Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-1515612-20150926001457/@comment-10353303-20151001014946

One way to make a difference (if you're a student still) is to join a few clubs like I did which seek to raise awareness about issues like these. For example, in my school, I was in the Red Cross and Child Adoption Program clubs, where we raised money for fundraisers by going from class to class to ask for donations. We also set up small games such ones involving trivia about world issues in which you'd get prizes so as to raise awareness. Also, each year, my family contributes a certain amount of money collectively to donate to humanitarian groups to purchase either medicine, livestock (e.g. chickens, pigs, etc), or school textbooks/books. It's these little things that do make all the difference and can change people's lives.

I admire things like these because these are really important issues that have to be addressed. On the issues of income gaps and higher standards of living, I think we can take the Scandinavian countries as a good example of how things should be done. They take a more socialist approach than what we know here or in other parts of Europe, in that taxes are higher than what we may experience, but the standard of living is higher and there is less of a gap due to more money being poured into helping the unemployed, homeless and generally making life much less worrisome (e.g. the governments invest more money into student loans, education and for old people, pensions). It's similar in Canada. This way of thinking would do wonders to improve the overall standard of living and we wouldn't have so many talented people who are unable to attend higher education due to lack of funds.

However, being the cynic I am, I have to sadly note that some of these aren't possible in multiple lifetimes, let alone 15 years. For instance, responsible consumption and production will be an extremely difficult thing to achieve. The ideal business model is one where your business operates with the minimal amount of cost and earns the maximum amount of revenue possible. In seeking to lower costs, businesses often move their place of productions to other countries where environmental laws are more lax, such as countries in south-eastern Asia. There, labour is cheap, and they won't have to incur any fines for violating environmental laws due to them being either barely enforced or non-existant in those countries. This makes the companies seem pretty cheapskate, but to look at it from the business' point of view, having to go through the trouble and additional costs of disposing of (for example) toxic waste responsibly would cause them to incur higher cost and as a result, earn less profit (revenue - cost = profit --> Increase your cost, lower the profit). With less money from profits, they will have less money to  put back into the company to improve it (i.e. improve production and increase efficiency). As a result, to retain the current level of profit while coping with these extra costs, they'd have to do something drastic such as fire workers in order to lower the cost (in this case, wages). Of course we don't want ourselves or someone we know being without a job, don't we? Now, that sounds like a conundrum, right? The question has always been where can we find the balance is between responsible production and the ability to earn the maximum amount of money possible. It isn't just simply a matter of whether or not companies are willing to act responsibly.

That being said, many of these issues are already in the process of being solved, which makes our future look a bit brighter than the issue I just pointed out.