Thought Exercise ~ Future Poverty
Let's travel forward to a time not so far off: 30 years from now. Imagine you are a journalist who specializes in writing about culture, social issues and related government policies. Indonesia has become the sixth biggest economy in the world; its middle class and business elites are a match for those of other developed countries. What would you be writing about poverty and Indonesia's approach to it in 2048? (You need to imagine and speculate about the future in order to answer this question. Don't just talk about poverty in 2018.)
Poverty is a lack of means necessary to fulfill one or all of the personal basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter (Wikipedia). Poverty includes many different aspects in social, economic and political issue. Indonesia has been dealing with poverty for years. Dealing poverty is not as easy as pie. The multifaceted concept has numerous factors, ranging from factors that can be prevented, can be solved even though it is time consuming, until factors that can occur unexpectedly.
ReplyDeleteThis recent decade, there have been various mega projects conducted by the government that focuses on the development of infrastructure. Roads are constructed in order to connect cities and villages from Sabang to Merauke. Airports, seaports, and railway are built to ease people’s mobility and logistic distribution. These developments reduce travel distance from one place to another, lead to a lower fuel consumption by distributors, and finally results the cheaper price of commodities. Slow but sure, the number of people who live below the poverty line has decreased.
However, I believe that poverty will still be a never ending phenomenon in the society. A basic logic of one is superior because there’s an inferior, support this issue. If one day, hundreds of million Indonesian people live in prosper and above the poverty line, where’s the inferior? I assume it will be somewhere else, most likely to be in the neighbouring countries. Now, what will happen next? Just like what happen in Europe, there’ll be a massive number of immigrants migrating to Indonesia to seek opportunities. Will Indonesia be ready to supply those opportunities? Or will it be a threat to the prosperity that has been achieved earlier?
In 2048, Indonesia has become 6th biggest economy in the world. Because of higher level of infrastructure and education, the island of Java and Sumatera become the centre of Indonesian economy and also the centre of Indonesian industry. Prosperity flourishes in these islands and its inhabitants have higher income and living condition than people living in other island. Poverty in this islands are limited and small compared to other island.
ReplyDeleteBut, in the outer islands of Indonesia, poverty rate will still be high, the income and living condition are considerably lower than Javanese and Sumatran. The industry is still oriented in raw material industry, like mining, fishing, and forestry. There will be some tourism industry in some exotic places in the east Indonesia.
I think in 2048, the government will focus more in developing provinces in outer island of Indonesia, so that we can achieve one of our nation’s ultimate goal which is prosperity for entire Indonesian people.
Since becoming the world 6th largest economy, Indonesia hasn’t really tackle the problems of poverty in the society, the high rate of economical disparity between the rich and the poor cause a lot of people to wonder, what is the next policy that the government going to make after few attempts of failure. Java and sumatera had become the most populated island In the country with a lot of development and attention from the government whilst the other islands received little to no development.
ReplyDeleteThe rate of population in Kalimantan and Sulawesi are still very low compared to Java and Sumatera. Even though there had been a lot of mega construction project such as free housing for emmigrant and alternative energy plant going on in those islands, there are simply not enough emmigrant to occupy and operate those kinds of project.
The highly concentrated Java and Sumatera will still be the backbone of Indonesian economy for years on from now. Many will think that even though Sulawesi,Kalimantan and Papua have such a high potency of being the next backbone of Indonesian economy. The lack of population there will really hinder the progress of development. The government should really focus on how to change the people mindset, that emmigrating is a must to achieve the prosperity of the Indonesian people.
In 2048, Indonesia has become the sixth biggest economy in the world. and this has resulted in lower poverty rate in Indonesia, why?.Because Java is now the second fastest developing island compare to the other 4 big islands, and now here is where everything become interesting, astonishingly Papua which was the most backward island back in 2018, is now the fastest developing island. There are almost no poverty in this island, Poverty rate is only at 0.005%. that means there are only about 1000 people who are poor at the moment because that number is slowly decreasing. Soon there will be no poverty at all in Papua, and this is the first time a country has accomplished an achievementm of succesfully removing poverty from an island. You might think, how about the other islands?. Well, the poverty rate in Java is 1%, Sumatra at 0.009%, Kalimantan at 0.008%, and Sulawesi at 1.115%. So it can be concluded that soon, Indonesia will be the first devbeloping country and there wll be no poverty at all in Indonesia. -Dimas Aditya Permana
ReplyDeletePoverty is one of the major problem in Indonesia, mainly in big cities such as Jakarta where poverty are more apparent as the gap between “The rich” and “The poor” are explicitly categorised as the characteristics of Indonesia as a country. It is NOT Indonesia without 3 characteristics corruption, congestion, and poverty. Poverty is the main problem of Indonesia, because there are an uneven distribution of wealth between people within this country, and corruption can be considered as one of the factor of poverty as the wealth only enjoyed by the upper class people, and the gap between both working and ruling class becoming larger and larger. And looking from the trend for the past decade that poverty is becoming more apparent as corruption becoming a norm and the gap is increasing significantly, although there are some government intervention to overcome this problem in the future, the most notable program from the government is the funding for the micro-businesses which called Program Padat Karya, however this trial to save Indonesia from poverty is a minor action to face a major problem.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), the number of Indonesians experienced poverty in September 2017 was 10.12 percent of the total population. This proved that Indonesia has a high poverty rate back in 2017. As the people in Indonesia have become more educated and with the help of the advanced technology that provide access to information, the economic condition has improved significantly. There is less margin between the poor and the rich as the money supply is distributed equally. In the previous years, corruption plays a big role as the cause of poverty. Now, the current government has a higher education level and better work ethics. Hence, they tend to make more rational decisions and eventually the number of corruption is declining. However, poverty is still apparent, but it is lower than ever before. There are better infrastructures and community services that distributed evenly within the country. People also having better quality of life, healthcare, and education.
ReplyDeleteTo answer the question about poverty in 2048, all i can say is that we can simply predict the future by looking at the data from the past. Therefore, i’ve checked the official statistic from BPS (Central Statistics Agency), and It was showed that the rate of poverty in our country during the year of 2007 was about 17.6% (out of the total population). Then i can see from the data that these numbers keeps on dropping year after year, until it reach the rate of 9.82% in the year of 2018. By looking at the reality of this data, i can only assumed that these numbers will keep dropping. In addition, the current situation of this world shows that people are getting smarter, technology keeps on improving, the number of company and infrastructure keep on growing, and therefore by seeing these rapid development from various aspects, i’am optimistic that in the year of 2048 Indonesia will be free of poverty.
ReplyDeleteDespite the speculative nature of this comment, one thing I am certain with about poverty in the future is that it might even be worse than it is today due to job displacement brought by automation. Contemporary commentators believe that mass automation would be good for humanity, as freeing workers from industrial labor would mean a shift to a service-based post-industrial society with higher standards of living. However, this view is ignorant of the fact that large-scale automation will only benefit capital owners, as the displaced workers will find it harder to find jobs that aren’t replaced by robots. The ultimate paradox here is that if the majority of workers were replaced, the ensuing poverty of the masses would mean that businesses couldn’t sell their products to people. Thus, my prediction of the future is that poverty caused by the replacement of the workers by automation will cause the implosion of capitalism, as businesses can no longer sell their products. This would also bring about a change in the paradigm of the economy, wherein businesses and the government must seriously tackle the social conflict brought forth by the inequality of capital ownership.
ReplyDeleteIt’s 2048. Indonesia already become one of the biggest country with a good economy improvement in the world. Our industries is as good as Japanese or Americans. We can produce our own resources to live and survive in the future world. Everything is controlled and made by machines, robots, and automatic workers. The productions are much faster, the quality is much better, and human mistakes are already disappeared. Using machines in industries doesn’t mean we all are in good conditions. Some of us are much more poor than 20 or 30 years ago. Unemployment rate is bigger than ever. Poverties are everywhere. The economic gap is much bigger and worse. Death by poverty is so many that we can’t even control it anymore. The humans are already replaced by machines, and we can’t fight for it. The government only prioritize the income, rather than it’s people. The poor are in collapse, and the rich are still living in peace, and don’t even care about the poor.
ReplyDelete2048 is the year where Indonesia has become the sixth biggest economy in the world. Our resources helped us gain the title, making us able to compete with other developed countries. The development outside of Java Island is starting to rise equally. Urban areas such as Jakarta and Surabaya are as busy as a man with no sleep. The improvement of an artificial intelligence has made androids being mass produce. Many jobs have been replaced by androids. Corruption has gone because of androids having high accuracy for their jobs. This action causes people to lose their job, making them unemployed and have to face a different kind of poverty. The poverty this time around, is that people with no job have to survive in the suburban area. The rich and the poor are being divided with androids as the securities on the border. The look on urban area like Jakarta is becoming more futuristic. The bad thing is that pollution also increases, making mask as the higher trend of fashion.
ReplyDeleteLet us speculate about Indonesia’s poverty in 2048 if Indonesia has become the sixth biggest economy country in the world. But before that let us begin by discussing the poverty in nowadays which is in the 2018. Nowadays general speaking, the Indonesia’s economy is so poor due to Indonesia have a big loan. The causes of the loan itself mostly because the poverty in Indonesia. With the rate of the unemployment in Indonesia considered high it makes us wonder how the people behavior change in the 30 years from now if Indonesia suddenly become one of the biggest country in the world. If it happened the people might be so different with nowadays. There will be a very competitive competition in Indonesia. But looking at the fact that there are still many people in Indonesia that is not into the competition. The people who live in rural are tend to avoid the competition. Then the speculation is there is still be a lot of poverty across the country.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts on poverty are basic and straightforward. Poverty is not inevitable. Poverty can be prevented. Poverty is an affront to a decent society. As human beings, we should consider poverty to be intolerable, and we should unite to eradicate it. In a world where technology has made it possible for everyone to have at the very least, sufficient food, shelter, education, and medical care, which are necessities for a decent life, I consider it a crime against humanity that poverty is allowed to exist in any country, anywhere in the world. The reason that poverty exists, indeed, the reason there is so much poverty in a world where everyone could have at least the necessities of life, is because we allow so much of the world’s resources and wealth to be hoarded by a class of plutocrats. Wealth hoarded by a wealthy individual is wealth that could alleviate the suffering of many thousands of other people.
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