Pogge, Thomas. "Eradicating Systemic Poverty: Brief for a global resources dividend". Journal of Human Development, Vol.2, No.1 (2001): 59-77.

Pogge, Thomas. "Eradicating Systemic Poverty: Brief for a global resources dividend". Journal of Human Development, Vol.2, No.1 (2001): 59-77.

• Povery can be conceived of as a moral issue from the perspective of either positive or negative rights. Either we are not fulfill of our positive obligation to give help to those in need, or we are failing to fulfill our negative obligation to not actively profit from the misery and exploitation of others (60).
• Some scholars argue that the existence of radical inequality constitutes a failure to uphold negative responsibilities. Because there is a large relative and absolute gap between the wealthy and the poor, because that gap cannot be reasonably crossed by personal initiative, and because it is possible for the wealthy to aid the poor without severely injuring themselves, then failing to do so is contributing to suffering and therefore a violation of the negative duty to not harm (60).
• The logic presented above is not convincing because, although the wealthy are not helping end suffering, they are also not shown to be actively contributing to the suffering. For not solving radical inequality to be a failure of negative duty, then it needs to be shown that the wealthy contribute or benefit from the suffering of the poor (61).
• The wealthy are responsible for the suffering of the poor if the wealthy created the institutional order which exists and imposed it on the poor, and an alternative system of institutions not resulting in radical inequality could have been created (61).
• The contemporary world order clearly fullfils the first of these conditions, in that the international economic, political, and financial order was established primarily by wealthy nations in support of their own interests and enforced on all other states, often to the direct detriment of other states (61-62).
• The fact that the global order has already undergone great changes in the past two decades demonstrates that there are and were alternatives available for the wealthy and powerful nations which would not have resulted in radical inequality, and that these alternatives were deliberately not choosen (62-63).
• The wealthy are responsible for the suffering of the poor if the wealthy enjoy significant advantages from the use of natural resources which the poor are largely excluded from without compensation (63).
• In the contemporary world, the wealthy use a disproportionate amount of global resources while the poor receive both no compensation and a minimal share of these resources. This situation has obviously benefited the wealthy at the expense of the poorest populations (63-64).
• The wealthy are responsible for the suffering of the poor if the current distribution of resources between the wealthy and the poor resulted from a shared historical process characterized by massive and grevious wrongdoing (65).
• Since most of the world's poor reside in Africa or Asia, the conditions of global radical inequality are undoubtedly shaped by the grevious injustices which took place during the period of colonialism. The source of radical inequality is severe wrongdoing during shared histories, for which some moral restitutions is owed (65).
• The author proposes, as a solution to global poverty which fulfills all categories of justice, the introduction of a 'global resources divident', to be enforced by national governments in every countries on Earth. Based on the assumption that the global poor deserve a 'share' of all natural resources, the policy envisions a dividend or percentage of all natural resources sold or used being given to the global poor (66).
• Even a dividend of 1% of the value of natural resources would provide enough money to substantial increase the incomes of the extremely poor and end radical inequality within a few years (67).
• These funds should be distributed according to the situations needed in those countries and according to the assessed needs by that government, but some guarantee should be made of transparency. The author specifically considers giving the dividends to the UN or another international organization for distribution (68).
• Whereas the current system of development aid is woefully inadequate and develops insulting ideas of dependence and hand-outs, the global resources dividend system would provide the required funds and inculcate the positive notion that this is a fair payment for the prior exclusion of the global poor (69).
• The full written form of author's argument can be seen on pages 70 and 71. It demonstrates that failing to correct the system of radical poverty which the wealthy nations created and benefit from is both a failure of positive duty and a failure of negative duty.
• Poverty generates an enormous number of problems for the developing world, problems which in an increasingly interconnected and globalized environment pose a threat to developed countries. It is therefore not only moral, but smart for both developing and developed countries to implement the global resource dividend or similar systems for massive and effective poverty relief (73-74).