Notes on Pogge and Hickel - Global Politics PDF

**VERY ROUGH NOTES on Chapters 1, 2 of Thomas Pogge's *Politics as Usual* (pp. 1-47) and Chapters 1, 2 of Jason Hickel's *The Divide (pp. 48-end)*** ***(full sources available on request)*** **[Thomas Pogge, Politics as Usual (Chapters 1 and 2)]** Thomas Pogge in *Politics as Usual* undertakes an...

**VERY ROUGH NOTES on Chapters 1, 2 of Thomas Pogge's *Politics as Usual* (pp. 1-47) and Chapters 1, 2 of Jason Hickel's *The Divide (pp. 48-end)*** ***(full sources available on request)*** **[Thomas Pogge, Politics as Usual (Chapters 1 and 2)]** Thomas Pogge in *Politics as Usual* undertakes an "institutional analysis" of the global order, one that focuses on the institutions, regimes, organizations, actors that are driving "globalization." Pogge argues that institutional arrangements are not the result of the free working of the market ("law of supply and demand," "invisible hand," etc.). There is nothing "free" about "free trade," "free markets," "free enterprise," etc. Markets have always been the creation of governments (protecting property rights of the "opulent minority," waging imperialist wars to acquire new markets, repressing labor, etc.). Behind the invisible hand of the "free market" is the iron fist of the state. "Globalization," for Pogge and others, is just another word for neo-colonialism or imperialism. Institutional analysis allows us to understand how the global capitalist economic system of rules, policies, laws--- is deliberately designed to transfer wealth from the Global South to the Global North. According to Oxfam, "this system still extracts wealth from the Global South to the super-rich 1% in the Global North at a rate of \$30million an hour." [Takers Not Makers: The unjust poverty and unearned wealth of colonialism \| Oxfam International](https://www.oxfam.org/en/takers-not-makers-unjust-poverty-and-unearned-wealth-colonialism) Oxfam also reported that "84% of countries \[studied\] have reduced their spending on education, health and/or social protection. Progressive taxation, tax collection and their impact on inequality has regressed in 81% of countries. Labour rights, minimum wages, vulnerable employment and/or labour income inequality have worsened in 90% of countries." [rr-commitment-to-reducing-inequality-index-2024-211024-summ-en.pdf](https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621653/rr-commitment-to-reducing-inequality-index-2024-211024-summ-en.pdf?sequence=8) The current institutional order stifles human flourishing and does not treat rich and poor has having equal rights to dignity, moral autonomy. The vast majority of people in the world live a life that deprives them of their ability to develop their true potentials as human beings. Asking *why* these rules, policies, laws were created means asking *who* developed and enforced them. As Michael Manley, former Prime Minister of Jamaica, once said, "To know whose interests they serve, ask who set them up." One World Mania: A Critical Guide to Free Trade, Financialization and Over-Globalization A book cover with a cartoon of a person standing on a pillar AI-generated content may be incorrect. A book cover of a global development AI-generated content may be incorrect. Dimensions of globalization: Economic: removal of barriers to the "free" flow of capital, goods and services. Most important have been the removal of barriers to CAPITAL mobility. Key international institutions of the Global North are the Bretton-Woods Institutions (the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organization), MNCs, as well as the numerous bilateral and multilateral trade treaties, which should be considered primarily investment agreements because they prioritize the rights of capital (investor rights) over all other rights (labor, health, environmental, etc.). Political: The increasing influence of supranational institutions, which have been shifting sovereignty upwards from states. Ideological: The propagation of slogans like "TINA" (There is No Alternative (to Capitalism)), the "end of history," "markets know best," "winners and losers," "trickle down," "a rising tide lifts all boats," "in the long run," "global village," etc. Cultural: the spreading of "universal" (western) culture (language, media, music, etc.). The emergence of "McWorld." Military: military alliances among countries of the Global North, especially NATO, which has been projecting US military power across the globe. Institutions of the Global North include the G-7, G-20, OECD, MNCs (which hold 90 percent of the world's patents), the Bretton-Woods institutions (IMF, WB, WTO), influential NGOs (i.e., the Gates, Soros, Clinton, Bezos Foundations), military organizations like NATO. The World Economic Forum (WEF), which meets every year in Davos, Switzerland (registration fee: \$250,000), along with a rapidly multiplying ecosystem of pro-business, pro-market think tanks (Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, the Atlas Network, Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, etc., and consulting agencies like McKinsey publish a steady stream of studies ostensibly proving the superiority of market-based solutions to development. Organizations of the Global South: Bandung Conference (Non-aligned Movement), UNCTAD, NIEO, G-77 (now the G-134), and the newly emergent BRICs. The Bandung Conference, held in 1955, called for worldwide decolonization. It brought together twenty-nine countries and 19 liberation movements; participants were "nonwhite and anti-imperialist" (Lorenzini, 40). The Conference "alarmed the United States as a challenge to its model of liberal capitalism" and as evidence that countries in the Global South were drifting towards communism (Daunton, 343). The aim of poor countries like India was not just the efficient production of goods, but the creation of a society "based on equality....,social justice, the right to work with an adequate wage, and social security for all citizens" (Daunton, 344). Nkrumah of Ghana, for example, denounced outside "interference in our internal politics," opposed the transmission of cultural ideas which we find degrading and economic ties which limit our independence" (Daunton, 354). In 1974, launching the NIEO, New International Economic Order, Mexico drafted a [Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States](https://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=a/res/3281(XXIX)), whose aim was to restructure relations between developed and developing countries. The UN General Assembly adopted the charter by a vote of 115 to 6. The United States and its allies opposed. The Charter declared that "every state has the sovereign and inalienable right to choose its economic system as well as it political, social and cultural systems in accordance with the will of its people, without outside interference, coercion, or threat in any form whatsoever." These rights included "the right to regulate transnational corporations; a nation's right to its own natural resources; the right to nationalize foreign property; the right to form groups of commodity producers; the right to regulate foreign investment; and the right to pursue industrial policy; among others. It also includedthe duty of wealthy nations to provide developing nations preferential treatment in trade and other forms of economic cooperation; the duty to increase financing and net flows of real resources to developing nations; the duty to share knowledge and technology; and more." The main principles of the NIEO were: 1. The **sovereign equality of all States**, with non-interference in their internal affairs, their effective participation in solving world problems and the right to adopt their own economic and social systems; 2. Full **sovereignty of each State over its natural resources and other economic activities** necessary for development, as well as regulation of transnational corporations; 3. **Just and equitable relationship **between the price of raw materials and other goods exported by developing countries, and the prices of raw materials and other goods exported by the developed countries; 4. **Strengthening of bilateral and multilateral international assistance to promote industrialization in the developing countrie**s through, in particular, the provisioning of sufficient financial resources and opportunities for transfer of appropriate techniques and technologies. [General Assembly resolution 3201 (S-VI) of 1 May 1974 (Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order) - introductory note - English](https://legal.un.org/avl/pdf/ha/ga_3201/ga_3201_e.pdf) The mainstream or dominant narrative of globalization sees the world coming together as a "global village" which has given rise to the "global consumer," the "global citizen," the "global market," "global values," etc. Economic growth, "maximizing GDP," etc., are the key goals. International organizations and trade are ostensibly bringing the world together. The promotion of liberal democratic regimes will ostensibly lead to a more peaceful, stable and prosperous world. The other narrative sees the opposite. Critics of globalization (which became the dominant development "narrative" in the 1990s), argue that global institutional arrangements, power structures and decisions of powerful actors in the Global North negatively affect the lives of people in the majority world or Global South. For Pogge and Hickel, globalization is a zero-sum system designed to transfer wealth and resources from the Global South to the Global North, keeping the former in a perpetual state of dependency on the latter. The political and economic institutions that were created after WWII, specifically, the Bretton-Woods institutions (IMF, WB, WTO) perpetuate and reinforce the hegemony of the North vis-a-vis the Global South. Behind the creation of the new institutional order was the desire for American global hegemony. John Maynard Keynes railed against the US-dominated global institutional order after WWII: "The Americans....seem to have absolutely no conception of international co-operation and \[believe\] they have the right to call the tune on practically every point" (Daunton, 234). The new institutions would be run by financial experts who found overwhelming support in the economics establishment. A poll of members of the American Economic Association found that 90 percent supported the Bretton Woods agreement" (Daunton, 219). Wall Street insisted that loans by the IBRD (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development had to be based on "sound economics" and yet at the same time be consistent with American foreign policy, exposing the blatantly partisan nature of their ostensibly "apolitical" approach (Daunton, 309). Bank directors were all chosen to gain the support of Wall Street, and the IBRD became "the bill collector for Wall Street." It proceeded to lend money to dictators in Nicaragua, Philippines, South Africa, ostensibly guided by the desire to protect market "freedom," but "denying loans to countries that were implementing policies that might create freedom by a fairer distribution of the world's resources" (Daunton, 309-10). When it came to investing in health and education, the reply from the financiers was a resounding "no": "Damn it....we're a bank!" bellowed one advocate of "sound economic policies" (Daunton, 313). 483820  The director of the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) called a UN special assembly on Man's Right to Freedom from Hunger, the biggest human problem of the century whose solving would raise the moral and intellectual stature of humanity more than putting men on the moon" (Daunton, 327). However, the proposal to focus on redistributive measures to eliminate hunger in poor countries was off the agenda. The "feeding of most Chinese and Hindus could only be justified on the basis of charity, and the world cannot afford this at the present moment," claimed the defenders of global inequality. "Normative issues of the distribution of wealth and poverty were matters for national governments" (Daunton, 313). A proposal at the Havana Conference calling for the expropriation of foreign investment with compensation" was equally shot down by the same financial interests. A yellow and grey book cover AI-generated content may be incorrect. Those actors and institutions who participate in and benefit from these global institutional arrangements are mostly in the Global North and are therefore amorally implicated, according to Pogge, and have a moral duty to oppose this institutional order. The current *state-centric order, moreover,* gives all states international resource, borrowing, treaty-signing and arms acquisition privileges. Is this system compatible with global justice? No, argues Pogge. The poor---who constitute the vast majority in the Global South\-\--have not given their consent to this order. Many states in the world are dictatorships (many of which have been kept in power by the Global North), and the people there have not consented to surrender their resources or agreed to loans or military expansion that have kept their countries in perpetual debt bondage. As well, countries of the Global South have been mostly coerced to sign free trade agreements and other treaties that reinforce the North-South divide. Participation in the global "market" is not a level playing field, however: the trade system in particular has been rigged in favor of the Global North. But even democratic regimes in both Global North and South, by failing to protect social and economic rights at home and abroad, are complicit in maintaining this institutional order. \[Refer to Pogge's "baseline arguments," "consent of the poor," and "flaws of poor countries' social institutions and rulers in Ch. 1 of *Politics as Usual\]* Global reality is increasing inequality, increasing absolute numbers of people living in poverty: the gap between rich and poor are greater than ever in the post-war II period.  **In 1960 the gap between rich and poor countries was 32 times; in 2000 it was 134 times.** **The number of people whose wealth is equal to that of the poorest half of the world's population since 2010:** **2015: 62** **2014: 80** **2013: 92** **2012: 159** **2011: 177** **2010: 388**  Source: Forbes and Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2014 and 2015 \\\\faculty1\\users\\M.DUFOUR\\b drive\\INTREL\\rich poor\\3\_people\_richest.jpg.png To get a sense for just how badly wealth is maldistributed, consider that the richest 1% alone capture nearly 25% of world GDP, according to the World Inequality Database.  That's more than the GDP of 169 countries *combined*, including Norway, Argentina, all of the Middle East and the entire continent of Africa.  If income was shared more fairly (i.e., if more of it went to the workers who actually produce it), and invested in universal public goods, we could end global poverty many times over and close the health and education gap permanently.  Jason HIckel, [IS THE WORLD POOR, OR UNJUST?](https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/2/21/is-the-world-poor-or-unjust) February 22, 2021 ================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================  A group of people standing on a roll of money AI-generated content may be incorrect. **Elon Musk\`s net worth vs country GDP**  https://i.insider.com/56055b87dd0895cb7b8b4645?width=2400 Why the smiley face? Answer below: Tesla awarded Musk a pay package in 2018 that that is worth \$50.9 billion today. It was necessary, say Musk-appointed board members, to "incentivize and motivate" Musk. "How much would your hourly wage need to be so that by the end you had amassed Musk's wealth? Suppose you worked 50 hours a week between the ages of 20 and 65 -- week in week out, year in year out --The answer is: \$1,871,794 per hour. *Almost two million dollars per hour.* Every working hour for 45 years." [Limitarianism: why we need to put a cap on the super-rich \| Philosophy books \| The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/21/limitarianism-the-case-against-extreme-wealth-ingrid-robeyns-extract#:~:text=Limitarianism%20does%20not%20advocate%20strict,that%20generate%20savings%20over%20time.)  A graph with a drop of blood AI-generated content may be incorrect.  Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez "Jeff Bezos, one of the [richest men in the world](https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#22748e903d78), is poised to save at least \$610 million in taxes by moving from Washington state to a hyper-exclusive Miami island that\'s been dubbed \"Billionaire Bunker.\" While Bezos didn\'t mention the potential tax savings as one of the reasons for his move, the announcement came after Washington state\'s new 7% capital gains tax on the sale or exchange of stocks and other assets worth more than \$250,000 took effect [after a lengthy court fight](https://dor.wa.gov/about/news-releases/2023/capital-gains-excise-tax-ruled-constitutional). The tax [brought in far more revenue](https://www.commondreams.org/news/tax-the-rich) in its first year than supporters expected. Bezos has been selling Amazon shares nearly every year for more than two decades---but he stopped in 2022, the first year of Washington\'s new tax. Now that he\'s in Florida, which doesn\'t tax income or capital gains, Bezos has resumed selling his Amazon stock, dumping around 12 million shares worth [roughly \$2 billion](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/11/1230650932/jeff-bezos-sells-nearly-12-million-amazon-shares-worth-at-least-2-billion) last week. *CNBC* pointed to recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings showing that Bezos has \"launched a pre-scheduled stock-selling plan to unload 50 million shares before Jan. 31, 2025. At today\'s price, that would total more than \$8.7 billion.\" \"On the \$2 billion sale last week, he saved \$140 million that he would have paid to Washington state,\" *CNBC* observed. \"On the entire sale of 50 million shares over the next year, he will save at least \$610 million. And that\'s assuming Amazon shares remain flat. If they continue to rise, the value of his shares---and his tax savings---will be even higher.\" **Tax-Dodging Jeff Bezos to Save \$610 Million With Move to \'Billionaire Bunker\' in Florida** Mr Bezos\'s worth had climbed so much between March-September 2020 that he could have given all 876,000 Amazon employees a \$105,000 bonus and still have been as wealthy as he was before the pandemic. [\'Wealth increase of 10 men during pandemic could buy vaccines for all\' - BBC News](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-55793575?fbclid=IwAR0JPbVPeIwBSJanzEcJRxEaws7ot0g_kMF92u2a4iC39pPdd4FDP7gOX5E) ***\"If the "Make Billionaires Pay Act" had been signed into law during the pandemic Bezos would have paid \$42,800,000,000 more in taxes and everyone in America would have had healthcare as a right.\"*** The world\'s billionaires increased their wealth by [\$2.5 billion per day](https://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/media/files/bp-public-good-or-private-wealth-210119-en.pdf) in 2018. There are now more than 2,200 of them. here were **2,668 billionaires on *Forbes* list of richest men. Together they held \$12,700,000,000,000. On average the value of their assets is \$4.75bn.** The gains of economic growth, in other words, are being captured by a tiny fraction of the world's population. Cartoon of a person standing on a scale with a crowd of people Description automatically generated  *"Over the past two years, the **world's super-rich 1 per cent have gained nearly twice as much wealth as the remaining 99 per cent combined."*** According to the RAND Corporation, a staggering **\$50 trillion has been CONFISCATED by the rich since the mid-1970s:** "had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady, the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been \$2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDP---enough to more than double median income---enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional \$1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year." In 2020, **1% of all adults (56m) in the world owned 45.8% of all personal wealth in the world; while 2.9m owned just 1.3%.** In 2021, **that the top 1% now owned 47.8% of all personal wealth while 2.8bn owned just 1.1%! ** **And the top 13% own 86% of all wealth.** According to an [analysis](https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/reports-research/global-wealth-report.html) published by Credit Suisse, there were 218,200 ultra-high net worth (UHNW) people in the world in 2021, an increase of 46,000 from the previous year. **The share of the world\'s wealth held by the richest 1% of people also increased from 44% to 46% last year.** The number of US millionaires increased by 2.5 million -- almost half of all new millionaires minted across the world. "This is the largest increase in millionaire numbers recorded for any country in any year this century." **During the pandemic, since 2020, \$26 trillion (63 percent) of all new wealth was captured by the richest 1 percent, while \$16 trillion (37 percent) went to the rest of the world put together. A billionaire gained roughly \$1.7 million for every \$1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90 percent.** Entire countries are facing bankruptcy, with **the poorest countries now spending four times more repaying debts to rich creditors than on healthcare**. Three-quarters of the world's governments are planning austerity-driven public sector spending cuts ---including on healthcare and education--- by \$7.8 trillion over the next five years. [Davos and the melting world economy \| Climate & Capitalism (climateandcapitalism.com)](https://climateandcapitalism.com/2024/01/20/davos-and-the-melting-world-economy/) Bar chart of \$bn showing Wealth of billionaires has increased in all major economies Increase in billionaire wealth 1987 to 2022 ------------------------------------------- https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/\#2da8c28e3d78 **The collective wealth of this iteration of the oligarchic dozen has increased by more than \$1.3 trillion, or 193 percent, since Forbes published its 34th annual list of global billionaires in April 2020.**  [**Combined wealth of 12 US billionaires passes 2 trillion dollars \| Climate & Capitalism**](https://climateandcapitalism.com/2024/12/10/combined-wealth-of-12-us-billionaires-passes-2-trillion-dollars/) **India\'s top 1% owned more than 40.5% of its total wealth in 2021, according to a new report by Oxfam.** In 2022, the number of billionaires in the country increased to 166 from 102 in 2020, the [**report**](https://d1ns4ht6ytuzzo.cloudfront.net/oxfamdata/oxfamdatapublic/2023-01/India%20Supplement%202023_digital.pdf?kz3wav0jbhJdvkJ.fK1rj1k1_5ap9FhQ) said. Meanwhile, it added that the poor in India \"are unable to afford even basic necessities to survive\". Only 3% of total wealth created had trickled down to the bottom 50%. In 2022, the [**wealth of India\'s richest man Gautam Adani increased by 46%**](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-63817883), while the combined wealth of India\'s 100 richest had touched \$660bn. "In 2022, Mr Adani was ranked the second richest person in the world on the Bloomberg\'s wealth index. He also topped the list of people whose wealth witnessed the maximum rise globally during the year. Meanwhile, the country\'s poor and middle class were taxed more than the rich. Approximately 64% of the total goods and services tax (GST) in the country came from the bottom 50% of the population, while only 4% came from the top 10%, the report said. A 2% tax on the entire wealth of India\'s billionaires would support the nutrition of the country\'s malnourished population for the next three years, the report said. A 1% wealth tax could fund the National Health Mission, India\'s largest healthcare scheme for more than1.5 years, it added. Taxing the top 100 Indian billionaires at 2.5% or taxing the top 10 Indian billionaires at 5% would nearly cover the entire amount required to bring an estimated 150 million children back into school," according to Oxfam. China now has [more billionaires](https://www.hurun.net/en-US/Info/Detail?num=LWAS8B997XUP) than the United States, India and Germany combined. **The top 10 percent there controls 68 percent of the country's wealth, compared with about 6 percent by the bottom 50 percent, according to the [World Inequality Database](https://wid.world/country/china/).** A large portion of the 1.4 billion Chinese remain poor. **About 600 million people, or 40 percent of the country's population, live on about \$150 a month or less**. In February 2024, *The Economist* reported that "about **50% of China's wealth is in the hands of just 8% of the population---They own 64% of all publicly traded shares, and 61% of investment funds. Half of China's housing wealth belongs to the "got-rich-first." About 30% of residential property was purchased as an investment, rather than to live in.** Speculation in property has led to bubbles forming. Authorities worry that **too much of China's household wealth---some 80%---is concentrated in housing**, compared with about 30% in America, for example. In rich countries like Canada, the richest **86 people have the combined wealth of the poorest 11.4 million.** Source:https://www.thestar.com/business/2014/04/03/canadas\_riches\_86\_people\_have\_as\_much\_wealth\_as\_the\_poorest\_114\_million.html Oxfam Canada recently [reported](https://www.oxfam.ca/story/inequality-inc-oxfams-call-to-address-the-widening-wealth-gap/) (2024) that the **richest 0.02 per cent of Canadians now possess more wealth than the bottom 80 per cent.** Diagram Description automatically generated In One Map: How Many Billionaires Are in The World  The ultra-rich derive most of their income from **unearned wealth**: **asset inflation** (sharply rising property prices and a credit-fueled stock market boom.)  monopoly rents, inheritance, corruption account for the other sources of income. They ultra-rich, in other words, engage in speculative\--not productive or socially useful\--investment. Globally, the single biggest predictors of wealth and poverty are geography (country of birth), class into which one was born, gender, race and....sheer luck. It has been estimated that more than 50 percent of a person's income is determined by the country in which they were born or live. (Wisor, 23) So in the next few decades, a person born in the US will earn a hundred times more than a Zambian, and live THREE decades longer! The result: the world is increasingly divided between the "takers" and the "makers." See: [Takers Not Makers: The unjust poverty and unearned wealth of colonialism \| Oxfam International](https://www.oxfam.org/en/takers-not-makers-unjust-poverty-and-unearned-wealth-colonialism) In 2018, just [17 global financial conglomerates](https://www.sevenstories.com/books/4097-giants) collectively managed \$41.1 trillion, more than half the GDP of the entire planet. A recent analysis showed that in 2019, "the top 1 percent of Americans in wealth controlled about 38 percent of the value of financial accounts holding stocks. Widen the focus to include the top 10 percent, and you've found 84 percent of all of Wall Street portfolios' value." [Who Owns Stocks? Explaining the Rise in Inequality During the Pandemic - The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/upshot/stocks-pandemic-inequality.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=The%20Upshot) **The combined wealth of the world\'s 10 richest men rose by \$540bn (£400bn) during the pandemic, according to Oxfam.** This amount would be enough to prevent the world from falling into poverty because of the virus, and pay for vaccines for all. [\'Wealth increase of 10 men during pandemic could buy vaccines for all\' - BBC News](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-55793575?fbclid=IwAR0JPbVPeIwBSJanzEcJRxEaws7ot0g_kMF92u2a4iC39pPdd4FDP7gOX5E) The amount of wealth stored in global financial secrecy jurisdictions (**tax havens**) is a staggering **\$24-\$32 trillion.** "In the 1970s, about 2% of profits made by corporations were shifted to tax havens such as Bahamas, Anguilla, and Panama. By 2019, the amount had grown to 40%, with the use of corporate tax havens rising sharply in the past decade." Julia Conley, 3 November, 2022. Image [This Graph Shows Where Surging Corporate Profits Increasingly Go: Tax Havens (commondreams.org)](https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/11/03/graph-shows-where-surging-corporate-profits-increasingly-go-tax-havens?utm_source=daily_newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=daily_newsletter) Billionaire fortunes are increasing by \$2.7bn a day, even as inflation outpaces the wages of at least 1.7 billion workers, more than the population of India. **Only 4 cents in every dollar of tax revenue comes from wealth taxes**; half the world's billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax on money they give to their children. The failure to tax wealth is most pronounced in low- and middle-income countries, where inequality is highest. Two-thirds of countries do not have any form of inheritance tax on wealth and assets passed to direct descendants. **Half of the world's billionaires now live in countries with no such tax, meaning \$5 trillion will be passed on tax-free to the next generation, a sum greater than the GDP of Africa.** **Elon Musk pays a 'true tax rate' of only 3.2%, while another of the richest billionaires, Jeff Bezos, pays less than 1%. According to Oxfam, a tax of up to 5% on the world's multi-millionaires and billionaires that could raise \$1.7 trillion a year would be "enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty and fund a global plan to end hunger." ** **"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." -- Warren Buffet**  So, let's just....... C:\\Users\\m.dufour\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\Windows\\INetCache\\Content.MSO\\9F05DF01.tmp Why are the billionaires winning the class war? Just follow the money:  In 2024, a record \$16 billion was spent in the electoral cycle: "presidential hopefuls spent \$409,346,942: \$278.2 million (68.0% of the total) by Republican candidates, \$99.3 million (24.3%) by Democratic candidates, and \$31.7 million (7.8%) by third-party candidates." [Tracking 2024 election contributions and spending \| USAFacts](https://usafacts.org/articles/tracking-2024-election-contributions-and-spending/) Since Trump's election, Musk's net worth has increased \$64 billion, or nearly 25%, according to Bloomberg's estimate.  Despite his campaign to shrink the government and eliminate spending, Musk has benefitted hugely from government subsidies. He has "not only received over \$5 billion in subsidies from the U.S. government; his companies, SpaceX and Tesla, have been built on the work of NASA and the Department of Energy, respectively." [Opinion: Who really creates value in an economy? The billionaires, or us? - MarketWatch](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/who-really-creates-value-in-an-economy-the-billionaires-or-us-2018-09-11) Musk's with the Trump administration, his companies stand to make a killing from government contracts. [How much of Musk's wealth comes from tax dollars and government help?](https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/companies/how-much-of-musk-s-wealth-comes-from-tax-dollars-and-government-help/ar-AA1uqrGX?ocid=BingNewsSerp) Warren Buffet (**net worth (2018): \$82.6 billion) pays a tiny fraction of the tax rate paid by his secretary, who "works just as hard as me," says the centibillionaire. However,** no one among the 25 wealthiest billionaires avoided as much tax as Buffett: "According to ProPublica,[ Buffett\'](https://meaww.com/battle-of-the-billionaires-warren-buffet-koch-brothers-david-koch)s real income-tax rate is 0.1 per cent and that he minimizes his personal tax bill by keeping his fortune in Berkshire Hathaway stock and not paying a dividend. Between 2014 and 2018, Buffett\'s wealth grew by \$24 billion during that period, but he only reported \$125M of income and paid just \$24M in taxes. This put his \'true tax rate\' below the near about 1 per cent paid by Amazon CEO[ Bezos](https://meaww.com/jeff-bezos-and-mackenzie-officially-divorced-with-mackenzie-giving-75-percent-of-amazon-stock-voting-control) and much below the 3.3 per cent paid by tech billionaire[ Musk](https://meaww.com/elon-musk-lists-two-los-angeles-homes-for-millions-he-is-selling-all-possessions)." [Warren Buffett slammed for avoiding tax after calling for higher taxes on the rich: \'Hypocrite\' \| MEAWW](https://meaww.com/pro-publica-irs-leaks-warren-buffett-slammed-for-not-paying-taxes) Somalia famine A mother holds her malnourished baby at a hospital in Baidoa, Somalia on September 3, 2022. (Photo: Ed Ram/Getty Images) ...while a rising tide lifts all.... Superyachts [Opinion \| The Superyachts of Billionaires Are Starting to Look a Lot Like Theft - The New York Times (nytimes.com)](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/10/opinion/superyachts-private-plane-climate-change.html) A picture containing outdoor, airplane, runway, aircraft Description automatically generated Eco-friendly (insert sarcasm emoji here) private planes arriving for the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. Passengers favor market-friendly (and jet-friendly) solutions to our global existential problem: climate change. In 2020 the WEF was attended by 600 global CEOs -- including 1,500 C-suite level overall. The WEF sessions of 2023 are "likely to surpass the old record with 2,700 participants in attendance. According to Bloomberg, **a total of 116 billionaires are attending the WEF this year (2023), a 40% rise from ten years ago**. Representatives from the US will form the largest group with 33 delegates. Some 18 more billionaires are coming from Europe, and 13 from India, including industrialist Gautam Adani, the world's fourth-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. [Survival of the Richest: How we must tax the super-rich now to fight inequality (openrepository.com)](https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621477/bp-survival-of-the-richest-160123-en.pdf) Read the executive summary https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71TDR+UtRjL.\_SL1500\_.jpg  https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61TY23zjgLL.\_SL1280\_.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81sYD0SV8eL.\_SL1500\_.jpg  From the back cover: "Through his vaunted philanthropy, Bill Gates transformed himself from a tech villain into one of the most admired people on the planet....But Tim Schwab shows in this fearless investigation, Gates is still exactly who he was at Microsoft: a bully and monopolist, convinced of his own righteousness and intent on imposing his ideas, his solutions, and his leadership on everyone else. At the core, he is not a selfless philanthropist but a power broker, a clever engineer who has innovated a way to turn extreme wealth into immense political influence―and who has made us believe we should applaud his acquisition of power, not challenge it. The Bill Gates Problem shows how Gates's billions have purchased a stunning level of control over public policy, private markets, scientific research, and the news media. Whether he is pushing new educational standards in America, health reforms in India, global vaccine policy during the pandemic, or Western industrialized agriculture throughout Africa, Gates's heady social experimentation has shown itself to be not only undemocratic, but also ineffective. In many places, Bill Gates is hurting the very people he intends to help." May be an image of text that says \'r/LateStageCapitalism u/PhilosoBee 32m 472,200,000,000 That\'s how much we can seize from the billionaire class\... without even reducing the number of billionaires. That could entirely eradicate world hunger for 216 years. 1/20th of it would halt climate change by 2030 and remember, this doesn\'t even takea a PENNY from people with \'only\' 1B. Just spent a while with a spreadsheet and the Forbes 2019 rich list, thought I\'d share.\'  The annual global wealth report from Credit Suisse....revealed that by the end of 2021, total **global wealth had reached \$463.6 trillion, or more than 4.5 times world annual output**. Thomas Piketty provides the reason: over the past two centuries the rate of return on capital has exceeded the rate of economic growth. Ownership of assets confers wealth at a far greater rate than income on labour. **Karl Marx** made the same observation in the 19^th^ century: **"Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole"**\-- Karl Marx. Global wealth rose 9.8% in 2021, far above the average annual 6.6% recorded since the beginning of the century. If you exclude the movement of currencies, aggregate global wealth grew by 12.7%, making it the fastest annual rate ever recorded.  At the same time, top rates of tax on income have become lower and less progressive, with the **average tax rate on the richest falling from 58% in 1980 to 42% more recently in OECD countries**. Across 100 countries, the average rate is even lower, at 31%. Rates of tax on capital gains -- in most countries the most important source of income for the top 1% -- are only 18% on average across more than 100 countries. Only three countries tax income from capital more than income from work.    Chart, line chart Description automatically generated **Microsoft currently has around **[\$108 billion in offshore accounts](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/us-corporations-14-trillion-hidden-tax-havens-oxfam). This is the sort of money that the former chair of the U.K. Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, calls ["socially useless"](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/aug/27/fsa-bonus-city-banks-tax):  It has been removed from general circulation to protect it from taxation, which means it doesn't contribute its fair share to the general pot for education, health-care, infrastructure, or even the foreign aid the Gates' say they want more of." [Gates Foundation\'s rose-colored world view not supported by evidence (humanosphere.org)](https://www.humanosphere.org/opinion/2017/03/gates-foundations-rose-colored-world-view-not-supported-by-evidence/) The IRS claims that Microsoft owes \$28.9 billion in unpaid taxes from a plan designed by KPMG that violated transfer pricing laws. [Warren Probes KPMG on Its Role in Microsoft's 'Tax Evasion' (bloombergtax.com)](https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/warren-demands-answers-from-kpmg-on-microsoft-tax-restructuring)  Corporate tax rates have been falling for 30 years "The Congressional Research Service in 2012 found that "changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth.... However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. Tax policy could have a relation to how the economic pie is sliced---lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities." Thomas L. Hungerford, "Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945," September 14, 2012, Congressional [Fifty Years of Tax Cuts for Rich Didn't Trickle Down, Study Says - Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-16/fifty-years-of-tax-cuts-for-rich-didn-t-trickle-down-study-says) In a book co-authored with Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman calculated that the 400 richest US Americans pay a lower tax rate than every single other income group, from plumbers to cleaners to nurses to retirees. Redistribution v. predistribution Redistribution: Oxfam calls for a tax of up to 5% on the world's multi-millionaires and billionaires that could raise **\$1.7 trillion a year, "enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty and fund a global plan to end hunger**.   Predistribution: "The eventual aim should be to go further, according to Oxfam, and to **abolish billionaires altogether**, as part of a fairer, more rational distribution of the world's wealth." Graphical user interface, text, chat or text message Description automatically generated  ***Caption: Good help is (not) hard to find*** https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51mhNjJgJ+L.\_SX321\_BO1,204,203,200\_.jpg  Caption: Which tragedy garnered the world's attention? Hint: not the migrants packing the boat. A group of birds on an airplane Description automatically generated Caption: What the ultra-rich do with their money: plane trips for falcons going to their next competition Does the market reward people on the basis of "hard work, "risk-taking," "education," "merit," etc. ?  C:\\Users\\Maurace\\Desktop\\lamborghini boss.jpg Whenever someone says rich people just work harder, think of this conversation with a stock broker: =================================================================================================== "I used to be a valet at a fancy hotel. Like \$1200 a night fancy. I'd regularly drive expensive cars that weren't mine. Met some famous people. Met some real assholes. Sometimes they were both. More often they were neither. This person was neither, at least not to me. On a quiet night, around 9pm, I think it was a Sunday, this guy comes out of the hotel to have a smoke. Mid-30s. White guy. Dressed business casual. Sandy blonde beard and shaggy hair, but in a way that takes effort to look like you're not trying. I stand there in my perfect bell boy uniform and do my little perfunctory nod. He offers me a cigarette. "I don't smoke, and besides, I'm on duty," I say. He shrugs, tells me his name, I forget what it is now. David maybe? He reads out my name tag. He shakes my hand, which is not something you do with guests, generally. He asks me how my night is going and if I like my job. I say it's okay. "Lots of walking. Drive nice cars. Sometimes get good tips." **I ask what he does. "Stock broker," he says. "Asian markets now, but yeah basically I move money around and take some of that money for myself. It's not a real job."** I ask if he likes it, his apparently unreal job. He shrugs and says "I'm rich!" in a way that seems to acknowledge richness as an expected yet inadequate proxy for personal or spiritual fulfillment. I'm not sure if maybe he had a couple drinks but clearly he was feeling some kind of way because he then goes on about how, "fucking stupid this whole thing is." **"I don't actually do anything. I buy imaginary things on a computer and sell them for profit. Then I get to take that money, and stay here while people like you do real things for me. Useful things like park cars or carry bags. Yet somehow I have more money than you."** He wasn't bragging. He was stating a fact. He did, in fact, have more money than me. I nodded, feeling a bit unsure, but happy I wasn't just staring at the wall waiting for a car to pull up. He kept going. **"My old office? It had two infinity pools. Not one! Two! Why? Because we literally didn't know how else to spend our money. Buy another pool! It's so fucking dumb. And don't get me started on the drugs. And the girls. Jesus fuck."** Poor guy, right? And even though I wanted to, I didn't get him started on the drugs or the, I presume, prostitutes. The hotel was owned by mormons after all. **"Oh, and here's the best part! If we lose all your money, we go ask the government for more and they just give it to us!" He genuinely found this funny.** Throughout this I'm nodding along, kind of in awe at his honesty, but also slowly becoming aware I'm being used. To him I'm a mere representation of the working class. I do "real" work, in his eyes. In that moment he apparently felt a need to access some kind of authenticity through me; to revel in an ironic delight of his absurd privilege, coupled, I suspected, with an emptiness discovered after years of his own pursuit of capitalist accumulation. At the time, his smoky outpouring felt like guilt. Or shame. And the way he chose to deal with it was to reach out to a stranger and admit he didn't really deserve what he owned. Maybe deserving had nothing to do with who owned what. I'm sure he hasn't thought about me at all since then, but it's the first thing I think about whenever someone tells me the rich deserve what they have because of hard work. Now that I think about it, even if I was being used, I was doing my job. I was providing service to a guest. All part of his \$1200 a night. And I got \$16 an hour to do it. That's real work. He finished his cigarette, tossed the butt on the ground, which I would clean up later, then handed me \$20, and said, "Better get going, I don't want to be late for "work!"" "See you tomorrow," he said. I never saw him again. [Institute for New Economic Thinking (ineteconomics.org)](https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/best-of-mankiw-errors-and-tangles-in-the-worlds-best-selling-economics-textbooks) Many argue that the ultra rich will just flee to a lower tax jurisdiction if we impose a wealth tax. Not true \"if we had a national billionaire **exit income tax**: we\'d collect that revenue no matter where they lived.\" \"Billionaires can\'t quit America to avoid paying,\" the group added. \"If they left, we\'d collect a fortune in exit taxes.\" [Tax-Dodging Jeff Bezos to Save \$610 Million With Move to \'Billionaire Bunker\' in Florida (commondreams.org)](https://www.commondreams.org/news/jeff-bezos-billionaire-bunker?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=f40c1ea329-Top+News%3A+Tues.+2%2F13%2F24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-f33353396e-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D)\\ **What are the moral implications of the widening gap between the Global South and Global North?** Our current institutional order is UNJUST, according to Pogge and Hickel, because it causes severe poverty, poverty and inequality are increasing, and these trends are both foreseeable and avoidable. The vast majority of deaths occurring on the planet are due to preventable poverty, which shortens people\`s lives in the Global South through hunger and disease. In fact, more deaths are caused by these than by war. The FAO has recently found that "the number of undernourished persons has risen sharply over the past two years, with up to 828 million people in the world facing hunger in 2021.   A report in September 2022 found that \"a staggering 345 million people are now experiencing acute hunger, a number that has more than doubled since 2019.\"  Fifty million people are on the brink of starvation in 45 countries.\" And while the number of Ultrarich Hits an All-Time High, Someone Dies From Hunger Every 4 Seconds." ====================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================== Across world regions, hunger numbers continue to depict significant disparities. Compared to 2015, the situation has worsened significantly everywhere; in addition to Africa, increases were also seen in Asia (+ 1.1 percentage points) and, of particular concern, in Latin America and the Caribbean (+ 2.8 percentage points)." [2.1.1 Prevalence of undernourishment \| Sustainable Development Goals \| Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (fao.org)](https://www.fao.org/sustainable-development-goals/indicators/211/en/) Meanwhile, a report by Oxfam revealed that profits from soaring food prices have enriched billionaires around the world by a collective \$382 billion. **The global institutional order is a "more efficient killing machine than Nazi death camps,"** according to Pogge. If one adopts the principle that moral duty to save lives should be directed towards the neediest, then it would follow that preventable deaths---those caused by poverty and disease---should focus our greatest attention. **Moral universalism**: Human rights are universal -- to be enjoyed by all people, no matter who they are or where they live. Every person in the world has an equal moral worth. It should make no difference whether that person is near or far, especially since everyone\`s life is increasingly interconnected through globalization. **Is it morally acceptable that an accident of birth is the most important determinant of whether a person suffers from malnutrition**? If we consider that everyone should have a right to the **prosperity generated by the global commons**, that is, the earth's resources, then just because one has the misfortune of having been born in a resource-poor country should not be an ethical reason to condemn that person to life-long poverty. Indeed, afte,r WWII, John Maynard Keynes argued that a primary duty of international institutions like the World Bank should be "to make the resources of the world more fully available to all mankind" (Daunton, 208) A key moral principle or duty: if a person can save the life of another without sacrificing anything else morally significant, that person has a moral duty to do so (e.g., saving the life of a drowning child) without endangering their life in the process). The same applies to governments in the Global North, which can easily abolish third world debt, which prevents poor countries from spending on critical poverty alleviation programs, thus saving millions of lives a year. Similarly, relaxing patents on life-saving drugs would do the same. A choice is wrong if it is incompatible with the ascription of equal worth to everyone\`s life. This means applying the **Kantian** principle: "act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law."  Moreover, one should also act in such a way as to never treat a person as a means to an end. If something is wrong when another person does it, it is wrong when you do it. It follows from this that **everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms in the UDHR (United Nations Declaration of Human Rights) can be fully realized. (Article 28).** There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of human rights declarations, covenants, resolutions, treaties, etc. but they all suffer from the same problems. Most deal with **negative (freedom from government), not positive (requiring positive government intervention)**, rights, they are not enforceable, they protect property rights to the detriment of basic human rights, and many have not been signed and/or ratified by the US. The UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)) enumerates the universal rights and freedoms, encompassing both civil/political and social/cultural/economic rights. The former are negative rights; the latter, positive rights. Liberal democracies (capitalist economies) prioritize the former over the latter. Socialist/social democratic countries give stronger protections to the latter. The founder of Amnesty International (AI), for example, envisioned the focus on human rights in the post-war period as an **alternative to socialism** (which has a far better record of ensuring basic needs). Like Human Rights Watch, it focused exclusively in its early years on negative rights like freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom from imprisonment (the communist world was targeted as a way of deflecting attention away from the many violations of positive rights in the capitalist West). Addressing poverty and inequality by advocating for positive rights was not on the agenda (Moyn, 122-123). The US adopted the same narrow approach to human rights:  It was only in 1974 that a public declaration insisting that human needs have basic needs\-\--food, shelter, health, and education\-\--was widely publicized (Moyn, 131). Key Human Rights Treaties The United States has ratified only four, four have been signed (but not yet ratified), and two haven't even been signed: 1\. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ([ICCPR](http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx)) -- **United States signed in 1977, but ratified only in 1992** - 2\. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination ([CERD](http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CERD.aspx)) --**United States signed in 1966, but ratified only in 1994** - 3\. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment ([CAT](http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CAT.aspx)) -- **United States signed in 1988, and ratified in 1994** - 4\. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of [Genocide](http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CrimeOfGenocide.aspx) -- **United States signed in 1948, and ratified in 1988** - 5\. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ([CRPD](http://www.un.org/disabilities/convention/conventionfull.shtml)) -- **United States signed in 2009, but has not yet ratified (failed to ratify by five votes in December 2012)** - 6\. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women ([CEDAW](http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CEDAW.aspx)) --**United States signed in 1980, but has not yet ratified** - 7\. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ([CESCR](http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR.aspx)) -- **United States signed in 1977, but has not yet ratified** - 8\. Convention on the Rights of the Child ([CRC](http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx)) -- **United States signed in 1995, but has not yet ratified** - - May be an image of map and text that says \'Global Ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Signed, Ratified Not Ratified Created mapchart.net\' - For interactive list of HR treaties signed/ratified by US, see: - [- OHCHR Dashboard](https://indicators.ohchr.org/) - 9\. International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families ([CMW](http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cmw/cmw.htm)) -- **United States has not signed or ratified** - 10\. International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance ([CED](http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CED/Pages/ConventionCED.aspx)) --**United States has not signed or ratified** - -  - ***18/12/07*** - **[Vote on Right to Food]** - - **The draft resolution on the right to food (document A/C.3/62/L.53/Rev.1) was approved by a recorded vote of 176 in favour to 1 against, as follows:** - - **[In favour]:  Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia (Federated States of), Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Samoa, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.** - **[Against]:  United States.** - **[Abstain]:  None.** **Why the UNited states does not support a universal right to food** MARCH 24, 2017 **Explanation of "no" vote on right to food by the United States of America** **A/HRC/34/L.21** **Human Rights Council 34th session**\ **Geneva, March 23, 2017** "This Council is meeting at a time when the international community is confronting what could be the modern era's most serious food security emergency.  Under Secretary-General O'Brien warned the Security Council earlier this month that more than 20 million people in South Sudan, Somalia, the Lake Chad Basin, and Yemen are facing famine and starvation.  The United States, working with concerned partners and relevant international institutions, is fully engaged on addressing this crisis. This Council, should be outraged that so many people are facing famine because of a manmade crisis caused by, among other things, armed conflict in these four areas.  The resolution before us today rightfully acknowledges the calamity facing millions of people and importantly calls on states to support the United Nations' emergency humanitarian appeal.  However, the resolution also contains many unbalanced, inaccurate, and unwise provisions that the United States cannot support.  This resolution does not articulate meaningful solutions for preventing hunger and malnutrition or avoiding its devastating consequences.  This resolution distracts attention from important and relevant challenges that contribute significantly to the recurring state of regional food insecurity, including endemic conflict, and the lack of strong governing institutions.  Instead, this resolution contains problematic, inappropriate language that does not belong in a resolution focused on human rights. For the following reasons, we will call a vote and vote "no" on this resolution.  First, drawing on the Special Rapporteur's recent report, this resolution inappropriately introduces a new focus on pesticides.  Pesticide-related matters fall within the mandates of several multilateral bodies and fora, including the Food and Agricultural Organization, World Health Organization, and United Nations Environment Program, and are addressed thoroughly in these other contexts.  Existing international health and food safety standards provide states with guidance on protecting consumers from pesticide residues in food.  Moreover, pesticides are often a critical component of agricultural production, which in turn is crucial to preventing food insecurity. Second, this resolution inappropriately discusses trade-related issues, which fall outside the subject-matter and the expertise of this Council.  The language in paragraph 28 in no way supersedes or otherwise undermines the World Trade Organization (WTO) Nairobi Ministerial Declaration, which all WTO Members adopted by consensus and accurately reflects the current status of the issues in those negotiations.  At the WTO Ministerial Conference in Nairobi in 2015, WTO Members could not agree to reaffirm the Doha Development Agenda (DDA).  As a result, WTO Members are no longer negotiating under the DDA framework.  The United States also does not support the resolution's numerous references to technology transfer. We also underscore our disagreement with other inaccurate or imbalanced language in this text.  We regret that this resolution contains no reference to the importance of agricultural innovations, which bring wide-ranging benefits to farmers, consumers, and innovators.  Strong protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights, including through the international rules-based intellectual property system, provide critical incentives needed to generate the innovation that is crucial to addressing the development challenges of today and tomorrow.  In our view, this resolution also draws inaccurate linkages between climate change and human rights related to food. Furthermore, we reiterate that states are responsible for implementing their human rights obligations.  This is true of all obligations that a state has assumed, regardless of external factors, including, for example, the availability of technical and other assistance. We also do not accept any reading of this resolution or related documents that would suggest that States have particular extraterritorial obligations arising from any concept of a right to food. Lastly, we wish to clarify our understandings with respect to certain language in this resolution.  The United States supports the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living, including food, as recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Domestically, the United States pursues policies that promote access to food, and it is our objective to achieve a world where everyone has adequate access to food, but we do not treat the right to food as an enforceable obligation.  The United States does not recognize any change in the current state of conventional or customary international law regarding rights related to food.  The United States is not a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights." \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ **Jason Hickel-The Divide- summary of Chapters 1 and 2: "The Development Delusion" and "The End of Poverty...Has Been Postponed."** The significance of Truman's "Point 4" in his 1949 speech: the US possessed the knowledge, skills, technology, and capacity to meet the needs of everyone on the planet. As President Truman boasted, "For the first time in human history we can wipe poverty, ignorance and human misery clean off the face of the Earth." The promise of peace, plenty and freedom could be easily realized. Truman's promise came not long afer Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech in 1941, stressing "freedom from fear and want" and arguing for an economy of abundance, and purchasing power sufficient to maintain an adequate diet for all" (Daunton, 177) **Anthropologists and other development theorists**, however, were skeptical of Truman's program viewing it as a "nightmare that would do violence to traditional cultures" (Lorenzini, 29). This attitude was prevalent even among many European social scientists, for example, who "preferred the public sector over the private sector and paid attention to anthropological elements and cultural specifics,\[signalling\] a discontent with US expertise and its one size-fits-all approach and...standardized solutions imposed from above" (Lorenzini, 32). According to the modernizers, "ancient philosophies have to be scrapped, old social institutions have to disintegrate; bonds of caste, creed and race have to burst; and large numbers of persons who cannot keep up with progress have to have their expectations of a comfortable life frustrated" (Daunton, 322). \\The Soviet Union also denounced Truman's program, which it said called for "expansion under a screen of anti-communism that was no different from other forms of imperialism" (Lorenzini, 38). Indeed, Truman readily acknowledged that anti-communism, not altruism, lay behind the plan. And since resources were to come from private sources, it was essential to create the right environment for private investors "by taming nationalist and leftist tendencies among peasants and worker" in the Global South (Lorenzini, 28). At the same time US elites believed that rich nations were better because they were doing better...they were smarter, had better values, better institutions, better technology and better policies. There was a widespread belief in "the **universal applicability of American values**" and felt that "the rest of the world was basically like the USA, but a bit behind" or in its infancy (Bevins, 106) The rich countries, therefore, would be the saviors of the poor...all that was needed was for the poor countries to emulate the rich countries by following the **"Great Arrow of Progress" (or the three "B's).** In other words, if poor countries adopted **western political institutions, western technology and western economic policies and fixated on one goal---maximizing economic growth (as measured by GDP)**---they would eventually achieve the same stage of development as the West. Thus was born the **"development industry,"** the foreign aid industry, and development economics. Hickel saw through the **"development delusion"** when he worked with World Vision in Swaziland. Despite all of the projects undertaken by World Vision and other NGOs, people were still dying of AIDS, farmers were unable to make a living off the land and the government was unable to provide basic social services. He realized that these tragedies were linked to the way the global economic system was **rigged** in such a way as to make meaningful development impossible. Hickel was prevented from asking key questions about the global protection of intellectual property rights, unequal trade and debt bondage, which lay at the root of the problem. He also realized that **"foreign aid"** was a misnomer, dwarfed as it was by the **outflows of capital** from Global South to Global North in the form of losses due to structural adjustment, interest on past debts to foreign creditors, underpaid labor and goods in the GS, illicit capital flows, tax breaks for MNCs, royalties, etc. As a result, for every one dollar in aid to the GS, twenty-four dollars flowed back to the GN. For example, the amount poor countries have lost in unrecorded capital flight since 1980: **\$16 trillion.** The annual **global aid budget**, on the other hand, is **\$135 billion**. Despite all the efforts of the development industry, hunger is not only persistent but is growing (about one-third of humanity is malnourished) despite a global stock of food that is enough to feed 10 billion people. Just the same the development industry, the foreign aid industry, and development economics, have continued to promote the linear **"stages theory of economic growth."** The Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations, US-based NGOs, along with government agencies such as **USAID, USIA and the NED promoted growth strategies in newly decolonized countries to prevent the latter from adopting their own paths to development (i.e., nationalization of resources, redistributive or "pro-poor" policies, which were typically denounced as "communist" policies, which needed to be stymied at all cost). During the Vietnam war, for example, the USIA engaged in extensive psychological warfare, "spreading rumours of communist atrocities and exaggerating the rigors of life in the communist North" (Lorenzini, 54).** Still, the dominant development paradigm that individuals had a right only to a **minimum** share in scarce resources, **not to an equal share**, so the goal of the international community was to set agreed floors under individual needs. **"**It was deemed necessary to allow the rich to get richer even faster (as a means of eradicating poverty)**"** (Moyn 134) The goal of all of these efforts was to frame development as a "technical" problem best left to economists, in order to **distract from the *systemic or structural* problems** responsible for inequality and poverty. The dominant international financial institutions (Bretton-Woods organizations (IMF, WB, WTO) were increasingly guided by "a particular view of economics that ignored alternate paths of development....To critics in the Third World, these institutions were a form of neocolonialism that maintained existing inequalities" (Daunton, 364). These inequalities had been created by centuries of colonization and militarism, according to an UNCTAD (*UN Conference on Trade and Development*) report: "Throughout history, colonization and military occupations have consistently had underlying economic consequences and motivations... have typically involved the exploitation and impoverishment of the occupied people (in the Global South). In its most severe form, the economic dimension of occupation entails the appropriation of the resources of the occupied people, leading to their displacement, replacement, impoverishment, and marginalization..... Economists, in other words, became "apologists for neo-colonial exploitation" of the Global South (Daunton, 360). Moreover, no one talked about the current institutional arrangements responsible for keeping much of the world in poverty. No one talked about **tax evasion, patent monopolies, corruption of democracy caused by the concentration of wealth**, etc..... r/WorkReform - Thee true conspiracy is already going on.  Instead, the causes of the Global Divide were delinked from colonialism, capitalism and the international institutional architecture: One school of thought: Paul Collier, a development economist, puts it, "\[c\]itizens of the rich world are not to blame for most of the problems of the bottom billion; poverty is simply the default option when **economies malfunction**." "If there is inequality between the Global South and North, **certain economic and political institutions**, namely those that facilitated economic growth, arose in some countries and not others." (see ) According to Dan Moller, "What seems to have happened... is that after hundreds of thousands of years of universal poverty, a small number of countries managed to induce (or stumble on) economic growth, while others simply stayed where they were. Then, a little later, more and more countries managed to grow." The Global South disagreed. In the **1950s and 1960s (the period known as "developmentalism,") many decolonized countries,** inspired by progressive, socialist ideas\-- were pursuing their own paths to development, and forming alliances to rewrite the rules of the global economy so they could choose their own paths to development (state-led industrialization, which involved central planning and promoting self-sufficiency, import-substitution industrialization (ISI), and protectionist policies (which Western countries themselves had implemented to build up their own industries and develop their economies)). They wanted JUSTICE and EQUALITY (**racial, political and** **economic**), the preconditions for development. They pursued **redistributive justice**: poverty-alleviation policies, state-directed growth, agrarian reform, protectionism, minimum wage laws, import-substitution, etc., resulting in impressive growth rates, falling rates of poverty, etc. Efforts to **bring the Global South back under Western control had to be stepped up**. Colonialism was replaced by neocolonialism and neoliberalism. As a result, the Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations invested heavily in growth strategies in newly decolonized countries to prevent the latter from adopting state-led industrialization, central planning, self-sufficiency, import-substitution, and protectionist policies (which Western countries themselves had implemented to build up their own industries and develop their economies). The development industry was bolstered in its efforts by USAID (Agency for International Development), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), along with a massive surge of NGOs, philanthropic foundations, philanthro-capitalists, etc., starting in the 1960s.. In 2005, Jeffrey Sachs published *The End of Poverty*, which argued that poverty is the result of geography, poor climate, institutional deficiencies, corruption, etc. All that was needed was to "Get the Institutions Right" along with massive infusions of aid from rich countries to poor countries. "Getting the 'fundamentals' of growth" right became the new mantra. Jeffrey Sachs: The Strange Case of Dr. Shock and Mr. Aid (Counterblasts) by Japhy Wilson (2014-04-15) \`My concern is not that there are too many sweatshops in Africa, but that there are too few.\` - Jeffrey Sachs. The development industry, however, only deepened the dependence of poor countries on private sector, **market-based solutions, not public solutions, individual empowerment, not collective solutions, etc. implementing the right macroeconomic policies**, low inflation, Washington Consensus The goal of all of these efforts was to distract from the systemic or structural problems responsible for inequality and poverty (e.g., centuries of colonization by the West). No one talked about colonialism, imperialism, unequal trade, tax evasion, patent monopolies, corruption of democracy caused by concentration of wealth, etc. No officials touting the dominant narrative talked about the goal of structural adjustment: to force down the price of labor and goods in the Global South. The goal was to restore Northern access to the cheap labour and resources they had enjoyed during the colonial era.  "England's wealth, \[for example\], had been created by the import of cheap food and raw materials produced by natives with wages so low that they lived in abysmal poverty, and paid for by expensive industrial products. The suggestion of a 'new deal' for the native producers, beginning with a fair price for the food Britain imported, \[would\] threaten English economic prosperity" (Daunton, 179). Few were those in the Global North that would acknowledge that "Europe was the creation of the Third World." As Hickel points out, "The goal was to restore Northern access to the cheap labour and resources they had enjoyed during the colonial era.  It worked: during the 1980s the quantity of commodities that the South exported to the North *increased*, and yet their total revenues on this trade (i.e., the GDP they received for it) *declined*.  In other words, by depressing the costs of Southern labour and commodities, the North is able to appropriate a significant quantity effectively *for free*.  The economist Samir Amin described this as "hidden value".  David Clelland calls it "dark value" -- in other words, value that is not visible at all in national or corporate accounts.  Just as the value of female domestic labour is "hidden" from view, so too are the labour and commodities that are [net appropriated](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800920300938) from the global South.  In both cases, *prices do not reflect value*.  Clelland estimates that [the real value of an iPad](https://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jwsr/article/view/564), for example, is many times higher than its market price, because so much of the Southern labour that goes into producing it is underpaid or even entirely *un*paid.  John Smith points out that, as a result, [GDP is an illusion](https://monthlyreview.org/2012/07/01/the-gdp-illusion/) that systematically underestimates real value." Jason HIckel, [IS THE WORLD POOR, OR UNJUST?](https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/2/21/is-the-world-poor-or-unjust) February 22, 2021 The 1948 Keenan doctrine stated, \"\[the US has\] about 50% of the world\'s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. \... In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to *devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity*. \... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. \... We should cease to talk about vague and \... unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.\"\ ---George F. Kennan, Policy Planning Study 23 (PPS23), *Foreign Relations of the United States* (*FRUS*), 1948 *By the "pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity"* Keenan was referring to development policies that would continue colonial trade structures. The "Western world depended on supplies of \[cheap\] raw materials,....so ways \[had to\] be found to make continued raw material output consistent with the economic output of producing countries." (Simpson, *Economists with Guns*, 26) The US would henceforth have to take on the "burden" of assuming the responsibilities of leadership tantamount to empire, analogous to those of Great Britain," according to Adolf Berle (Daunton, 155). As Hickel writes, "beginning in the 1980s, the World Bank and IMF (which are controlled primarily by the US and G7), imposed **structural adjustment programmes** across the global South, which significantly depressed wages and commodity prices (cutting them in half) and reorganized Southern economies around exports to the North. It worked: during the 1980s the quantity of commodities that the South exported to the North *increased*, and yet their total revenues on this trade (i.e., the GDP they received for it) *declined*.  In other words, by depressing the costs of Southern labour and commodities, the North was able to appropriate a significant quantity effectively *for free*." US officials, however, feared that many leaders of the Global South were embracing socialist ideals, at least rhetorically, and viewed....capitalism as an exploitative extension of formal colonialism." (Simpson, *Economists with Guns*, 18). The economic reforms undertaken by the Global South led to collective attempts **at independent state-led development, regional trading blocs or declarations of support for Chinese or Soviet models of industrialization**. As Lorenzini comments, after the market crash of the 1930s exposed a "decaying bourgeois social order," "Stalin's Five-Year Plans captured widespread attention;....an alternative path to modernity became credible among intellectuals around the world." The US was also suffering a tarnished image in the Global South; far from being leader of the "free world," it was viewed around the world as a society characterized by segregation and racism. Thus, as historian Adom Getachew describes in *Worldmaking After Empire*, many Global South leaders centered their political visions on the principle of sovereignty --- not the nominal sovereignty of a legally independent nation, but **substantive sovereignty, for a people to shape their own political and economic destinies free from predation**. By the 1970s, it had become apparent that formal political independence did not mean substantive economic independence. Rather, it would require a global political project for an ***alternative international order*** in which all nations, not merely the wealthy, could thrive. Third World leaders, despite their many differences, therefore turned to collective power. Through groupings like the Non-Aligned Movement and the G77, they sought to build a movement of solidarity strong enough to assert their interests on the world stage." In the 1950s and1960s many decolonized countries\--inspired by progressive, socialist ideas\-- were pursuing their own paths to development, and forming alliances to rewrite the rules of the global economy so they could choose their own paths to development. They wanted JUSTICE and EQUALITY (**racial, political and** **economic**), the preconditions for development. As the first leader of independent Indonesia put it, "nationalism in Indonesia is anti-capitalist---largely because capitalism here is Western" (Simpson, *Economists with Guns*, 27). In fact, "the vast majority of Indonesians associated Western-style democracy and capitalism with colonialism and sought a collectivist, social-democratic (or even socialist) and indigenously rooted path to political and economic development" (Simpson, *Economists with Guns*, 14). "The Soviet Union's achievement of rapid industrialization in a single generation, its emphasis on heavy industrialization, the prominence of state planning\-\--all carried great appeal to nationalist leaders who sought to rapidly cast off the burdens of colonialism" (Simpson, *Economists with Guns*, 27). Walt Rostow, who wrote the hugely influential *Stages of Economic Growth*, warned: "unless the US could respond in kind, the Soviets and Chinese would succeed in projecting an image of communism as the most efficient method for modernizing the underdeveloped regions." (Simpson, *Economists with Guns*, 8) Although Rostow's methodology was deeply flawed---he based his economic "laws" on a 1960 study of only 15 European countries---his **book served as the bible for government planners for decades**. All countries must pass through the same five stages of *capitalist* economic growth, according to Rostow. Historians, like Alexander Gerschonkron, disagreed, arguing that "linear development did not accurately describe European history, let alone global dynamics" (Lorenzini,6). Development was regarded as "a matter for anthropologists, sociologists and geographers" (Lorenzini, 5).  Other development theorists (mainly in the Global South) objected to the narrow number-crunching approach of what they considered an imperialist discipline (economics). Anthropologists and other theorists "abhorred the \[westernizing\] technocrats who fetishized statistics and "were guided by a fanatic intolerance" of local cultures, values and traditions, which held back development in the Global South (Lorenzini, 76). They also despised public sector input and "collectivism" and had a blind faith in private market approaches to "modernization." Provided there were no market distortions, a "stages" approach to economic growth would deliver optimum results. The last stage would be the holy grail of Western liberal capitalist democracy, which was fated to spread across the world. Despite widespread criticism in the social sciences, modernization theory became the exclusive domain of economists after WWII. Working out of MIT, University of Chicago ("Chicago Boys") University of California, Berkely ("Berkely Mafia"), these economists appointed themselves guardians of the scientific rigor and value-free analysis necessary to point the way towards development and convergence between poor and rich. The "Chicago Boys" along with the "Berkely Mafia," played a "crucial role in the construction and dispersal of social scientific thinking about political and economic development in the developing world and in the production of relevant policy knowledge." As such, they bear a responsibility for the growing impoverishment of poor countries and the increasing gap between rich and poor countries. They also laid "the intellectual and policy groundwork for an embrace of military dictatorships." Simpson, *Economists with Guns*, 18, 69). "Objective" metrics would be used by these economics to measure "progress." New tools proliferated, but just as income and wealth were finally be measured, so was the paradox of deepening poverty amidst increasing economic growth. While the economics profession has built a theoretical edifice around the notion of "scarcity," there is no scarcity. "Rather, the world's resources and energy are appropriated (disproportionately from the global South) in order to service the interests of capital and affluent consumers (disproportionately in the global North).  We can state it more clearly: our economic system is not *designed* to meet human needs; it is designed to facilitate capital accumulation. And in order to do so, it imposes brutal scarcity on the majority of people, and cheapens human and nonhuman life.  It is irrational to believe that simply "growing" such an economy, in aggregate, will somehow magically achieve the social outcomes we want." Jason HIckel, [IS THE WORLD POOR, OR UNJUST?](https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/2/21/is-the-world-poor-or-unjust) February 22, 2021 A graph with blue and red lines AI-generated content may be incorrect. Research Service. Source: The rhetoric of modernization, in short, was used to perpetuate colonialism and to justify human rights abuses in the Global South. "Imposing cultural practices, forced labour, population transfers were all part of social engineering for economic and structural development," writes Lorenzini (13). Reforms were all framed as "technical fixes," but "were in fact political tools for coercion and control" (Lorenzini,13). **Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were launched by the UN in 2000 to announce a new round of solutions to eventually eliminate poverty and hunger in the world. Only 12 years after announcement of goal 1, to cut global poverty and hunger in half, but in the middle of a global economic crisis, the surprise announcement was made that the first goal had been realized.** **The influential *Economist*, along with public intellectuals Bill Gates, Hans Rosling, Jeffrey Sachs, etc., just kept repeating the same line: global capitalism means less poverty than ever. Keep with the same policies, don't worry about inequality: the fact that 1 percent own more wealth than the rest of the world combined is not a problem...as long as the global economic pie keeps growing and no one is made worse off (insert mainstream economics truism---Pareto Optimality---here, embellished with sophisticated scientific modelling).** **Methodological problems abound, however, when it comes to measuring poverty and hunger. Both are deliberately understated for political reasons, according to Hickel and others. Methodology has ethical implications since it assumes morally acceptable levels of poverty and hunger.** **At first, proportions were used to inflate the success rate.**  **Then the poverty accountants moved from measuring the impoverished people in the whole world to only the impoverished people in the developing world and then moved the baseline from 2000 to 1990 (to take advantage of poverty reduction in China).** \[According to the Communist Party of China, \"850 million Chinese people have been lifted out of poverty." Curious how the same people who ridicule the Communist Party of China for being a persistent source of propaganda now argue it is a trusted and reliable source of information when it comes to self-reporting on poverty reduction!  In any case even if the figures were accurate, they wouldn\'t be the result of China\'s pursuing \"free market\" policies, but of central planning and state ownership of dominant industries, which get loans from state-controlled banks (while racking up huge unsustainable debts that are projected by many to provoke a major crisis in the near future)\]  ) **The result was that they deemed it was morally acceptable to raise the cap of people living in absolute poverty by 323 million (from 1 billion to 1.3 billion)** **The first international poverty line was set by World Bank at around \$1/day in 1990. But by 2000 the WB noticed the absolute number of poor was increasing; this would have been bad news for the "structural adjustment" policies imposed on the south: it was causing more poverty than ever.** **The IPL went from \$1.02 to \$1.08 (which was actually lower than previous one taking into account PPP (purchasing power parity). Then it went to 1.25/day, but this was done using the 1990 baseline so they could claim the trend in poverty reduction was improving. \`The IPL was then moved to \$1.90/day; today it is \$2.15/day.** **These poverty lines all ignore the fact that people living just about the poverty line are still destitute.** **Moreover, even at \$10/day poverty line 4.3 billion people would be living in poverty!** **Also, most of the evidence of reduction in poverty comes from China, which has pursued state-led growth (not free market growth) and whose model of development has come at the expense of the rural peasantry, unsustainable environmental degradation, increasing gap between rich and poor.** **The proper baseline should be not if there was improvement from previous years but with present possibilities.... our capacity to meet needs. The best way to "morally evaluate social progress is to compare current trends against what is feasible given current capacity for poverty reduction....While there have been reductions on several measures (child mortality, for example) this progress has been slower than if could have been if there has a more serious and sustained effort to make progress against global poverty." (Wisor, 18)** The world has more than enough wealth and resources to eliminate poverty and disease tomorrow, but the share of global wealth is accruing increasingly to the richest both within countries and between the Global North and Global South. **Enslaved black people in America were probably somewhat better fed and clothed under slavery in 1850 than in 1750. Should that have been cause for celebration?** **What about hunger?** **What are some of the tricks used to underestimate hunger? Don't take into account food price spike in late 1990s (speculation in food futures-actions of traders on commodities futures markets devastating for the poor) and then 2008 crisis then now the pandemic, or recurring economic crisis. Since poor households spend 70 percent of their incomes on food, spikes in food prices are especially devastating.** **Hunger metrics also take a very conservative estimate of caloric needs- minimum needs for sedentary lifestyle. They don't take into account vitamin deficiency.** **The ethical poverty line, according to Hickel, should be set at what is required to meet the normal or average life expectancy.** **The metrics also don't take into account unequal distribution of food and the fact that we have more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet.** **IPL is based on national poverty lines of 15 poorest countries (which might be greatly underestimated for political reason). Data collection is problematic.** **Better off countries report much higher poverty lines \-\-\--Mexico's national poverty line was 46% under poverty line; World Bank put it at 5%** The story of poverty alleviation is equal dismal: **almost all of the gains have been made in China**, the metric used to measure poverty measures poverty in proportions rather than absolute numbers, and the poverty line is still set far too late, greatly undercounting the numbers of poor. At the same time, the gap between rich and poor has reached obscene, unprecedented levels. Even the poverty rate has stopped declining in the poorest countries: "from 2013 to 2023, the global poverty rate will fall by a forecast of a little over 3 percentage points. In contrast, it fell by 14 percentage points in the decade prior to 2013" (See chart below.) Line chart of Proportion of population in poverty, at \$2.15 per day (%) showing The poverty rate has ceased to fall in the world's poorest countries ===================================================================================================================================================== A basic moral principle of duty is at play here: global justice is determined not by how big the global economic pie grows, nor by how many billionaires the global economy is producing, but whether the poor are able not only to simply meet their basic needs, but to flourish as human beings and live a life of dignity (human capabilities approach). **Addendum:** Hickel and others have been critical of the methodology used by current proponents of the "good news narrative" "Developed by *Our World In Data* and promoted widely by Bill Gates and Steven Pinker, the graph below gives the impression that virtually all of humanity was in "extreme poverty" as of 1820 (i.e., living on less than \$1.90 per day, PPP; less than is required for basic food). OWID has used this figure to [claim](https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty) that extreme poverty was the natural or baseline condition of humanity, extending far back into the past: "in the thousands of years before the beginning of the industrial era, the vast majority of the world population lived in conditions that we would call extreme poverty today."  In other words, virtually all of humanity, for all of history, was destitute until the 19th century, when at last colonialism and capitalism came to the rescue.   There are significant problems, however, with the graph's long-term trend.  For the period 1981 to the present, it uses World Bank survey data on household consumption.  This is a legitimate method for assessing poverty. For the period prior to 1981, however, the graph relies on estimates of GDP and income distribution from Bourguignon and Morrison.  This introduces several methodological problems, one of which is that, unlike household surveys, the B&M data does not tell us about people's access to livelihoods or provisioning, and does not adequately capture changes in non-commodity forms of household consumption (subsistence, vegetables, fish, game, foraging, commons etc).  This becomes problematic because we know that during periods of enclosure and dispossession under colonialism and early industrialization, the livelihoods and provisioning of ordinary people was often severely constrained even in cases where GDP was rising.  This violent history gets obscured by the graph.  (For more on this problem, see [here](https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/11/02/2019/global-poverty-over-long-term-legitimate-issues)).    Robert Allen addresses the question of long-term poverty trends in a recent [article](https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-economics-091819-014652) published in *Annual Review of Economics* (a PDF is available [here](https://1lib.uk/book/11926264/191b2c)).  In it, he demonstrates that the GDP data yields significant distortions when used to assess poverty, and argues that the matter of long-term trends can only be settled with historical consumption data.  Toward this end, he constructs a basic needs poverty line that's roughly equivalent to the World Bank's \$1.90 line, and calculates the share of people below it for three key regions: the US, UK and India. His findings reveal a much different story than the OWID graph would have us believe.  First, Allen demonstrates that using the Bourguignon/Morrison data leads to a significant overestimation of poverty in the 19th century for rich countries.  For instance, using the B/M data, OWID indicates that about 40% of the US population lived in extreme poverty in 1820.  By contrast, Allen indicates that the accurate figure is closer to 0%.  This is not to say that people weren't poor by today's standards, but rather that very few were living in "extreme" poverty, i.e., on less than what \$1.90 can buy in the US today. That's what is at stake her