The Lie Of Global Prosperity

A deconstruction of the neoliberal placations about global capitalism, exposing the inequalities of global poverty “We’re making headway on global poverty,” trills Bill Gates. “Decline of Global Extreme Poverty Continues,” reports the World Bank. “How did the global poverty rate halve in 20 years?” inquires The Economist. Seth Donnelly answers: “It didn’t!” In fact, according to Donnelly, virtually nothing about these glad tidings proclaiming plummeting global poverty rates is true. It’s just that trend-setting neoliberal experts and institutions need us to believe that global capitalism, now unfettered in the wake of the Cold War and bolstered by Information Technology, has ushered in a new phase of international human prosperity. This short book deconstructs the assumption that global poverty has fallen dramatically, and lays bare the spurious methods of poverty measurement and data on which the dominant prosperity narrative depends. Here is carefully researched documentation that global poverty—and the inequalities and misery that flourish within it—remains massive, afflicting the majority of the world’s population. Donnelly goes further to analyze just how global poverty, rather than being reduced, is actually reproduced by the imperatives of capital accumulation on a global scale. Just as the global, environmental catastrophe cannot be resolved within capitalism, rooted as it is in contemporary mechanisms of exploitation and plunder, neither can human poverty be effectively eliminated by neoliberal “advances.”

In That Used to Be Us, the blockbuster Michael Mandelbaum wrote with Thomas L. Friedman, the authors analyzed the challenges America faces, including globalization, and described a path to recovering America’s greatness. In his widely and well reviewed The Road to Global Prosperity, Mandelbaum, one of America’s leading authorities on international affairs, looks at whether our optimism about the world’s economic future is justified in view of the financial meltdown of 2008, still being felt; Europe’s troubled currency; the slowing growth of China and other emerging nations. He concludes that while the global economy does face major challenges in the years ahead, there are compelling reasons to believe for optimism. Mandelbaum says that globalization is both irreversible and a positive force for the United States and the world. As technology and free markets expand and national leaders realize that their political power rests on delivering prosperity, countries will cooperate more. As more nations connect, their economies will grow. As immigration increases, as more money crosses borders, and as more countries emerge from poverty, individuals and societies around the world will benefit. The Road to Global Prosperity illuminates the crucial issues that will determine the economic future. Mandelbaum makes a persuasive case for optimism as well as offering a concrete, practical guide to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

World wealth creation exceeded $2 trillion per month in 1999. The potential for world wealth might be as high as $500 trillion or $83,333 for each person on Earth. This rapid and increasing accumulation has the capacity to touch every aspect of economic development and exchange. The Wealthy World explains the reasons for this increase and its implications in a world whose financial systems are becoming increasingly unified. Written by an author with worldwide credentials, this fascinating book lays out a key component of the approaching world economy, including the impact of the global rise of technology and interconnectivity and the implications of these factors on global wealth.

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.

The co-author of the best-selling That Used to Be Us describes the forces driving the next stage of globalization, which he predicts will be a period of expanding wealth, opportunity and international cooperation.

The Dialectics of Global Justice uses a novel application of negative dialectical interpretation to offer an immanent and ethical critique of prominent theories of global justice (i.e., cosmopolitanism), including how these theories manifest in political movements and policy agendas. Drawing on the work of Theodor Adorno and Erich Fromm especially, author Bryant William Sculos exposes the contradictory relationship between cosmopolitanism and core elements of capitalism, particularly the domineering "capitalistic mentality" (re)produced by and through capitalism, leading to the conclusion that cosmopolitanism, on its own terms, demands an alternative, postcapitalistic political basis in order to make robust progress toward global justice. While offering this critique, Sculos also implicitly challenges the increasingly common view that cosmopolitanism today is inherently imperialistic and out of touch with the global resurgence of nationalism and anti-cosmopolitan sentiment.

"The Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism examines unequal commercial, trade, and investment gains at the international level and explores how countries and nations can have exploitative relations. The book contains thirty-four chapters written by academics and experts in the field of international political economy. The chapters in the Handbook look at the history of economic imperialism from the early modern age to the present. They demonstrate the persistence of economic imperialism in today's postcolonial world and the enduring control wielded by great powers even after the end of formal empire. The book reveals how emerging powers are expanding economic control in new geographic and geopolitical contexts. The Handbook highlights the significance of economic imperialism in the structures, relations, processes, and ideas that help sustain poverty and conflict worldwide"--

The term neoliberal has been in wide academic use for decades but only fairly recently entered the conversation—and quickly become controversial as a result. Back in 2019 Nader Elhefnawy took up this controversy in his book What is Neoliberalism? In this follow-up he revisits the question, offering a new consideration of the word's different meanings, especially how neoliberalism has restructured the world economy and the model of growth policymakers follow in regard to it; the economic record that has followed from it, from what it has meant for international development to what it has meant for the middle class; and how neoliberalism has shaped our thinking about the world, extending even to the idea of the future itself.