commissioner.org
| Source | Louis Proyect |
| Date | 03/07/17/10:56 |
| This twentieth century has been above all the century of increasing wealth.
No previous era we know of has seen anything like the proportional growth in material, economic wealth--in the productivity of workers and the standards of living of consumers--that the twentieth century saw in the industrialized democracies that make up the core of the world economy. No previous era and no previous economy has seen anything like the level of material wealth and productive potential attained by the twentieth century's economy. Brad DeLong http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/2000/TCEH_2.doc ==== Growing World Poverty and Conflict Shows the Barbarity of Capitalism By David Mitchell PCS Representative Home Office Group (Personal Capacity) The 1990's has seen a huge increase in poverty around the globe. The gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider, and if current trends continue then it will be the year 2147 before areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa can hope to halve the number of people in poverty. The statistics, which are from the World Bank and the UN paint an alarming catalogue of human misery, degradation and death. That is the reality of capitalism in the developing world. Ironically it is the very policies of institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF which are forcing whole countries to adopt the bankrupt and corrupt policies of privatization and the opening up of markets to the plunder of multi-national companies that is making the situation worse. For the developing world the Guardian newspaper calls the 1990's the lost decade. I would argue that the working class, and the masses internationally have lost the entire 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st because of the absolute failure of capitalism to advance the mass of humanity. The figures are disturbing: --54 countries saw the decline of average incomes during the whole of the 1990's --21 countries actually went backwards in terms of human development, which is measured by income, life expectancy and literacy. --On a daily basis 30,000 children die from illnesses which are totally preventable. --Annually, 500,000 women, that is one for every minute of every day die in pregnancy or childbirth. --In the 1990's alone 13 million children were killed by diarrhoea which equates to more than the entire number of people killed in all armed conflicts since World War II. --In Zimbabwe the average life expectancy has gone down from 56 in the early 1970's to 33.1 during the 1990's. In the UK life expectancy rose from 72 to 78.2 in the same period. --In Sierra Leone 363 children in every 1000 or over 1 third do not reach their fifth birthday. Just as a comparison in Norway only four children in 1000 do not survive or just 0.4%. These disturbing facts come from the United Nations Annual Development report which saw more than 50 countries have a decline in living standards during the 1990's. full: http://www.marxist.com/Globalisation/growing_world_poverty.html |
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