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SECTION FIVE:
The poor under neoism: from bad to worse
There are three parts to each nation in this section. "IMF
overview" is to show that the IMF is responsable for the changes in
policy and effects. Also, protests are included to disprove the myth
that the "antiglobalization" movement is a new thing done by kids in
rich nations. As you will see, the movement has been going strong for
decades by diverse groups all over the world.
The world under neoism
(For an excellent nation-by-nation look at
poor nations under neoism during the 1980s, read _A Fate Worse Than
Debt_ by Susan George. It is full of facts and fury!)
Half the world -- nearly three billion
people -- live on less than two dollars a day. 1
The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the
poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world's countries) is less
than the wealth of the world's three richest people combined. 2
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st
century unable to read a book or sign their names. 3
Less than one per cent of what the world
spends every year on weapons would be needed to put every child into
school by the year 2001. 4
51 percent of the world's 100 hundred
wealthiest bodies are owned by corporations. 5
The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest
gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation. 6
The poorer the country, the more likely it is
that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who
neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money. 7
20% of the population in the developed
nations, consume 86% of the worlds goods. 8
The top fifth of the world's people in the
richest countries enjoy 82% of the expanding export trade and 68% of
foreign direct investment -- the bottom fifth, barely more than 1%. 9
In 1960, the 20% of the world's people in the
richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20% -- in
1997, 74 times as much. 10
"The lives of 1.7 million children will be
needlessly lost this year [2000] because world governments have failed
to reduce poverty levels" 12
The developing world now spends $13 on debt
repayment for every $1 it receives in grants. 13
A few hundred millionaires now own as much
wealth as the world's poorest 2.5 billion people. 14
"The 48 poorest countries account for less
than 0.4 per cent of global exports." 15
"The combined wealth of the world's 200
richest people hit $1 trillion in 1999; the combined incomes of the 582
million people living in the 43 least developed countries is $146
billion." 16
"Of all human rights failures today, those
in economic and social areas affect by far the larger number and are
the most widespread across the world's nations and large numbers of
people." 17
"Approximately 790 million people in the
developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost
two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific" 18
"7 Million children die each year as a
result of the debt crisis" 19
In 1980, the average income of the First World
outdistanced that of the Third by a ratio of 87 to 1. Today that ratio
is 98 to 1 - 9700% and growing. Picture it visually:
If we could, at this time, shrink the Earth's
population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing
human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this: There would
be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere (North and
South) and 8 Africans.
70 would be non-white ; 30 white.
70 would be unable to read.
50 would suffer from malnutrition.
80 would live in sub-standard housing.
Only 1 would have a college education.
50% of the entire village would be the
property of only 6 people.
All 6 would be citizens of the United States.
"If we made an income pyramid out of
children's blocks, with each layer portraying $1,000 of income, the
peak would be far higher than the Eiffel tower, but almost all of us
would be within one yard of the ground." - Paul Samuelson
(_Economics_ p 84) This was as of 1976. In the last quarter century the
gap between rich and poor has widened much, much farther.
Take a look around your house... "strip it
of its furnature. Everything goes: beds, chairs, tables, television
set, lamps. We will leave the family with a few old blankets, a kitchen
table, a [one] wooden chair. Along with the bureas go the clothes.
Eachmember of the family may keep his "wardrobe" his oldest suit or
dress, a shirt or blouse. We will permit a pair of shoes for the head
of the family, but none for the wife and children. We move to the
kitchen. The appliances have already been taken out, so we turn to the
cupboards...The [one] box of matches may stay, a small bag of flour,
some sugar and salt. A few mouldy potatoes,already in the rubbish bin,
must be hastily rescued, for they will provide much of tonight's meal.
We will leave a handfull [literally] of onions, and a dish of dried
beans. All the rest we take away: the meat, the fresh vegitables, the
canned goods.
Now we have stripped the house: the
bathroom has beendismantled, the running water shut off, the electric
wires takenout. Next we must take away the house. The family can move
to the toolshed...
Communications must go next. No more
newspapers, magazines, books - not that they are missed, since we must
take away our family's literacy as well. Instead, in our shantytown we
will allow one radio...
Now government services must go. No more
postman, no more firemen. There is a school, but it is 3 miles away and
consists of two classrooms...There are, of course, no hospitales or
doctors nearby. The nearest clinic is 10 miles away and tended by a
midwife. It can be reached by bicycle, provided that the family has a
bicycle, which is unlikely...
Finally, money. We will allow our family a
cash hoard of 2 pounds (a few dollars). This will prevent our
breadwinner from experiencing the tragedy of an Iranian peasent who
went blind because he could not raise the 1.5 pounds which he
mistakenly thought he needed to recieve admission to a hospital where
he could have been cured." -Robert L Heilbroner, (The great ascent:
the struggle for economic development in our time p 33-36)
1) See the following:
The politics of hunger, Le
Monde, November 1998
2) The politics of hunger, Le
Monde, November 1998
3) The State of the World's
Children, 1999, UNICEF
4) State of the World, Issue
287 - Feb 1997, New Internationalist
5) Holding Transnationals
Accountable, IPS, August 11, 1998
6) The Corporate Planet,
Corporate Watch, 1997
7) Debt - The facts, Issue 312
- May 1999, New Internationalist
8) 1998 Human Development
Report, United Nations Development Programme
9) 1999 Human Development
Report, United Nations Development Programme
10) Ibid
11) Ibid
12) Missing the Target; The
price of empty promises, Oxfam, June 2000
13) Global Development Finance,
World Bank, 1999
14) Economics forever; Building
sustainability into economic policy PANOS Briefing 38, March 2000
15) Human Development Report
2000, p. 82, United Nations Development Programme
16) Ibid, p. 82
17) Ibid, p. 73
18) World Resources Institute
Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems, February 2001, (in the Food Feed
and Fiber section). Note, that dispite the food production rate being
better than population growth rate, there is still so much hunger
around the world.
19) The home page of the
Jubilee 2000 web site
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Women under neoism
30 million women were sold worldwide from the
70's to 1994. Around this time there were 800,000 child prostitutes in
Thailand, 400,000 child prostitutes in India, 250,000 child prostitutes
in Brazil, and 60,000 child prostitutes in the Philippines.
Global
resistence
As the G8 met in Birmingham in 1998,
200,000 Indian peasant farmers in Hyderabad marched to demand India's
withdrawal from the WTO.
In Brasilia 50,000 unemployed workers and
landless peasants took to the streets.
During the G8 meeting on June 18 1999,
protests occurred in Argentina ,Bangladesh, Belarus Brasil, Chile,
Colombia , Czech republic, Greece, India, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia,
Malta, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Senegal,
South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, Uruguay, Zimbabwe and many others,
in many cities.
10,000 braved military repression in Port
Harcourt, Nigeria, to march to the gates of Shell Oil, and to hear a
speech by Owens Wiwa - brother of the executed Ogoni leader Ken
Saro-Wiwa.
In Gujarat, Pakistan, union leaders in
disguise evaded police cordons to speak at a mass rally demanding
'bread not nuclear bombs'.
In Montevideo, Uruguay the main square of
the town's financial centre was converted into a 'trade fair' with
stalls looking at issues as diverse as education, child labour,
consumerism and community radio.
A group of 500 farmers from India and
Nepal toured Europe in an 'Inter-Continental Caravan', meeting the same
activists that Bush says are "not friends of the poor".
When two protestors were run over by a
police van and riots broke out and, the London Sun called protestors
"savages" and the Sunday Times labelled several people 'masterminds' of
a terrorist-style network. Both newspapers are owned by US media
monopolist R. Murdoch.
May Day 2001 saw 500,000 in Rome, 5,000
illegally marching in a banned rally in Berlin, thousands in Jakarta,
Indonesia, among many other events.
What about
neo success stories
Sometimes neos will claim success stories -
for example, in a New York Times article US Treasury Secretary Larry
Summers called Uganda and Poland success stories.
Notice that they always involve one country,
over a short time. Since every other time and place is a disaster for
the neos, these tiny examples are just proof that a broken clock is
right twice a day. In short, dumb luck.
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