation or dehydration. This isn’t something that I have to deal with in my life. I have unlimited access to quality food and water. I even have a variety of choices as to what to eat. Many people in lower-income countries may not have a choice. As we witnessed in the documentary “Living on One Dollar” many families in Guatemala either eat tortillas, rice, or beans and rarely anything else. People in lower-income countries normally have absolute poverty.
According to our textbook one in five people over the world are at risk of absolute poverty. In the U. S. even the less fortunate person is in a relative poverty society, which means there is hope. Another disadvantage of living in a lower-income country is that they are often dominated by other wealthier nations. The textbook explains the idea of other richer tions overdeveloping themselves and underdeveloping the rest of the world. I happen to live in the U. S. , one of the more stable economies in the world, therefore social mobility can exist in my lifetime.
For the people that live in lower-income countries, there is no way that they can move upward in society because of their economy being underdeveloped. Based on the lectures and textbook, one of the main reasons for the unbalanced global economy is the global stratification that exist in our society. Poorer countries work extremely harder, in order to make privileged countries wealthier. Stratification takes place when resources, opportunities, and priviliges are distributed based on positions in the social hierarchy. According to the textbook, the U. S. opulation earns about 49 percent of the national income.
Stratification and inequality can be evaluated from micro, meso, and macro-level perspective. The other reasons that global stratifications occur are based on several different theories. The first is modernization theory, which states that economic and social development is due to technological and cultural differences between nations. The dependency theory explains global inequality in terms of the historical explanation of poor nations by rich ones. The other theories place heavy blame on colonialism and neocolonialism.
Finally, world systems theory blame the three-tier system for global stratification. In my opinion the most logical explanation would be the dependency theory. These poor nations rely on rich nations to supply them with resources and infrastructure, placing them in financial debt and continuously depending on them to assist them. The multinational corporations exploit these poorer nations because they know that their country is desperate for income. I would like to donate money that that serves to low-income nations, but I’m very skeptical on if the funds are being well spent.
Although, I know that you have access to researching the company in order to find out if they’re legit or not, It’s still difficult to completely trust them on that alone. I have seen way too many legitimate companies, mishandle funds and not have the integrity to use the resources in the most appropriate way. After watching the documentary, I would like to personally take a vacation to a low-income nation and try to volunteer my services to them. The documentary enlightened me on just how fortunate Americans are and that we should appreciate things a lot more.
