Here, There, and Everywhere

Last night I was reading this item from Bradford Plumer, but frankly the first paragraph is very meaty:

It’s not a big secret that the developing world suffered a major slowdown in growth starting around 1980, right about the time that the IMF began leveraging Third World debt to force poor countries into adopting its preferred mix of neoliberal policies: devaluation, “free” trade, privatization, deregulation. Among developing countries, per capita income growth plummeted from 3 percent annually in the “bad” old protectionist days of 1960-1980 down to 1.5 percent in 1980-2000. (For the poorest group of countries, things were even worse—per capita GDP growth plummeted from 1.9 percent annually in 1960-1980 to negative 0.5 percent in the heady globalization decades.)

Now think about that for a moment: after the creation of the IMF, economic development in so called “developing countries” was cut in half, and in some places went negative. Here’s one of his sources complete with charts and footnotes, he also has a link to a PDF article. Lest you think this is liberal loony left-wing propaganda, traditional conservatives* like Steve Forbes have for many years been critical of the IMF, saying “the IMF has been guilty of economic malpractice in not promoting growth policies.” As for myself, I remember thinking on September 11, 2001 that it was very interesting that the terrorists chose to target a building that housed the IMF and the World Bank.

Mr. Plumer goes on to discuss “the breathtaking rise of urban poverty” and the resultant rise of slums and super-ghettos around the world, a problem which he sees as only getting worse over the next few decades. It is an excellent item that I recommend reading, but I would prefer to focus on the IMF prescription and what it means here in the United States. So let’s get back to those “neoliberal policies: devaluation, ‘free’ trade, privatization, deregulation.”

Sound familiar?

Devaluation sure sounds like what has happened to the dollar under the Bush Administration. This was aided and abetted by John Snow, our Secretary of the Treasury, who says he is for a strong dollar, and then goes on to say that means among other things that it’s hard to counterfeit.

“Free” Trade is certainly something the Bush Administration says it is for. Now, you can’t give them blame or credit for NAFTA; that was ratified under the Clinton Administration. But you can blame them for CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, a document whose ramifications have yet to play out. And furthermore, it is only fair to note that President Bush himself has said repeatedly he is for “free and fair trade”. In theory, this means free trade as long as it doesn’t hurt American interests. In real life it appears to mean free trade unless big American corporations stand to make a lot of money. See also: pissing contest with China, farm subsidies, steel tariffs, etc..

Privatization has been going strong in this country. It brought us Enron. Proponents say that privatization and breaking up monopolies in telecom has worked, but can you really choose who runs phone lines to your house? We still hear talk of privatizing Social Security, but thankfully most people have realized that you can’t solve “not enough money” by giving the system less money. A very scary prospect indeed is those who favor water system privatization. The TSA would like to privatize frequent flier security, a bad idea several ways. The core idea of privatization is the old Reagan idea that government always does things badly and companies always do things better. Yeah, remember that next time you get bad service at some company. Proponents say it works better because there is profit motive. Some things are too important for “profit” to be a prime motive, particularly since that profit is not evenly distributed to the people who helped make it possible.

Deregulation is another thing that has been going on in this country for a lot of years. The underlying premise is that companies would do more stuff that stimulates the economy if it weren’t for pesky government rules. I suggest we ask the survivor of the Sago mine incident how he feels about that. There has been a lot of deregulation from the USDA, and if you’d like to read about the effects, I recommend “Fast Food Nation” or “Bushwhacked.” Speaking of the USDA, did you know that they predicted that “Electric utility deregulation could cause 19 states to have higher electricity costs, especially rural customers in those states…”? Yes, it costs money to comply with regulations, but the bottom line is that the regulations were put in place for a reason; often that reason is to protect real human beings and the environment they live in. Just a friendly reminder, Earth is the only place we know of where humans can live at all.

So, these things being so right here in the United States, we can hardly be surprised when the Guardian reports “37 million poor hidden in the land of plenty.” Nor can we be shocked to learn that wages are not growing relative to inflation. And that’s inflation as measured (or undermeasured, if you prefer) by the government.

Our old friend Ben Franklin once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Our government is doing here the same things the IMF is forcing other nations to do, and getting the same results. Either our government is insane, or it is their goal to have a large, impoverished class of virtual serfs.

In closing, an excerpted scene of Security Theatre: 9700 items of checked baggage lost on average each and every day. They can’t even figure out where your bag is, and they want to tell you that’s because they want to make sure there’s not a bomb in it? And they want to poke through your underwear — that is with you, on the plane — but not all the cargo below, when the shipper is miles away? It sure would be nice if we could apply some good old fashioned logic and common sense to this airplane security thing.

* You remember them: the guys who are for things like small government, low taxes, and reducing the federal deficit.