STWR - Share The World's Resources

17th Jan 07 - Tonderai Matonho, The Herald (Africa)

The recent statement by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the gap between the rich and poor countries is ever-widening makes one wonder whether this schism is ever going to be closed or more aptly whether poor countries are ever going to catch-up with the rich nations.

There are interesting statistics to this effect that have been used since the 1990s that boggle the mind and that continue to deepen this puzzle.

According to the World Bank's World Development Report the per capita Gross National Product (GNP) for Industrial Market Economies, that is, the 20 richest capitalist countries was US$12 960 in 1986, with an annual average growth rate (1965-86) of 2,3 percent.

A simple calculation gives an annual increase in per capita income of US$298,08.

The per capita GNP for the poorest 33 countries in the same year was US$270 with a growth rate of 3,1 percent.

The same calculation gives an annul increase in income of only US$8,37.

Given this scenario, little wonder that the gap between North and South is getting wider every year.

Admittedly, if the poor countries keep a growth rate higher than the rich countries for a very long time, theoretically they can eventually catch up.

But how long would that take?

Assuming that the growth rates in the report remained constant, calculations would indicate that the poor countries would achieve the 1986 income level of the rich countries in 127 years' time.

In fact, they would catch up with the rich countries in half a millennium, 497 years to be precise.

Economic experts note that the world average per capita income at that time would be US$1 049 billion.

A sustained growth rate for all the poor countries of five percent on assumption would still enable them to catch up in 149 years' time.

This would be at an average per capita income of just under US$400 000 per year.

In fact, the growth rate for most of these countries is only about two percent, clearly, according to experts; they will never catch up.

This is unnecessarily surprising after all the efforts that have gone into development.

Thus the gap between the rich and poor countries continues to widen at an accelerating pace.

Economists such as A G Frank, Samir Amin and Immanuel Wallerstein, note that part of the reason is that the world is not a collection of separate national economies, as is generally accepted, but a single economic system that operates to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich countries.

A large portion of the wealth of the rich countries is wealth imported from the poor countries. Tawanda Murewa, a senior sales executive, working for an indigenous exporting firm in Harare, is not less amazed.

The world economic system generates inequality and it runs on inequality. Look at how Western multi-national companies siphon natural resources such as oil in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, minerals, gas and timber from all these regions.

The absurdity of it all is that the appetite to pillage and transfer is insatiable.

In fact, the consumption rate is shameful.

In this case, catching up is out of the question.

Robert McNamara -- the former president of the World Bank -- once said that for the rich to oppose development is "short-sighted, of course, for in the long-term they, as well as the poor, can benefit.

Thus any development that makes the poor a little better off will make the rich a lot better off.

Critics of development argue that this is only true of a certain kind of development.

To them there is another form of development -- alternative development authentic development, pro-people development, that can bring equality and prosperity to the entire world.

In Murewa's case, this could only describe a hope that must never be abandoned. Such a hope for a different political and economic world structure that could bring an end to oppression, starvation, unnecessary economic sanctions but the setting up of a true and committed internationalism or universalism to create prosperity for all, is altogether critical.

The fact remains that in this present or any other economic system, the consumption levels and habits of the West consumes the whole world, producing economic inequality and poverty.

About a century ago, the famous writer, John Ruskin, once wrote: "Whereas riches are a power like that of electricity, acting only through the inequalities or negations of itself . . . and the art of making oneself rich is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbour poor."

Critical development analysts point out that this idealises the Western capitalistic system -- denoting the lives of people who do less than their share of the world's productive work because others do more, who consume more than their share of the world's goods because others consume less, and whose lives are made pleasant by an army of servants and workers.

In fact, if the economy is arranged as a pyramid it is understandable that everyone might want to stand on top.

However, with the West's oppressive attitudes and tendencies, there is no way that it can be arranged.

Scholars point out that it is by a relentless logic then that the former socialist societies aspiring to achieve US standards of living broke apart into new class structures in the process.

The US standards of living have class built into them. It is, as US slang accurately tells 'classy'.

Development equality -- catching up with the rich through economic activity, is thus a notion that goes against both common sense and economic science.

It is a physical impossibility and a logical contradiction. In fact, it operates to establish new forms of inequality.

It is easily recognisable that different cultures really have their own standards of value, which cannot be subsumed into one another. It makes a lot of sense to give each equal respect and equal voice.

The contrary notion that prevails today that all the world's cultures can be measured against single standard of living measure (Western) renders all those cultures unequal. It dispossesses the world's peoples of their own indigenous notions of prosperity.

The solution does not call for a new value system forcing the world's majority to feel shame at their traditionally moderate consumption habits but for a new value system forcing the Western capitalist world to see the shame and vulgarity of their over-consumption habits and the double vulgarity of standing on other people's shoulders to achieve those consumption habits.

Otherwise, the timeworn adage "eliminating the widening gap between the rich and poor nations" which was rightly and originally coined for the unjust world economic system, remains mythical.

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