What has been the role of the so-called enlightened governments in
creating the following situation? Certainly such inequities were
inconceivable even under feudalism. What was the expression bandied
about? benevolent oligarchy? for whom?
The Chicago Tribune July 12,
1999
A ‘GROTESQUE' GAP:
The global economy's winners and losers are so far apart that balancing
efforts are needed to avoid disaster, according to a new UN overview.
By R.C. Longworth
Tribune Staff Writer
As the global economy grows, rich nations are getting richer than ever,
and
poor ones are stuck in shantytowns on the outskirts of the global
village.
"Global inequalities in income and living standards have reached
grotesque
proportions," the UN Development Program said in its annual global
overview,
the Human Development Report.
For instance:
The richest countries, such as the United States, have 20 percent of the
world's people but 86 percent of its income, 91 percent of its Internet
users, 82 percent of its exports and 74 percent of its telephone lines.
The
20 percent living in the poorest countries, such as Ethiopia and Laos,
have
about 1 percent of each.
The three richest officers of Microsoft--Bill Gates, Paul Allen and
Steve
Ballmer--have more assets, nearly $140 billion, than the combined gross
national product of the 43 least-developed countries and their 600
million
people.
The United States, meanwhile, has more computers than the rest of the
world
combined. Lesser-developed countries are not likely to catch up any time
soon: the same computer that costs a month's wages for the average
American
takes eight years' income from the average resident of Bangladesh.
The 200 richest people in the world more than doubled their net worth
between 1994 and 1998. But in nearly half the world's countries, per
capita
incomes are lower than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Some of these are
oil-producing nations hit by the long slump in oil prices, but many are
in
sub-Saharan Africa, where per capita income has fallen to $518 from $661
in
1980.
In 1960, the richest fifth of the world's people had 30 times as much
income
as the poorest fifth. By 1997, that proportion had more than doubled, to
74-1.
The key to a solution to these problems, the UNDP said, is not to stamp
out
the global economy but to embrace it with the rules and institutions
that
will ensure it serves people and communities, not just markets and their
manipulators.
"Competitive markets may be the best guarantee of efficiency but not
necessarily of equity," it said. "Markets are neither the first nor the
last
word in human development.
"Many activities and goods that are critical to human development are
provided outside the market, but these are being squeezed by the
pressures
of global competition.
"When the market goes too far in dominating social and political
outcomes,
the opportunities and rewards of globalization spread unequally and
inequitably--concentrating power and wealth in a select group of people,
nations and corporations, marginalizing the others.
"The challenge," the report said, "is not to stop the expansion of
global
markets. The challenge is to find the rules and institutions for
stronger
governance . . . to preserve the advantage of global markets and
competition
but also to provide enough space for human, community and environmental
resources to ensure that globalization works for people, not just for
profits."
The gap between people, like the one between nations, also is growing in
the
global economy, the UNDP report said. Inequality is growing both in
industrialized nations--especially in the United States, Britain and
Sweden,
it said--and in newly industrializing countries, such as China and the
formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe.
One result of globalization, it said, is that the road to wealth-- the
control of production, patents and technology--is increasingly dominated
by
a few countries and companies.
Of all the countries in the world, only 10, including the United States,
account for 84 percent of global research-and-development spending.
Businesses and institutions in the same 10 control 95 percent of all
patents
issued by the U.S. government over the past 20 years, it said.
Among corporations, the top 10 controlled 86 percent of the
telecommunications market, 85 percent of pesticides, 70 percent of
computers
and 60 percent of veterinary medical products, it said.
The major countries and the global corporations may have earned their
dominance, but, the report said, this monopoly of power is cutting
poorer
nations off from a share of the economic pie and, often, from decent
health
care and education.
"The privatization and concentration of technology are going too far,"
the
report said. "Corporations define research agendas. . . . Money talks,
not
need. Cosmetic drugs and slow-ripening tomatoes come higher on the
priority
list than drought-resistant crops or a vaccine against malaria."
Many new technologies, "from new drugs to better seeds," are priced too
high
for poor nations, it said. Global patent laws, intended to protect
intellectual property, are blocking the ability of developing countries
to
develop their own products.
Even within the Third World, inequality is sharp. Thailand has more
cellular
phones and Bulgaria more Internet users than all of Africa except South
Africa, the report said.
The report was not all gloom and doom. Even as gaps between nations grow
and
some countries slide backward, the quality of life for many of the
world's
poor is improving, it said.
Between 1975 and 1997, life expectancy in Third World countries rose to
62
years from 53, adult literacy rates climbed to 76 percent from 48
percent,
child mortality rates to 85 per 1,000 live births from 149, and some
countries --Costa Rica, Fiji, Jordan, Uruguay and others--"have overcome
severe levels of human poverty."
The UNDP report said uneven and unequal development around the world is
not
sustainable and risks sinking the global economy in a backlash of public
resentment.
Without global governance that incorporates a "common core of values,
standards and attitudes, a widely felt sense of responsibility and
obligations," the major nations and corporations face trade wars and
uncontrolled financial volatility, it said, with the Asian financial
crisis
of the past two years only the first of many upheavals.
At the moment, new rules and regulations are being written in talks at
the
World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and other
powerful
global bodies. But these talks are "too narrow," the report said,
because
they focus on financial stability while "neglecting broader human
concerns
such as persistent global poverty, growing inequality between and within
countries, exclusion of poor people and countries, and persisting
human-rights abuses."
They also are "too geographically unbalanced," with an unhealthy
domination
by the U.S. and its allies."
The UNDP report called instead for a "global architecture" that would
include:
- A global central bank to act as a lender of last resort to strapped
countries and to help regulate finance markets.
- A global investment trust to moderate flows of foreign capital in and
out
of Third World countries and to raise development funds by taxing global
pollution or short-term investments.
- New rules for the World Trade Organization, including anti-monopoly
powers
to enable it to keep global corporations from dominating industries.
- New rules on global patents that would keep the patent system from
blocking the access of Third World countries to development, knowledge
or
health care.
- New talks on a global investment treaty that, unlike talks that failed
last year, would include developing countries and respect local laws.
- More flexible monetary rules that would enable developing countries to
impose capital controls to protect their economies.
- A global code of conduct for multinational corporations, to encourage
them
to follow the kind of labor and environmental laws that exist in their
home
countries. The report praised voluntary codes adopted in Asia by Disney
World and Mattel, the toy company.
The leading industrial nations already are considering new global rules
on
investment, banking and trade. The UNDP report, in effect, endorsed
these
efforts but urged that they be broadened to include the needs of poorer
nations.
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