Saturday, April 25, 2009

The poor must be included in a global economy


In an age characterised by the death of trust we find comfort in being able to blame everyone. It is entirely reasonable that thousands will protest, hopefully peacefully, against bankers who stuck their noses in the trough, regulators who turned away and governments who kept smiling as the tax take grew. The truth is they could just as easily protest against themselves for blindly succumbing to this leveraged society. We must now clear up the mess. Amid all the experts who failed to call this disaster, only one got it right. It was Bob Dylan, who said: “Money doesn’t talk. It swears.”

The system was always skewed and its rewards asymmetric. We built a global economy that excluded half of the globe. We marginalised the productive capacity of the 3bn people who live on less than $2 a day. By excluding them, we deprived them of the income they need to buy our stuff and consigned them to ill-health, lack of education and conflict. Instability is inherent in asymmetry. It will topple over. The first task of the Group of 20 nations must be to bring the peripheral economies and their people into the centre.

See full Article.