Wednesday, November 17, 2004
G8 and NATO (more)
Globalisation involves security.
A paper in July gave an idea of how desperately security is needed. http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-article75pdf?.pdf
Extracts are:
"If a large majority earns much less than the average income, it may be easy to obtain a majority in a universal (or wide) suffrage democracy in favour of seizing the
wealth or incomes of the rich minority. Democracy then becomes populist, as it
has long been in much of Latin America."
[A striking example of the self-defeating nature of populism is Argentina. In 1950, Argentina’s real gross domestic product per head in 1990 international dollars was $4,987. By 1998, after decades of populism, it was $9,219. By way of contrast, Italy, from which many Argentineans had come, had a GDP per head of $3,502 in 1950 and $17,759 in 1998.]
"Over the past two decades, the accelerated growth of a number of very large, poor countries, above all, China and India appears to have reduced global inter-personal inequality, somewhat. But a huge number of countries containing some 1.5bn people lag ever further behind"
"gaps in living standards will continue to grow between the richest and the poorest countries in the world. Today, that ratio is some 75 to one. . . In half a century, it could easily be 150 to one."
The United States and the European Union have different strategies for addressing this vital problem. Could they ever agree on only one strategy?
A paper in July gave an idea of how desperately security is needed. http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-article75pdf?.pdf
Extracts are:
"If a large majority earns much less than the average income, it may be easy to obtain a majority in a universal (or wide) suffrage democracy in favour of seizing the
wealth or incomes of the rich minority. Democracy then becomes populist, as it
has long been in much of Latin America."
[A striking example of the self-defeating nature of populism is Argentina. In 1950, Argentina’s real gross domestic product per head in 1990 international dollars was $4,987. By 1998, after decades of populism, it was $9,219. By way of contrast, Italy, from which many Argentineans had come, had a GDP per head of $3,502 in 1950 and $17,759 in 1998.]
"Over the past two decades, the accelerated growth of a number of very large, poor countries, above all, China and India appears to have reduced global inter-personal inequality, somewhat. But a huge number of countries containing some 1.5bn people lag ever further behind"
"gaps in living standards will continue to grow between the richest and the poorest countries in the world. Today, that ratio is some 75 to one. . . In half a century, it could easily be 150 to one."
The United States and the European Union have different strategies for addressing this vital problem. Could they ever agree on only one strategy?
# posted by IJ @ 9:47 AM 
