There was a time, in the rich nations, when it seemed as if we could all triumph. From the second world war until the late 1970s, general prosperity rose steadily. The top 1% captured a decreasing proportion of total income. But then, in the US, the UK, Canada, Ireland and Australia, the curve suddenly turned, and the 1% began to grab an ever greater share. The trend has continued to this day, sustained by the neoliberal doctrines that were first imposed in the rich world by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
The ultra-rich have gained most: since the beginning of the pandemic, the world’s 10 richest men have doubled their wealth, while 163 million people have been pushed below the poverty line. Wages for many people in the Anglosphere have stagnated, but the costs of living, especially housing, have soared.
But even during the “glory years” (1945 to 1975) the universal triumph capitalism promised was an illusion. The general rise of prosperity in rich nations was financed, in part, by poor ones. Decolonisation was resisted by the rich world with extreme violence and oppression, then partly reversed through coups and assassinations (such as the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953, the crushing of Jacobo Árbenz’s government in Guatemala in 1954, the murder of Patrice Lumumba in Congo in 1961, Suharto’s coup in Indonesia in 1967 and Augusto Pinochet’s in Chile in 1973). Today, such extreme measures are seldom required, as the transfer of wealth is secured by other means. The rich world’s wealth continues in large part to rely on the exploitation of black and brown people.
OK, let’s take the dual complaints seriously.
The second first – we got rich because other folk didn’t. Those black and brown out there remained poor because all the income and wealth was challenged to us white folk in the Global North, the post-colonial overlords.
Well, it’s a view.
So, more recently. The global growth pattern has been entirely overturned. We in the global North are gaining 1 and 2% a year of GDP growth. That poor post-colonial South is gaining 3 and 5 and 7% annual GDP growth. Those brown and black are getting rich – richer at least – and we whiteys aren’t so much.
OK, that’s also a view.
Now think of how perverse you’ve got to be to complain of both these things happening.
The world before globalisation was bad because the poor didn’t get the growth. The world of globalisation is bad because the poor do get the growth.
Must be a Wednesday though. For normally George is complaining about there being growth at all, isn’t he?
What’s happening with the zeroth, 80th, 85th percentiles?
That any group at all, however you cut the population up has experienced a loss of real income over that 30 year period needs some explaining, doesn’t it?
Roughly speaking, roughly you understand, the less than median incomes in the rich world have stood still, around and about, these last 40 years. Everyone else – including that 80% of the global population below that rich world median – have made out like bandits.
So Tim the beastly browns and blacks are robbing us poor whiteys blind. It’s wicked colonialism, as you can see from the hordes of colonists swarming into our countries. This keeps our wages down, and allows the upper crust, Monboit among them, to scoop up more of the loot.
Of course the push for diversity means that the police forces are packed with the colonists to fulfil their role as janissaries. So we can’t stage a successful revolt.
I’m sure George’d be overjoyed to know his whinge can be so easily turned around to support my ratbag ideas rather than his.
The losers from globalization and rise of technology are the below median workers in the developed world. This helps to explain Trump and Brexit. The effect of offshoring jobs to China and Mexico. In the EU, the Euro has ensured that the working class in Germany have been protected from some of this because the Euro is cheaper than it would be if the southern periphery was not in it. Of course, this also means that Italy has had no growth in GDP per capita since 2000.
We’ll also find that the rush to green nonsense has hit the working class in the developed world hard as jobs have been exported to China – which belches carbon freely. Depressingly with the demands we stop financing carbon intensive power sources probably means that we’re going to shaft Africa – which unlike China cannot afford to ignore the West’s latest fetish.
Monboit has been quite open about his insistence that society should be poorer and consume much less. Increasing standards of living in formerly very poor countries surely fills him with horror. Third world inhabitants are actually quite a disappointment to the left. They get a little money and instead of buying books of philosophy or using any new found leisure time to write poetry they’re more apt to buy a motorbike.
“The losers from globalization and rise of technology are the below median workers in the developed world. This helps to explain Trump and Brexit. The effect of offshoring jobs to China and Mexico. In the EU, the Euro has ensured that the working class in Germany have been protected from some of this because the Euro is cheaper than it would be if the southern periphery was not in it.”
I’d say you’re entirely right, there. The main beneficiaries in the PIGS have been a section of the middle classes. Paid for by high unemployment amongst the serfs.
It’s over 40 years since the late 1970s. Most of the top 1% in the late 1970s are now dead. So I’d say we have pretty successfully redistributed their wealth to other people.