ABSTRACT
The paradox of age is the dogged persistence of chronic and endemic poverty in a world of unprecedented opulence. In 1973, when the World Bank, a linchpin of the Bretton Woods system and the quarterback of the world capitalist system that called its major plays, described poverty reduction and alleviation as the main goal of development and its own central mandate, two-fifths of the world's population was unable to meet their basic human needs and thus the target of the Bank's interventions. As Chossudovsky argued, poverty is a social function of economic growth, i.e. the inevitable product of the normal functioning of the capitalist system and the result of the way and how the benefits or fruits of economic growth are socially distributed. The use of standard measure of income poverty is problematic when used to make international comparisons and when income is calculated on the basis of the exchange rate of various currencies against a US dollar standard.
