smooth, I'm probably just splitting hairs so take this as an aside factoid. I live in Canada. Our standard of living is very good. I'd say that the poorest among us have many more opportunities and services available to them than the poorest in the "3rd world" countries.
However, we're also very rich in resources. In fact, in global economical talks, we're critisized for being overtly dependant on resource exports. You're first link is also rather misleading. The dollar pics are outdated and, quite puzzling, Canada is listed without an economy of any form. Quite frankly, from a Coin, Currency_& Stamp page the economy thing isn't all that surprising (but the outdated currency thing is
). Now that the factoids are aside.
My take on the matter? I think that there's always been poor people. Whether by choice or by predicament in life I won't go into.
My question is: are we, the well-off, willing to down-grade are standard of living so that the not-so-well-off can up-grade theirs? This is, of course, assuming that we all can't live with the "western" standards (which I don't think we can. A study was shown that if the whole population of Earth lived like Canadians, we'd need 7 more Earth-sized planets just for garbage. We'd need some serious tech into recycling to overcome that..........but I digress from the main subject ).