Quote:
Originally posted by Dragonlich
They're also not forced to sell us anything - they can say no if they want to; but apparently they don't want to say no...
I'll refine my statement: <b>most of the people on this planet are better off than they ever were</b>. Most countries on the face of this planet have seen their average income go UP, not down. The problem is that the Western world has grown much faster than the rest of the world, partly because of our luck with the environment, partly because of our culture that encourages free enterprise and innovation.
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All of these statements (with the exception of the claim that "people are better off than they ever were") are flat wrong and have been firmly rebutted in over 30 years of literature. I'm not going to rehash the arguments here.
For those interested in learning more run searches on (I did a couple myself for you):
The IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank
Structural adjustment programs (SAP)
A Major Cause of Poverty
Joseph Stiglitz (author of
Globalization and Its Discontents, 2001 Nobel Prize in Econonmics, and
Senior Vice President and Chief Econonist of the World Bank)
Wallerstein (among others):
World Systems Theory
Dependancy theory (John Isbister, among others)
And finally, Globalism
The only caveat I made was in reference to your claim that people live better than they did in history--which stems from the West's discourse of modernity (roots of French enlightenment, capitalism, Darwinism, and our postivism of sciences)
The people who make that claim argue that sure, people are getting smaller pieces of pie than they were before, but now the pie is getting larger. So that's better for everyone. If the pie didn't get larger and the people cutting it didn't divvy up the goods so unequitably, the pie would stop growing.
That's the
only context conservatives argue conditions are "better" for impoverished nations.