As an American, I (like most other Americans), take everything that we have for granted. Recently, my teacher read us a book called, If the World Were a Village. This book describes the many people of the world, but compressed into a village of only 100 people, and it describes what kinds of people they are (nationality, language that they speak, age, and religion). After that, it starts to go into other things, such as food, air and water, schooling and literacy, money and possessions, and electricity. This is where it starts to really get interesting, because here it is capitalizing on how unevenly the resources are distributed. Some interesting facts are: 17 people do not have easy access to a clean source of water (which is essential for life), 43 do not adequate sewage, and the ten richest people have more than 50 percent of the wealth. The saddest part of this is that there would be plenty of resources if everything were to be split evenly, which I believe is the best way to go, even though that sounds a little communistic. I know this from experience. About 3 years ago, I went to a simulation of a global village, and on the first day, we learned this lesson. A tray of food was brought out, and we were assigned a place in the line (determined by the wealth of our country), and there was originally enough food for everyone, but everybody at the front of the line was taking more food than they actually needed, leaving a small quantity for all of the other poorer countries. I believe that communism always sounds good on paper, but there is always somebody that screws it up.