And I am not referring to the menace of al Qaeda, IS and assorted deranged constituencies which cast a pall of horror around the world.
No I am referring to the ascendancy of selfishness and inequality in the administration of states and in individual relationships everywhere.
If I was younger, and the fierce fire burned in me, surely I would be among the protestors against this new order of things. Even now, old as I am and the fire in me dampened and dimmed, I still grow agitated at the increasing worldwide neglect of justice. Who would live easily in this world without protest when the following is happening?
By 2016 the accelerating pace of inequality will lead to the 1% richest people in the world possessing more wealth than the remaining 99%.
- The movers and shakers in society everywhere speak continually of “the engine of economic growth” and never mention “the engine of social justice.” Yet the equitable distribution of the fruits of growth is as important as growth itself if the world is ever to become a half-decent place to live.
- While ‘globalisation’ is creating opportunities for those with the assets, skills and education needed to operate in increasingly cut-throat markets, it is leaving utterly behind those without assets, skills and education. Millions benefit. Hundreds of millions are going under.
- 1.2 billion people live on less than US$1 per day. And for every new billionaire created in this marvellous new age of technological progress and swollen stock markets 50,000 souls sink below the poverty line. A majority of the world lives on less than US$2 per day.
- The average income of the richest twenty countries is thirty times that of the twenty poorest countries, compared with fifteen times fifty years ago. When the 20th century began, the richest country in the world was nine times richer than the poorest. At the start of the 21st century, the richest country in the world was sixty-three times richer than the poorest. And what is evil is that those in power in the world show every sign that they are determined to maintain the trend. The world’s 500 richest people have the same income in total as the world’s poorest 400 million.
- Capital is free to move where it will in the world to get the best return. Labour is not free to move where it will in the world to get the best wages. Why? Simple. The rich countries select the best from the developing countries to work in their countries and leave the rest to provide low-cost fodder for their free-roaming capital.
- Within the rich countries, the disparities also grow. In the United States today the average chief executive earns nearly 500 times as much as the average worker, up from 40 times in l980. A similar surge in inequality is emerging everywhere
- Today, every day, 30,000 children will die of hunger, disease and the other consequences of extreme poverty. This is cruel, universal genocide practised on the most vulnerable of our kind.
- Democracy is about being represented and protected and having your living standards raised by democratically approved intervention in the economy. Who can doubt that this is steadily being replaced by global businesses using governments to manage people in the interest of getting the best possible deal for themselves?
- Rich countries posture and prevaricate. Great plans are put forward for relieving the poorest of the poor of their debt and then doubts and provisos and exceptions pile up and what little is finally agreed ends up in internationally strung out implementation schedules. Promises to help when catastrophe strikes are not kept: Haiti a year after the devastating earthquake is still waiting on much of the help promised after the devastating earthquake.
- The rhetoric at summit conferences is sickening. Grand goals were set “to reduce by half the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015 and to reduce infant and child mortality by two thirds by 2015.” Who do they think they were fooling? The fact is that the rich countries’ sweet words about aid and debt relief and poverty alleviation are largely a hoax. There is no real sign that their leaders, their businesses, and their taxpayers are really prepared to make the resources available to fulfil the rhetoric.
These bullet points describing what is nothing less than a precipitous flight from a fair and decent world could be multiplied almost ad infinitum. The statistics of gut-wrenching worldwide poverty, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor both between countries and within countries, the continuing exposure of the poor to preventable diseases, the continual retreat from real democracy in a world more and more directed by what the multinationals want, the overwhelming of local values and cultures – the statistics and the information are available to anyone willing to do a little reading and a little checking beyond the institutional rhetoric, the glossy handouts and the establishment publications which preach the infamous “there is no alternative” doctrine.
In my own career stretching over 50 years I saw at firsthand how Europe at first organized and for a long while stood by but then gradually, hypocritically, ruthlessly and in the end conclusively withdrew the fair and decent trading arrangements with Caricom for sugar, bananas, rum and rice and substituted for the development-oriented Cotonou Agreement the disgracefully one- (their) sided EPA.
Again and again over recent years there has been the need to repeat the ringing, heartfelt words of George Odlum, Minister of Foreign Affairs in St Lucia, at a WTO Ministerial Conference years ago – which now more than ever need proclaiming:-
“No to globalisation without ethics! No to liberalisation without equity! No to globalisation without inclusion! No to liberalisation without human security! No to globalisation without rights suited to circumstances! And, above all, no to liberalisation without development! How can we, the world’s deprived countries, be expected to come here to this WTO that was supposed to be the epitome of democracy to put the seal of approval on … texts from which are expunged every vestige of the concept of development – with no sensitivity to the plight of the poorest and smallest among us? No, we cannot! We must halt, if not stop, this mad rush to human destruction in the name of ‘liberalisation’ – it is not the first time in history that virtuous words have been used to describe vicious deeds.”
