I was thinking of titling this blog, “Are we ready for world
peace?” That is an important question,
yet it is the solutions I’m seeking and I postulating a link between education
and warfare.
My observation is that where there is the least education there is the most warfare. Yes, the educated countries meddle and get involved, but with the overriding requirement not to have "our boys" killed, yet forgetting the numbers killed on the other side.
Here is another graphic from "The International Institute for Strategic Studies", which shows much the same distribution.
I'm thinking, we are prepared to pay for the education of the children down the road, but are we prepared to pay for the education of all the children in our world community?
The question is do we live in the same community? As long as we are saying "our children" and "other children", we are inviting trouble upon ourselves in the long run.
To take this point further, I've been thinking about what it would cost. The answer I fear is staggering. The young in developing nations far outnumber the adults in the developed nations.
Researching the cost of a satisfactory education in the developed world, I find it is of the order of $2,000 per year per child. I suspect that number does not include the cost of capital for the school. But as a working number, multiplied up across the globe, I found that about 5% of world GDP needs to be spent on education.
In the developed world we spend more than that for the education of the children in the country (both as a percentage of GDP and in absolute dollars). We are not as a world anywhere near that level of education spending and the gap lies in the places that appear on the conflict maps.
China, to my surprise, is close at about 4%. Yet the difference in absolute dollars is huge because the population is so large.
What would I tax?
I suggest a universal tax on energy. If every energy trade were taxed at 1%, the resulting tax revenue would be about right to foot the education bill. Eventually, as warfare declines, the military budgets could decline to policing budget levels and we'd all be better off.
Can we afford to do this?
Small print for further thought...should we be taking out debt to fund this education. Anyone with some good ideas on how to securitise the loans would be appreciated.
Comment from Nick Luft (http://www.impudent.org.uk/)
ReplyDeleteI don't think you have made the connection between the lack of education and the incidence of violence.
One of conflicts with the highest death toll is the Mexican drug wars. I note that on your graphic a lot of Mexico is in dark red, indicating a hot conflict.
Drug gangs fighting for turf is not one of ignorance. More probably greed and a need to inspire fear.
I read a review of a book about global statistical links that attempted to explain why the USA is a lot more violent than equally wealthy states like Sweden. THe answer of the book was status and security of status within that society.
But on the idea of education I agree. There are other stats that support the impact on education and literarcy etc. A simple one I recall is that the more literate a nation the lower the birth-rate.
But the essential problem with all these "links" and "causes" is that the world is so complex we do not really what is correlation and what is causation.
Nick