Matters of scale

Random fact set I stumbled upon recently. This is kind of old (1999) but I doubt the proportions have gotten much better... the comparisons are powerful:

Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide reproductive health care for all women in developing countries $12 billion
Amount of money spent annually on perfumes in Europe and the United States $12 billion 

Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide water and sanitation for all people in developing nations $9 billion
Amount of money spent annually on cosmetics in the United States $8 billion 

Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide basic health and nutrition needs universally in the developing world $13 billion 
Amount of money spent each year on pet food in Europe and the United States $17 billion 

Source

These numbers kind of remind me of an article I came across today about mental illness in the US, and one thing that really stuck out to me was that depression was a "luxury" illness. Our women have problems like anorexia, cutting and self-loathing because of images projected by our culture so we buy cosmetics and perfume by the boat-load... but the money we spend on the beauty industry could solve, well, world hunger, basically. (I do not in any way wish to minimize the seriousness of these psychological issues.)