My name is Elliana, and I am a BFTF Founder this summer from California.  As the Ben Franklin Transatlantic Fellows Initiative’s Founders, we represent high school students from all over the world.  We met at Wakeforest University about, and have been together for about three weeks thus far.  As part of this diplomacy program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, we have been attending different classes, from Citizenship to Blogging.  For our current Advocacy classes, we are participating in the CNN and Youtube presidential candidates’ debate. 

The candidates for the 2008 election have thus far spoken mostly about the rich-poor gap in the
United States, but we want to know about the same problem globally.  What will each of the democratic candidates do to narrow this gap if they are elected?  The rich-poor gap is made larger by such factors as immigration and urbanization.  A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. The bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth.  People in developing countries are immigrating to wealthier countries for better work, pay, housing, healthcare, etc., and as a result, the countries they left become even worse economically.  With no technological advantages there is no future for urbanization and economic growth.  Hence the gap between the rich and poor is created.  The developed countries with resources continue to prosper and work with the materials and people they have, while the developing countries are trapped in an inefficiency pattern.