Please Read This & Understand My Unbreakable Support for The CBN & PMB.
There are two kinds of Economic Bad Samaritans. There are the genuine, powerful "ladder-kickers" working in the "unholy trinity" of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Then there are the "ideologues - those who believe in Bad Samaritan policies because they think those policies are 'right', not because they personally benefit from them much, if at all". Both groups adhere to a doctrine they call "neo-liberalism" a rerun of what economists suffering from "historical amnesia" believe were the key characteristics of the international economy in the golden age of liberalism (1870-1913)......Please note that all of today's rich countries used protection and subsidies to encourage their manufacturing industries, and they discriminated powerfully against foreign investors. All such policies are anathema in today's economic orthodoxy and are now severely restricted by multilateral treaties, like the WTO agreements, and proscribed by international financial organizations, particularly the IMF and the World Bank......In 1820, Britain's average tariff on manufactured imports was between 45 & 55%, whereas such tariffs were 6-8% in the Low Countries, 8-12% in Germany & Switzerland, and around 20% in France....The 19th and early 20th century US tariffs of 40-50% were then the highest of any country in the world. Throughout this same period, it was also the world's fastest growing economy. Much like contemporary China, whose average tariff was over 30% right up to the 1990s, In neither American nor Chinese did protectionism inhibited foreign direct investment but rather seemed to stimulate it.....The US abandoned overt protectionism after it became the world's richest nation; However, the US government actually subsidized and paid for 50-80% of the country's total expenditures on research and development from the 1950s through the mid-1990s, usually under the cover of defense spending.
However, scared that its position as global hegemony was being undermined, the United States turned decisively toward neo-liberalism. It ordered the unholy trinity to bring the developing countries to heel. Through draconian interventions into the most intimate details of the lives of their clients, including birth control, ethnic integration, and gender equality as well as tariffs, foreign investment, privatization decisions, national budgets, and intellectual property protection, the IMF, World Bank, and WTO managed drastically to slow down economic growth in the developing World. The Developing World were forced to adopt neoliberal policies and to open their economies to much more powerful foreign competitors on unequal terms, their growth rate fell to less than half of that recorded in the 1960s (1.7 % instead of 4.5 %)....Since the 1980s, Africa has actually experienced a fall in living standards - which should be a damning indictment of neoliberal orthodoxy because most African economies have been virtually run by the IMF and the World Bank over the past quarter-century. The disaster has been so complete that it has helped expose the hidden governance structures that allow the IMF and the World Bank to foist Bad Samaritan policies on helpless nations. We live in an allegedly enlightened age of free trade. Nonetheless, European citizens support their dairy industry with subsidies and tariffs to the tune of £16billion (Sixteen Billion Pounds per annum). This amounts to more than one pound per cow per day, when half the world's people live on less. The pattern is repeated with regard to a vast range of agricultural commodities grown in rich, developed countries. The US subsidizes corn and exports it to Mexico, where it is the staple diet of most of the people. These exports, however, drive small Mexican farmers into bankruptcy and encourage their illegal immigration into the United States, where a racist backlash is directed against them. In many cases, the American proponents of farm subsidies are one and the same people who stir up hatreds against Mexican farm workers. Japan is one of the world's richest countries, with a remarkably even per capita income distribution, but it still lavishly subsidizes its extremely inefficient rice growers and prevents the import of rice that could easily compete on price with domestic rice....All countries have domestic political interests, and successful politicians cater to them. The problem is the hypocrisy surrounding "free trade" and the lies that distort political rhetoric in virtually all economically advanced countries.
Reduction of tariff revenues also plays havoc with national budgets in poor countries. Because they lack efficient tax collection capabilities and because tariffs are the easiest taxes to collect, developing countries rely heavily on them. Add to this lower levels of business activity and higher unemployment that results from IMF-ordered trade liberalizations, which reduce income tax revenue. When such countries are then put under further IMF pressure to reduce their budget deficits, falling revenues mean severe cuts in spending, often eating into vital areas like education, health, and physical infrastructure, damaging long-term growth.....Neoliberal theorists believe that when it comes to golden straitjackets "one size fits all" - except for those countries rich enough to afford a private tailor. The chief effect of the golden straitjacket has been not to promote growth but to turn healthy countries into basket cases. "In the long run", writes Chang, "free trade is a policy that is likely to condemn developing countries to specialize in sectors that offer low productivity growth and thus low growth in living standards. This is why so few countries have succeeded with free trade, while most successful countries have used infant industry protection to one degree or another. With "Bad Samaritans", Chang has succinctly and comprehensively exposed the chief structures of economic imperialism in the world today. What is now required is the leadership to undermine and dismantle the barriers that keep so much of the world so poor. You must get the Book 'Bad Samaritan: The Myth of Free Trade and The Secret History of Capitalism' It is an Economic and Historical Perspective that is worth Reading and Keeping.
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