Liberal Vision

The Improving State of the World

The World Bank have released some interesting statistics. Data from 1981-2008 has illustrated that the number of people in the developing world existing on $1.25 per day or less has declined markedly. As the study shows, the United Nations goal of cutting the extreme poverty rate by 2015 has already been met.

The narrative familiar to many is often the exact opposite, with globalisation/free markets/big business/other evil villains worsening the lives of the very poor in the developing world. The facts, however, show something completely different:

There are still too many individuals living in poverty but that should not trick us into believing that things are getting worse. We should be optimistic that the trends shown in the graph above may continue to fall.

Perhaps ‘neoliberalism’ isn’t that bad after all…

Creeping protectionism

In the run up to the G20, it is worth noting that nearly all (17) of these countries have implemented protectionist measures in the last few months–in spite of signing a pledge in November 2008 to avoid protectionist measures.

For all their crowing about free trade, these scoundrels are sneaking in barriers at every opportunity, often to the detriment of the world’s poor.

Details are in a report by the World Bank. It states:

“Since the beginning of the financial crisis, officials have proposed and/or implemented roughly 78 trade measures … Of these, 66 involved trade restrictions, and 47 trade-restricting measures eventually took effect.”

Click here for the full report.

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