Global economics

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> We have a lot to be thankful for in 2013. Look at the protests now going on in Bangkok. After some initial clashes at the beginning both sides have become non-violent. One can praise the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra for this. She ordered the gates and doors of the ministry of the interior, of the police and the Thai equivalent of Scotland Yard/FBI to be opened. The protesters poured into the buildings and then left – bored. In the Ukraine after a couple of nights of police brutality President Vikto Yanukovych ordered the police to restrain themselves. Both sides now use peaceful tactics. Non-violence à la Gandhi and Martin Luther King doesn’t always achieve its objectives, but it keeps the political temperature down and avoids many deaths. It is more likely to work when there is a grave injustice. This is not the case either in Thailand...

Washington-DC Charles Darwin, in The Voyage of the Beagle, has a passage where he condemns an egalitarian native people on the tip of South America to stay primitive. Development presupposes inequality, having chiefs – human, animals, races – to look up to and learn from; no word wasted on the humans, animals or races at the bottom. And the evolution theory emerging from a mind thus pre-programmed is obvious: competition, struggle for survival, not mutual aid, as the substitute narrative for Genesis 1:20-28, 4th to 6th day–but without God. However, a man of God, Pope Francis – if anyone is saving Western civilization from itself it is he, not economic growth presidents/PMs – comes out and decries inequality and “trickle-down economics” in particular as a “crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power” (Washington Post, 27 Nov 2013, p. 1). Or, maybe “those wielding intellectual power”,...

Political terrorism failed. The House Republicans used voting in one US chamber to put millions of people inside and outside the US at livelihood risk for their own political goals. And made the mistake of most terrorists, non-state or state: when people suffer they will join us, against our enemy; to find out that people turn against the terrorists instead. And they were not a small group of Tea Party extremists but a clear majority of the House Republicans: 144 voted NO in the end, only 87 YES. Obama has himself to thank for the general House Republican majority; having betrayed most groups voting for him in 2008 he was punished in the 2010 mid-term elections. Like the Republicans will be in 2014 for their political terrorism.

Keynote European Center for Peace and Development, Beograd, Two basic facts stand out in the world economic development, leaving aside military, political, cultural and social development: * The BRICS – an acronym becoming a social fact–are emerging; * The USA-EU are declining; not only as markets, also as producers. Another way of saying this is that the West has been outcompeted, not by the Rest but by – so far – a select part. The world market is not constant but increasing sum, but much demand may be met by domestic production, not by import-export. As part of the story. The West got the definition of development wrong, still clinging to economic development = economic growth (measured by annual GNP/capita increase). The BRICS understood development differently, adding economic distribution (measured by the ratio in acquisitive power between the top and bottom 20%, and between the CEO and average worker salary;...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> In 1776 Adam Smith published his “Wealth of Nations” which has guided economists and political thinkers ever since. It marks the start of the Industrial Revolution that began in England and then spread throughout most of the world. That was 237 years ago. It is not that long ago – only 4 life-spans or so, the time of your great, great, great, grandparents. Where will we be 237 years hence? Presumably just as today we listen to Mozart, born 257 years ago, and watch or read Shakespeare, born 439 years ago – they have survived all changing tastes and spread well outside their original orbit of European culture to countries as varied as Japan, China, Argentina, Tanzania and South Korea – we can be sure that generations to come will have much the same cultural interests. In all likelihood in 2250 we will probably still enjoy tastes picked up...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> My family is in a bit of a crisis. My earnings are cut by 25%. Writers never did earn a lot and now we have this economic catastrophe. We’ve cut our expenditures severely. This is what happens to families in financial trouble. Cut. Common sense, eh? But when it comes to our country being in trouble we have to be counter-intuitive. Then a country must spend more. It has to grow faster to produce the wealth that when taxed can pay down the deficit. As the world’s greatest economist, John Maynard Keynes, wrote: “The boom not the slump is the right time for austerity”. The Germans and the European Union Commission continue to push countries to cut and squeeze. Yet despite the evidence that the patient is not recovering, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany seems determined not to allow the Euro-zone members to let up. (The British government is...

Keynote Speech, World Futures Studies Federation 40th anniversary – Bucuresti, România Future studies, like peace-development-environment studies, is an inter-disciplinary, inter-national effort to get a grip on key issues; divided into preferred futures–utopias–whose?; predicted futures–forecasting–who does it for whom?; and future practice–scenarios bending the predicted toward the preferred–by and for whom? The title of Ravi Morey’s Looking Backward: 2050-2013 catches future studies in a nutshell: exploring intermediate stages between a fully democratic world government and our 2013 present. The road may pass through a bankrupt USA bailed out by a democratic China in 2025. Some may argue that is already happening, with China – more democratic than the West knows – being creditor No. 1, and the USA – more bankrupt than the USA admits – debtor No. 1; Nos. 1 and 190 among 190 countries. Like in 1967, in Oslo, for the predecessor organization Mankind 2000 this keynote is on...

The atrocious Second World War left behind lasting damage by lowering our standards for what is marginally acceptable. War is bad; but if it is not nuclear, the limit has not yet been reached. Fascism is bad; but if it does not come with dictatorship and the elimination of a category of people, the limit has not yet been reached. Hiroshima, Hitler, Auschwitz are deeply rooted in our minds, distorting them. Hiroshima makes us disregard the state terrorism against German and Japanese cities, killing citizens of any age and gender. And Hitler and Auschwitz make us disregard fascism as the pursuit of political goals by means of violence and the threats of violence. It takes two to make a war, by whatever means. But it takes only one to make fascism, against one’s own people, and/or against others. What is the essence of fascism?

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> In June,1994, Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, spoke at a summit meeting of the Organisation of African States: “We must face squarely that there is something wrong in how we govern ourselves. It must be said that the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves.” At last Africa seems to have taken his words of wisdom to heart. This week President Barack Obama will be in Africa to see for himself how most of Africa over the nine years since that speech has taken the high road. One by one throughout the 1990s governing elites began to come to their senses. Twenty-five States established multi-party democracies. Approximately two-thirds of the people of Africa own a mobile phone. In many African countries phone technology is ahead of Europe and North America.

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> Never in the history of mankind have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast. The birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, Great Britain, took 150 years to double its output. The US which industrialised later took 50 years. Both countries had a population of less than 10 million when they industrialised. Today China and India with populations over a billion each have doubled their output in less than 20 years – and many other developing countries have done as well. According to the UN’s recent Human Development Report– which everyone should read on line – it is more exciting than most novels – reports that by 2050 Brazil, China and India will account for 40% of the world’s output. The combined incomes of eight developing countries – Brazil, Argentina, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey – already equals that of...

How do the elites of declining empires react? One answer is demoralization. Like 26,000 annual acts of sexual harassment in the US Army leaving little time for killing; and one US soldier on active duty committing suicide every 18 hours–higher than combat deaths–the figures for veterans being one every 80 minutes. Or else, simply giving up empires–like the colonial powers did before and after the official abolition of colonialism (UN Charter Art. 73). Like Moscow outside and inside the Soviet Union, copying England with a Commonwealth of Independent States. Like the USA is partly doing, and partly not, hanging on to the last countries willing to kill for them, like Canada, Norway, Japan, Georgia. And partly not, working on imperial strongholds in Africa and the Pacific; doing the long distance killing themselves. But what do such dubious elites do with their own peoples? Wise elites wash their hands off imperialism,...

Let us try a look at the world from above, right now. There is so much drama unfolding. Is there a Big Picture? Of course there is, we all have one, so here is one effort, imgaine it as The Octagon, consisting of these eight big states or regions: 1) USA, 2) Russia, 3) India, 4) China, 5) OIC (the Organization of Islamic Conference, the 57 Muslim countries), 6) EU (27), 7) Africa (AU, African Union, 54 countries) and 8 ) CELAC, Latin America and the Caribbean, 33 countries). We might add Israel and Japan to the USA if the criterion is willingness to go to war with and for the USA – but Israel wants the USA to fight its wars, and Japan, even with Japanese hawks more than willing to join the nuclear club, is still bound by the constitution depriving Japan of the right to war. So...