Sweden proves neoliberals wrong about how to slash poverty
George Monbiot
Tuesday January 11, 2005
Guardian
'Does not already the response to the massive tidal wave in
south-east Asia," Gordon Brown asked on Thursday, "show just how
closely and irrevocably bound together... are the fortunes of the
richest persons in the richest country to the fate of the poorest
persons in the poorest country?"
The answer is no. It is true that the very rich might feel sorry for
the very poor, and that some of them have responded generously to the
latest catastrophe. But it is hard to imagine how the fate and fortunes
of the richest and poorest could be further removed. The 10 richest
people on earth have a combined net worth of $255bn - roughly 60% of
the income of sub-Saharan Africa. The world's 500 richest people have
more money than the total annual earnings of the poorest 3 billion.
This issue - of global inequality - was not mentioned in either
Brown's speech or Tony Blair's simultaneous press conference. Indeed, I
have so far failed to find a reference to it in the recent speeches of
any leader of a G8 nation. I believe that the concern evinced by Blair
and Brown for the world's poor is genuine. I believe that they mean it
when they say they will put the poor at the top of the agenda for the
G8 summit in July. The problem is that their concern for the poor ends
where their concern for the rich begins.
There is, at the moment, a furious debate among economists about
whether global inequality is rising or falling. No one disputes that
there is a staggering gulf between rich and poor, which has survived
decades of global economic growth. But what the neoliberals - who
promote unregulated global capitalism - tell us is that there is no
conflict between the whims of the wealthy and the needs of the
wretched. The Economist magazine, for example, argues that the more
freedom you give the rich, the better off the poor will be. Without
restraints, the rich have a more powerful incentive to generate global
growth, and this growth becomes "the rising tide that lifts all boats".
Countries which intervene in the market with "punitive taxes, grandiose
programmes of public spending, and all the other apparatus of applied
economic justice" condemn their people to remain poor. A zeal for
justice does "nothing but harm".
Now it may be true that global growth, however poorly distributed,
is slowly lifting everyone off the mud. Unfortunately we have no way of
telling, as the only current set of comprehensive figures on global
poverty is - as researchers at Columbia University have shown - so
methodologically flawed as to be useless.
But there is another means of testing the neoliberals' hypothesis,
which is to compare the performance of nations which have taken
different routes to development. The neoliberals dismiss the problems
faced by developing countries as "growing pains", so let's look at the
closest thing we have to a final result. Let's take two countries which
have gone all the way through the development process and arrived in
the promised land of prosperity. Let's compare the United Kingdom - a
pioneer of neoliberalism - and Sweden, one of the last outposts of
distributionism. And let's make use of a set of statistics the
Economist is unlikely to dispute: those contained within its own
publication, the 2005 World in Figures.
The first surprise, for anyone who has swallowed the stories about
our unrivalled economic dynamism, is that, in terms of gross domestic
product, Sweden has done as well as we have. In 2002 its GDP per capita
was $27,310, and the UK's was $26,240. This is no blip. In only seven
years between 1960 and 2001 did Sweden's per capita GDP fall behind the
UK's.
More surprisingly still, Sweden has a current account surplus of
$10bn and the UK a deficit of $26bn. Even by the neoliberals' favourite
measures, Sweden wins: it has a lower inflation rate than ours, higher
"global competitiveness" and a higher ranking for "business creativity
and research".
In terms of human welfare, there is no competition. According to the
quality of life measure published by the Economist (the "human
development index") Sweden ranks third in the world, the UK 11th.
Sweden has the world's third highest life expectancy, the UK the 29th.
In Sweden, there are 74 telephone lines and 62 computers per hundred
people; in the UK just 59 and 41.
[There's more. Click here. mp]
In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Stanley Fish has an essay titled "One University Under God?" Here's the thrust of the piece:
When Jacques Derrida died I was called by a reporter who wanted know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion.
(Thanks to CT for the lead.)
Rob
