Chapter 397: One Billion People

The start of a new day for Masayoshi Kishimoto and Rie Sakai often began with a meeting in the small dining room on the first floor. With a full-time maid in the house, she had also gotten lazy and didn’t get up to make breakfast.

As for noon, both were out and about, not coming back for lunch. In the evening, sometimes they ate together and sometimes they didn’t.

Masayoshi Kishimoto sat on top of his established one, and with a smooth hand, he picked up a newspaper from the desktop is habit and read it.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a party at our house. How about having one this weekend?” Sakai Rie said bluntly.

Masayoshi Kishimoto, with that pair of eyes still focused on the newspaper’s lead, succinctly said in just one word, “Yes.”

“On that night, call all the people from your company who showed up at the sorority together. I’ll call some more people from the Rose Society’s side.

That’s right, I’ll call Saki as well. Just some of us unmarried young people getting together to get high.” Sakai Rie said as she picked up a glass of milk with both hands.

Masayoshi Kishimoto closed the newspaper in his hands and folded it again and said, “You’re not talking about a Party, you’re having a get-together again.”

“You’re a man who speaks with such a lack of class.Parties invite people who are generally known. Sororities are often filled with people who don’t know each other.

People reach the goal of getting to know each other by having a party.” Rie Sakai took a sip of milk from the middle of her glass to moisturize her throat and perked up her voice.

“Whatever you say it is!” Masayoshi Kishimoto said as he placed the newspaper back in his hands.

“If you don’t object, I’m going to have to call people one by one.” Rie Sakai smiled sweetly and said.

“Would it help if I objected?” Masayoshi Kishimoto asked rhetorically.

“Don’t make it seem like I’m oppressing you in some way. If you’re not happy about it, then we just won’t have the Party.” Sakai Rie put down the glass of milk in her hand and opened her hands.

“Where there is oppression, there is resistance. Actually, that’s a lie. Oppression is everywhere. For that reason, you either learn to endure it or become cruel.” Masayoshi Kishimoto picked up the knife and fork on the table and prepared to start eating the portion of breakfast in front of himself said.

“It’s not just a party, how did you call it class oppression?” Sakai Rie retorted.

“There’s a line in the great Chinese poet Du Fu’s ‘Five Hundred Words on Going to Fengxian County from Beijing’ that says, “Vermilion gates stink of wine and meat, and the roads have bones that freeze to death.

It means that the wine and meat in the homes of the aristocrats stinks when they can’t finish it, while the poor die of cold and hunger in the streets. Do you know how many people in the world are still starving?

One billion people on less than a dollar a day. That’s only 6 billion people in the world (2000 figures). That’s a whole sixth of the population struggling to stay above and below the subsistence line.” Masayoshi Kishimoto said as he ate.

Sakai Rie just blinked twice at him and said, “When did you become so compassionate?”

Masayoshi Kishimoto was just catching up with her words, so just inside his head, he suddenly remembered two books that he had read in his previous life, one was The Bottom Billion and the other was The Nature of Poverty.

Both of these books dealt with the field of economics. Today, with the unprecedented development of the global economy and the substantial increase in the material standard of human beings, there are still 1 billion people who are left out of the development.

It is not an exaggeration to say that these 1 billion people at the bottom of the ladder are living in hell on earth. For them, education is a luxury.

Even if NGO-funded schools provide free education and even free lunches, there will still be children who stop going to school.

The result of this vicious circle is that the less they read, the narrower their thinking becomes, and the less their heads turn. At the age of ten or even a few years old, they start to work in simple, mechanical, long hours, with little income and no hope. This is often referred to as child labor.

Even then, there will be a number of people without jobs. For this reason, their parents go around on their knees begging for a bowl of rice for their children.

To say that poor countries or regions are poor because the people there are lazy is pure bullshit. In some parts of Africa, it is possible to work more than ten hours a day and engage in heavy manual labor without getting enough to eat.

Is that lazy? That’s because others don’t have the opportunity. On the one hand the rich countries have exploited the poor countries with scissors, and on the other hand there are patches of bad governance within the poor countries.

The ruling class of the poor countries adopts the policy of fooling the people, not requiring them to do a single thought, but only requiring them to bury their heads in their work like cows and horses, as well as to multiply more like pigs and dogs.

This goes on day after day, year after year, until the body is worn out. Truly the Chinese saying is true, the body is a labor force, death is a rest.

On the contrary, another book, “Mega Wealth”, puts the pen on the 1% and 0.1% of the population above the tip of the social pyramid.

A top dentist will only work full-time for fifty of the people in the group at the top of the pyramid. All three books are economics works, not in the least exciting YA literature cool feeling, but the more you read the more complex mood.

“Why don’t you say anything? Did I poke your soft spot again?” Sakai Rie pursed her lips and said.

“I was thinking, should I send you to India to see for yourself how the poor people there get by? The most important thing is that you can see how miserable the women of poor families in India are living.” Masayoshi Kishimoto didn’t laugh and said quite seriously.

“A woman like me who doesn’t give her husband’s family a dowry. After the marriage, you must be burning me to death.” Sakai Rie feigned anger.

“Burning you to death would be a crime. Even so, India plays host to a number of such tragedies every year. The most ludicrous thing is that the marriage of men and women in India is completely shaped like a business, with a clear price tag.

If a man is a civil servant, the woman’s dowry is 1 million yen. If a man is a teacher, the dowry price is 800,000 yen.

If a man is a bus driver, the dowry price is 500,000 yen. If a man is a cook, the price of the dowry is 200,000 yen.

Don’t think for a moment that the upper classes are able to have much freedom in marriage. Inbreeding is quite common in India, and in South Asia in general. They also know that it is not good for the offspring and the percentage of deformities will be high.

Why do they still do it? That is so that the property can stay within the family and not go out of the family. After all, the accumulation of wealth is particularly difficult. It just becomes even tougher by way of agricultural production.” Masayoshi Kishimoto did not speak blindly at all.

“You’ll marry me in the future and not lose money? Otherwise, you can consider an Indian woman. At that time, she will also be able to bring along a large and generous dowry!” Sakai Rie “giggled” and laughed her head off.