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Home , The End of Poverty, Thomas Friedman

Robin Broad is professor in the International Development Program of the School of International Service at American University, Washington, DC, and the author, most recently, of Global Backlash: Citizen Initiatives for a Just . John Cavanagh is director of the Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, DC, and board chair of the Interna- tional Forum on . He is the co-editor (with Jerry Mander) of Alternatives to : A Better World Is Possible.

The Hijacking of the Development Debate How Friedman and Sachs Got It Wrong Robin Broad and John Cavanagh

Thomas Friedman and —ar- visited on the poor, workers, and the envi- ticulate, learned globetrotting pundits— ronment. In the late 1990s, a global back- would seem an unlikely duo to hijack the lash of citizen protest erupted as the finan- development debate. Yet, through their cial crisis of 1997–98 plunged hundreds of best-selling books—Friedman’s The World Is millions into poverty in Asia, Russia, and Flat and Sachs’s —their Brazil. prominent exposure in the U.S. media, and For Americans, this backlash was most endorsements by celebrities like Bono, the visible in the “Battle of ” in De- superstar lead singer of the rock group U2, cember 1999, in which massive demonstra- they have done precisely that.1 Just a half tions shut down a World Trade Organiza- decade after protests by citizen groups in tion (WTO) ministerial meeting. But this Latin America and elsewhere discredited was hardly a localized phenomenon: else- two decades of market-oriented neoliberal where, activists reacted against the growing dogma, Friedman and Sachs have narrowed power of international corporations, which the debate with simplistic slogans of “more pitted workers, communities, and nations aid” and “more trade.” They have done so against one another in “a race to the bot- by putting forward myths about the poor, tom.” As corporations spread sweatshops to economic development, and the global Mexico, China, Indonesia, and elsewhere, economy. workers demanded that they respect such In many ways, Friedman and Sachs are principles as the right to organize. Environ- leading us backward to the era that began mentalists struggled to maintain hard- with the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan, Mar- won protections in the face of pressure from garet Thatcher, and Helmut Kohl in the international investors. Farmers protested early 1980s. Those “free market” icons ush- against land grabbing by corporate agri- ered in almost two decades of a one-size-fits- business. As privatization of basic services all approach to economic growth: privatiza- shifted wealth from government coffers tion, government deregulation, and fewer into the pockets of private investors and barriers to trade and financial flows. This increased the cost of water, electricity, and approach became known as the Washington other basic services, citizen groups in Bo- Consensus. Market-opening policies were livia, Ghana, Uruguay, Argentina, and pressed on dozens of poor, indebted nations elsewhere fought off water privatization ef- by the World Bank, the International Mon- forts and successfully replaced privatized etary Fund (IMF), and the U.S. government. systems with various models of public con- Trade and foreign investment surged, and trol.2 Since the election of Hugo Chávez as though many large corporations and con- president of Venezuela in 1998, the elec- sumers benefited, a heavy toll was too often torates in more than a half dozen Latin

Copyright © World Policy Institute 21 American countries have rejected govern- the agenda at the G-8 summit in Edinburgh ments that supported the Washington in 2005. Thomas Friedman, in his columns Consensus. for and other writings, Although no new consensus emerged in has painted a picture of high-tech prosper- the late 1990s, officials in key public and ity, a “flat earth” where every individual has private institutions began to consider alter- an equal chance to get ahead. native approaches to the neoliberal dogma One reads their books and sighs with re- (some important innovations are described lief: there are in fact straightforward answers below). Following the global financial crisis, to ending poverty and spreading prosperity. the IMF accepted the need for some controls As Friedman reassures us: “We know the on capital flows. Amid the dislocations basic formula for economic success.”4 Un- wrought by the building of dams and other fortunately, this formula rests on dubious large infrastructure projects, the World “facts” about the poor, about technology and Bank claimed to be reassessing the environ- the “development ladder,” about aid, about mental and social costs of such undertak- trade and open markets and, perhaps most ings. A number of global corporations importantly, about the choices we face. jumped on the social responsibility band- From our own work in the Philippines and wagon. Experts at the United Nations other poor nations, and through discussions Development Program and elsewhere sug- with scholar/activists Walden Bello and gested that “human development” and hu- , and other members of a man rights indexes were better gauges of poverty working group of the International success than crude and aggregated income Forum on Globalization,5 we believe that measures. Friedman and Sachs, in having accepted cer- However, the steady movement away tain myths about development, are leading from the Washington Consensus was inter- us down the wrong path. rupted by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The Bush adminis- Myth #1: The primary focus should be on tration seized the moment to argue that , as defined by per capita in- opening markets was an essential weapon in come of less than a dollar a day, rather than the “global war on .” In its Sep- on broader quality-of-life indicators, includ- tember 2002 National Security Strategy, the ing the empowerment of the poor. administration cited poverty as one of the From his perch at Columbia University’s root causes of the terrorist impulse. Wash- Earth Institute, Jeffrey Sachs has spent a ington once again began to push open mar- great deal of time attempting to measure ket policies as the best solution to the prob- poverty. By his estimates (he borrows heavi- lem of endemic poverty. ly on data from the World Bank and the Enter Friedman and Sachs, who rein- United Nations), roughly a sixth of human- forced this misguided focus. This may ity (1.1 billion) are “extremely poor,” eking sound like heresy to some readers. After all, out a bare existence on less than a dollar a Jeffrey Sachs ventured with Bono to remote day. Another 1.5 billion are “moderately villages in Africa and brought the plight of poor,” subsisting on $1 to $2 a day. And an- the world’s poorest to the readers of Time other billion are “relatively poor,” earning magazine.3 He helped popularize the con- less than what economists suggest is neces- cept of “ending poverty” and opened space sary to meet their basic needs. Sachs chal- for citizen groups to launch a “global cam- lenges us to end extreme poverty by 2025; paign against poverty” that has touched the United Nations, which he advises, seeks the hearts and pocketbooks of millions in to halve it by 2015 as part of its Millen- dozens of countries. He also put the poor on nium Development Goals. These goals are

22 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2006 not only morally right, says Sachs, they are opening of their natural resources to global achievable. We can take heart since the agribusiness, factory fishing fleets, and cor- ranks of the extreme poor are already down porate interests that often leads to real from 1.5 billion in 1981 to 1.1 billion poverty. Millions have been pushed off their today. land over the past few generations into ur- The problem with these “facts” is that if ban slums where they live in squalor, earn- you eliminate China, , and other fast- ing pennies a day from “informal” activities growing Asian nations, the number of “ex- like hawking cigarettes on the street or treme poor” has stayed fairly level during bringing home a few dollars a day from a this period, and has grown steadily in sweatshop where they sew clothes for con- Africa.6 Another major limitation of Sachs’s sumers across the ocean. Their plight is ex- approach, shared by many development treme: they are hungry much of the time, agencies and antipoverty crusaders, is that it they lack clean water, they cannot afford relies overwhelmingly on poverty measures doctors, community supports are few, and that appear deceptively precise. The fact hope is a sparse commodity. Thus the num- that someone lives on less than $2 a day ac- ber of people living in misery and squalor in tually tells us very little about that person’s a particular country may rise, even as the real condition. In countries such as South monetary measures of poverty decline. In Africa, where government services are gen- sum, the statistics upon which most pov- erous, $1 a day goes further than in Haiti. erty elimination strategies are based are ex- Furthermore, as nations grow rapidly, as tremely misleading, and often steer experts have China and India over the past decade toward the wrong solutions. and a half, the amount of money needed for people in the cash economy to maintain a Myth #2: Development is a linear process of decent standard of living also rises.7 individuals from all walks of life using new For many of the 1.1 billion who subsist technologies to move up a modernization in rural areas on less than $1 a day (over ladder. 300 million of whom are indigenous peo- Sachs suggests that we focus our energy ples), life changed little for centuries until on cleaning up pockets of extreme poverty the last few decades. Most live in rural or so that the impoverished are able to get a fishing communities where they have some leg up on the “ladder of development.” We control over the natural resources on which need to give them “a boost up to the first they depend for their livelihoods. They con- rung”...“so that they may begin their own sume much of what they produce and barter ascent.”8 Friedman picks up the same for some of the rest of what they need. They theme: “Ill health also traps people in live in self-built homes and depend on tra- poverty,” he writes, and “keeps them from ditional medicines. While their poverty may grasping the first rung of the ladder.”9 Once be “extreme” by Sach’s monetary measure, released from the bonds of extreme poverty, their quality of life is typically much better “a kid in India with a cheap PC can learn the than that of their urban counterparts, even inner workings of the same operating sys- though their incomes are often smaller. tem that is running in some of the largest While most would undoubtedly like more data centers of corporate America.”10 State economic, social (e.g., health and educa- power and corporate power count for less in tion), and political “security,” their basic a “plug-and-play world.”11 needs and sense of community and purpose In Friedman’s world anyone who is not have, until recently, remained largely intact. lazy (unlike those in Latin America where Our experience living with poor families “everyone sleeps until midmorning”)12 can in rural areas suggests that it has been the join the dynamic “flat world” economy by

The Hijacking of the Development Debate 23 finding a laptop and jumping into the Rather, the history of most parts of the global rat race. According to Friedman, the world suggests a more violent process of entry of China, India, and the former Soviet poverty creation rooted in unequal power Union into the global economy in the past relations and manifested through slavery, 15 years has added 3 billion people to this the colonial legacy of export , new economy. Then, quietly on p. 375, the presence of extraction industries, and Friedman confesses that “the world is not the sale of natural resources by govern- flat....” “Hundreds of millions” are “left be- ments to the highest corporate bidders.19 hind by the flattening.” Eight pages later, For much of the past century, the U.S. he acknowledges that the high-tech flat government has supported dictators who earth economy in India provides only 0.2 impoverished their people by plundering percent of India’s jobs.13 their countries’ resources. Our three decades Sachs does reflect on the causes of pov- of travel and research lead us to the conclu- erty. But his poverty-creation story also is sion that most people who are poor have linear: almost all people the world over were been marginalized by more powerful ac- poor and living on farms a couple of cen- tors, be they landlords or corporations or turies ago. He dismisses the notion that governments. “the rich have gotten rich because the poor Poverty is not simply an absolute have gotten poor.”14 As Sachs has it, those condition; it needs to be understood as a with access to technology and trade got dynamic. It is necessary to look at the social, wealthier, while those geographically iso- economic, and political interactions of poor lated or in areas prone to natural disasters people with the elites. It is not a matter of and disease got left behind. “cleaning up” disease; even healthy people As a result, Sachs’s quick fixes are tech- are easily pushed back into extreme poverty nological: “We glimpse the pivotal roles when the deeper structural roots of poverty that science and technology play in the de- are not dealt with. That “ladder of develop- velopment process. And we sense a progres- ment” is actually a complex, multidimen- sion of development that moves from subsis- sional maze of power relations. tence agriculture toward light manufactur- In this context, we would argue that ing and urbanization, and on to high-tech rising inequality is as important an indica- services.”15 To get a person with a middle- tor of human development as is poverty.20 class “state of mind”16 out of poverty, Fried- Elsewhere, we have presented evidence that man says, give that person access to a com- economic globalization has contributed to puter. “Guilty as charged,” Friedman says in the widening gap between its wealthy bene- response to criticisms of himself as a “tech- ficiaries and the marginalized within most nological determinist.”17 nations, and to a growing divide between This focus on technology is ahistorical. most poor nations (excluding China, India, As the Indian physicist Vandana Shiva Brazil, and a handful of other big emerg- writes: “Ending poverty requires knowing ing markets) and the club of rich nations. how poverty is created.”18 This sounds sim- There is also substantial evidence that ple, but it gets to the crux of why so much growing inequality within a nation falls of the development debate is misguided hardest on the poor.21 Contrary to Sachs and so much money has been wasted in the and Friedman, we believe that growing in- name of ending poverty. Our experience equality is the inevitable outcome of the suggests that laziness and corruption— past two decades of market-opening poli- Friedman’s culprits—are not the main roots cies. In China, for example, in order to cre- of this failure. Nor are Sachs’s accidents of ate an entrepreneurial class, the government geography and climate. deliberately abandoned public universal

24 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2006 healthcare and education, leaving millions tended to bring irrigation water to Bang- to fend for themselves. ladesh’s small farmers. Time and time again, however, the tubewells ended up owned by Myth #3: More and better aid is a big part the richest people in the village—effectively of the answer. making them richer and more powerful, and If one ignores the mechanisms that leaving others (including the targeted bene- make people poor, it is easy to conclude that ficiaries) even poorer and less powerful than throwing money at the problem is the an- before.24 The geographer Ben Wisner con- swer to poverty. Sachs argues for more and cluded that for aid to be considered success- better aid as he lays out five mechanisms ful there needed to be “a shift of power in through which aid could turn Africa around, favour of the disadvantaged group.” But, from boosting agriculture to improving ba- said Wisner, “this effect is as rare as it is es- sic healthcare to providing education, elec- sential to [a project’s] long-term sustain- tricity, and clean water. Through Sachs’s ef- ability and reproducibility.”25 Sachs’s model forts, aid has been distributed in this man- Kenyan village aid project does not meet ner to eight “model” Kenyan villages. this criterion, and has been criticized for ad- But we have been here before. In his dicting farmers to expensive chemical inputs 1960 book The Stages of Economic Growth: A and requiring amounts of aid that would be Non-Communist Manifesto, Walt Whitman impossible on a global scale.26 Rostow, a senior adviser to Presidents It would be more effective to put a halt Kennedy and Johnson, provided the intel- to the outflow of financial resources from lectual rationale for the postwar aid effort. poor to rich countries through widespread Rostow argued that “traditional societies” debt cancellation. Far more money is sucked needed aid and other external help to out of poor countries through debt service change their culture of primitiveness and on the now $2.5 trillion owed to interna- create the “preconditions for take-off” into tional lenders by 153 countries than comes modernization (“the age of high mass con- in through aid, and stemming this outflow sumption”) by means of higher income could free hundreds of billions of dollars for levels.22 healthcare, education, and disease preven- We do not dispute that under the right tion.27 (To be fair, Sachs is an advocate of conditions, aid can help mitigate disease debt cancellation.) and natural disasters. But the reality is that its track record in reducing poverty was as Myth # 4: After aid gets a country started poor in Rostow’s time as it is today. Former on the development ladder, increased trade World Bank economist will propel it upward. calculates that rich countries “spent $568 As Sachs phrases it, “When the precon- billion (in today’s dollars) to end poverty in ditions...are in place, markets are powerful Africa” between 1960 and 2003, a period engines of development,” given “the re- when the number of poor in Africa rose markable power of trade and investment” to steadily.23 catalyze “rapid economic growth” and com- In fact, there is ample evidence that fi- bat poverty.28 Friedman concurs: “Every law nancial aid often has a negative impact on of economics tells us that if we...promote the alleviation of poverty. It is invariably greater and greater trade and integration, channeled in such a way as to widen the gap the global pie will grow wider and more between the poor and the rest of society. complex.”29 Indeed, says Friedman, it is an Some years ago, the American researchers “irrefutable fact that more open and com- Betsy Hartmann and James Boyce studied petitive markets are the only sustainable ve- an aid project that funded tubewells in- hicle for growing a nation out of poverty.”30

The Hijacking of the Development Debate 25 He then reiterates the arguments that the country blindly followed Washington Con- World Bank has imprinted on the minds of sensus market opening policies. Instead, editorial writers everywhere, namely that each selectively and carefully opened some China and South Asia reduced extreme markets while leaving other markets to the poverty over the past 15 years by opening exclusive domain of domestic firms. Beijing their markets, while Africa kept its markets and New Delhi steered economic resources closed and poverty rose.31 toward land reform, education, and other How does the evidence stack up? First, national goals. Today, it is harder to follow does prying open markets help the poorest their path, given the opposition of the nations? During the 1990s, when market- World Trade Organization and other market opening policies were being pursued, the opening institutions, but that does not number of people living on less than a dol- change the fact that extreme poverty lar a day in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin Amer- dropped in both, in large part as a result of ica and the Caribbean, and the government policy.37 (Some social scientists increased.32 One reason for this was that the have concluded that a key factor in China’s prices paid to poor countries for their pri- poverty reduction was that family size fell mary commodity exports rose far more slow- over this period as a result of Beijing’s one- ly than the prices of their manufactured im- child policy.)38 In the absence of government ports. Indeed, according to a recent United intervention, open markets tend to enrich Nations study, “the terms of trade of com- large entrepreneurs and corporations, at the modities (vis-à-vis manufactures) have de- expense of the poor. clined, with the 2005 level 30% lower than Lately, the “alter-globalization move- the 1975–85 level.”33 Compounding this ment” has focused attention on what it calls problem is the fact that when the World the “Wal-Mart economy.” By this it means a Bank and the IMF press poor countries to global economy of increasing mobility for open their markets, imports tend to rise global firms like Wal-Mart in the absence of much faster than exports, with poor farmers effective protections for workers, small local often suffering the most. A 2005 study by businesses, and the environment. In listing Christian Aid concluded that “trade liberal- the key “free-market strategies” that coun- ization has cost sub-Saharan Africa US$272 tries should adopt, Friedman includes “flexi- billion over the past 20 years,” roughly the ble labor laws.”39 This is Orwellian code lan- amount that the region received in aid over guage for undermining worker protections. this period.34 In this Wal-Mart economy, the accepted In addition, there is a solid body of evi- way for others to compete with cheap Chi- dence refuting the World Bank’s heavily nese labor is through a in promoted research that market opening wages, working conditions, and government policies lead to growth, which Friedman regulations. cites as the source of his “irrefutable fact.”35 Another critical problem is that rapid Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic trade and investment growth depend on and Policy Research has studied growth heavy fossil fuel use that is accelerating a rates for poor countries in the 1980–2000 global climate crisis. Demand is skyrocket- period, when most were pushed to open ing in China and India. The end of cheap their markets, and he concludes that growth energy, along with coming water shortages, rates were substantially lower than during could create more pressures to abandon tra- the 1960–80 period, when markets were ditional trade-expansion policies.40 less open.36 Extreme poverty did decline in China Myth #5: The only alternative to market- and India during the 1990s. But neither opening globalization is protectionism.

26 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2006 In Friedman’s words, the choice is “free Globalization, in which democracy, ecologi- trade” or “erect walls.”41 He concludes that cal sustainability, subsidiarity (favoring local the only way for rich countries like the production), protection of common re- to keep up as China and India sources (like air, water, and parks), human surge ahead and grab millions of manufac- rights, food security, equity, and cultural turing and service jobs, is to compete hard- and biological diversity are the essentials.44 er. (To get his daughters to do their home- Alternatives in action—which build on work, he reminds them that “people in Chi- the above principles—abound. Local gov- na and India are starving for your jobs.”)42 ernments, under pressure from citizen If Friedman or Sachs had lent a more groups in many parts of the world, are en- sympathetic ear to what they simplistically couraging family farms, innovative worker- refer to as the “anti-globalization move- owned enterprises, green building and envi- ment,” they would have discovered that ronment-sustaining design, and the revital- many citizen groups and governments reject ization of public transportation and utilities. both market opening at all costs and 1930s- Curitiba, Brazil—a city the size of Hous- style protectionism. And they are offering ton—has been transformed into the “green- plenty of alternatives. The more properly est” city in that country, by providing in- termed “alter-globalization movement” centives for public transportation, bike draws from the ranks of union members, en- paths, nonpolluting industries, and massive vironmentalists, farmers, students, women, recycling. In Bolivia, Ghana, Nigeria, and indigenous peoples, health activists, mem- elsewhere, grass-roots movements are revers- bers of religious groups, researchers—and a ing the two-decade trend of selling key pub- growing number of elected officials, particu- lic utilities, such as municipal water sys- larly in Latin America, where the electorates tems, to global firms. In Cochabamba, Bo- in Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, livia, a consortium that included the inter- and Bolivia have turned to political leaders national giant Bechtel was forced out in fa- who reject the Washington Consensus. vor of a local-ownership model that reduced What are the movement’s goals? It seeks water rates. In Porto Alegre, Brazil, partici- to increase the power of governments and patory processes in place since 1989 involve citizen groups over markets now dominated large numbers of local people in setting by large global corporations. Although there government spending priorities. In Gua- many different proposals, most alternative temala, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Cuba, mo- projects have as a common starting point a bile teams of farmer-technicians from the redefinition of development. The movement “Campesino a Campesino” movement looks toward the fulfillment of people’s ba- share innovative sustainable agriculture sic social, economic, cultural, and political practices—protecting the environment, rights. It measures progress in terms of the producing food, and improving the incomes improved health and well-being of children, of hundreds of thousands of smallholders.45 families, communities, democracy, and the At the national level, governments of natural environment.43 Rather than a linear poorer countries are pressing for changes in “take-off,” development in this view in- global trade rules that will given them more volves the redistribution of political power “space” to set their own priorities as well as and wealth downward. A team of researchers their own industrial and agriculture poli- from rich and poor countries (including the cies, such as favoring domestic farms and authors) affiliated with the International Fo- firms over global corporations. Brazil and rum on Globalization has distilled the alter- Argentina, for example, have gained inde- globalization movement’s principles in an pendence from the conditionalities of the economic rulebook, Alternatives to Economic International Monetary Fund by paying

The Hijacking of the Development Debate 27 back their loans in full. This has allowed coffee from Latin America, Africa, and Asia them to give primacy to social, environmen- that has been certified by a third-party tal, and equity considerations over purely monitor. A TransFair certification label, for aggregate economic goals. Under pressure example, signifies that the farmers growing from an invigorated citizenry, Brazil has re- and harvesting the coffee or cocoa or tea duced clear cutting in the Amazon for the work in cooperatives and receive a price that first time since 1997 through strict regula- more than covers the cost of production. tions, arrests of illegal loggers, agricultural Often, organizations provide farm- planning, and the creation of protected ar- ers with interest-free loans to cover produc- eas. The Bolivian government is pursuing tion costs. land reform as well as renegotiating con- At the regional level, there are several tracts with the foreign firms that have con- alternatives to the “free-trade, free-invest- trolled its natural gas production to ensure ment-flow” model. The European Union of- that more of the proceeds stay inside the fers a model of regional integration in which country.46 In the Philippines, Ecuador, South poor member states like Ireland and Portu- Africa, and several other poorer countries, gal were aided by carefully targeted resource slow but significant progress is being made transfers and the setting of common (and in gaining legal recognition of the ancestral high) labor and social rules. In Latin Amer- domain rights of indigenous peoples. In ad- ica, the Venezuelan government is earmark- dition, a growing number of countries are ing part of its surging oil revenues to fund establishing community-based, natural re- new regional integration initiatives as a source management systems that devolve counterweight to the corporate-led integra- varying degrees of local authority to indige- tion proposals of the United States. Among nous and other local communities. other initiatives, the Venezuelan govern- Many citizen groups and governments ment is offering subsidized oil to several are rethinking aid and open markets, which neighboring countries and 12 Caribbean na- Sachs and Friedman so single-mindedly pro- tions (as well as to low-income people in mote. In the Philippines and several other several communities in the United States) countries, citizen groups have set up innova- and attempting to negotiate trade agree- tive structures to channel aid money to en- ments that put environmental, social, and dow foundations, which in turn fund small- equity goals on an even par with economic scale, grass-roots projects that often help lo- goals. The governments of Brazil, Argen- cal groups control and manage forest and tina, Uruguay, and Paraguay have likewise fishing resources in a sustainable manner. fashioned a regional integration pact that The “fair trade movement” seeks to bypass gives workers a place at the negotiating global corporations and set up alternative table. trading arrangements that discourage sweat- With the one-size-fits-all policies of the shop working conditions and environmental World Trade Organization, the World Bank, destruction. This includes product labeling and the IMF increasingly being questioned initiatives that let consumers know that by citizen groups and governments alike, rugs have been produced without child la- there is a vibrant debate over replacing some bor (RugMark), tee shirts have been sewn of their functions with institutions whose by workers paid a living wage (No Sweat), purpose is to raise and stabilize commodity or wood products have been made from tim- prices, give short-term financial relief in cri- ber that was harvested in a sustainable man- sis situations, and offer menus of policy ad- ner (Forest Stewardship Council). Numerous vice. There is now a global campaign to outlets—from Equal Exchange in Massachu- spread the debt relief offered to 18 countries setts to Dean’s Beans—now sell “fair trade” by the G-8 in 2005 to a much larger group

28 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2006 of countries and to eliminate harmful free- ern medicine, a profession of rigor, insight and market policy conditions that still accom- practicality” (p. 74). pany debt relief. 9. Friedman, World Is Flat, p. 382. 10. Ibid., p. 97. * * * 11. Ibid., pp. 9–11, 185. Jeffrey Sachs and Thomas Friedman must be 12. Ibid., p. 316. Friedman has a tendency to re- given some credit for embracing the idea of sort to such hyperbole. Indeed, in this case, he quali- ending poverty and spreading prosperity, fies “everyone” only by adding that he is not talking and for bringing these issues to wider public about “Chileans” or “energetic immigrants.” notice. Yet by basing their arguments on 13. Friedman, World Is Flat, p. 383. simplistic myths, they have hijacked the de- 14. Sachs, End of Poverty, p. 31. Emphasis in the velopment debate. The well-meaning rock original. stars, government leaders, billionaires, and 15. Sachs, End of Poverty, p. 18. civil society organizations that have jumped 16. “Middle class is a state of mind, not a state on the Sachs/Friedman aid-and-trade band- of income” (Friedman, World Is Flat, p. 375). wagon would do well to embrace the devel- 17. Friedman, World Is Flat, pp. 373–74. opment alternatives that are being put for- 18. Vandana Shiva, “How to End Poverty: Mak- ward by the alter-globalization movement. ing Poverty History and the History of Poverty,” If they do so, the goal of “ending poverty” unpublished paper, March 28, 2005. may actually be achievable. 19. See Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdevel- • oped Africa, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Howard Uni- Notes versity Press, 1982). 1. Thomas L. Friedman, : A 20. See Branko Milanovic’s World’s Apart: Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Measuring International and Global Inequality (Prince- Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005); Jeffrey D. Sachs, ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); see The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time also United Nations Conference on Trade and (New York: Penguin Books, 2005). Development, Trade and Development Report, 1997 2. Belén Balanyá, Brid Brennan, Olivier Hoede- (Geneva, 1997); United Nations Development man, Satoko Kishimoto, and Philipp Terhorst, eds., Program, Human Development Report 1999 (New Reclaiming Public Water: Achievements, Struggles and York, 1999). Visions from Around the World (Amsterdam: Trans- 21. Vandemoortele, “Are We Really Reducing national Institute and Corporate Europe Observatory, Global Poverty?” pp. 11–13. January 2005). 22. W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: 3. Jeffrey D. Sachs, “The End of Poverty,” Time, A Non-Communist Manifesto, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: March 14, 2002. Cambridge University Press, 1971), ch. 2, 3. Sachs 4. Friedman, World Is Flat, p. 330. indeed uses the word “takeoff” (for example, see 5. The International Forum on Globalization, p. 31) and “preconditions” (for example, see p. 3). created in 1994, has brought together leading re- 23. William Easterly, “Tone Deaf on Africa,” searchers and activists from North and South to un- New York Times, July 3, 2005. derstand the many ramifications of economic global- 24. Betsy Hartmann and James Boyce, Needless ization and to seek alternatives. See www.ifg.org. Hunger: Voices from a Bangladesh Village (San Francisco: 6. Jan Vandemoortele, “Are We Really Reduc- Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1979); ing Global Poverty?” United Nations Development A Quiet Violence: View from a Bangladesh Village (San Program, July 2002, pp. 2–3. Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Pol- 7. Ibid., p. 7. icy, 1983). 8. Sachs, End of Poverty, pp. 2, 24, 244. Sachs 25. Ben Wisner, quoted in Lloyd Timberlake, wants to clean up this “clinical poverty” through Africa in Crisis: The Causes, The Cures of Environmental “clinical economics,” building on the image of “mod- Bankruptcy (London: Earthscan, 1986), p. 219.

The Hijacking of the Development Debate 29 26. See, for example, the recent work of Ameri- and Robert Hunter Wade, “Is Globalization Reduc- can University’s Caleb Rossiter, esp. “Poverty in a ing Poverty and Inequality?” World Development, Time of Empire: Why Foreign Aid Can’t ‘Make vol. 32, no. 4 (2004). Poverty History,’” unpublished paper, 2006, available 37. See Robert Hunter Wade, “What Strategies at www.calebrossiter.com. Are Viable for Developing Countries Today? The 27. Sarah Anderson and the Global Economic World Trade Organization and the Shrinking of ‘De- Task Force of the Institute for Policy Studies, “Debt velopment Space,’” Review of International Political Boomerang: How Americans Would Benefit from Economy, vol. 10 (November 2003), pp. 621–44. the Cancellation of Impoverished Country Debts,” 38. B. Gustafsson and W. Zhong, “How and Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, DC, dis- Why Has Poverty in China Changed? A Study Based cussion draft, October 27, 2005, p. 3, available at on Microdata for 1988 and 1995,” China Quarterly, www.ips-dc.org. vol. 164, no. 1 (2000), pp. 983–1006; and S. Pal, 28. Sachs, End of Poverty, pp. 3, 356–57. “Economic Reform and Household Welfare in Rural 29. Friedman, World Is Flat, p. 248. China: Evidence from Household Survey Data,” Jour- 30. Ibid., p. 314. nal of International Development, vol. 12, no. 2 (2000), 31. Ibid., p. 315. pp. 187–206. 32. Vandemoortele, “Are We Really Reducing 39. Friedman, World Is Flat, p. 314. Global Poverty?” pp. 2–3. 40. See the special issue of WorldWatch Magazine 33. From UNCTAD meeting on “Commodities on “Peak Oil,” January/February 2006: and Richard and Development,” February 7, 2006, as discussed in Heinberg, The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Martin Khor, “UNCTAD Commission Debates the Industrial Societies (Gabriola Island, British Colombia: Crisis in Commodities,” TWN (Third World Net- New Society Publishers, 2003); and Maude Barlow work) Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues, Febru- and Tony Clarke, Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Cor- ary 13, 2006. porate Threat to the World’s Water (New York: New 34. “The Economics of Failure: The Real Cost of Press, 2002). ‘Free’ Trade for Poor Countries,” Christian Aid brief- 41. Friedman, World Is Flat, p. 227. ing paper (London, June 2005), p. 1. 42. Ibid., p. 237; see also p. 226. 35. For a critique of this research by World 43. See David Korten, The Great Turning: From Bank economists David Dollar and Art Kraay, and Empire to Earth Community (San Francisco: Berrett the “paradigm maintenance” role of World Bank re- Koehler, 2006); and Frances Moore Lappe and Anna search, see Robin Broad, “Research, Knowledge, and Lappe, Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet the Art of ‘Paradigm Maintenance’: The World (New York: Putnam, 2002). Bank’s Vice-Presidency 44. John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander, eds., Al- (DEC),” Review of International Political Economy, ternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is forthcoming August 2006. Possible, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 36. Mark Weisbrot, “The Scorecard on Devel- 2004). “Subsidiarity” refers to encouraging as much opment: 25 Years of Diminished Progress,” Center economic activity as possible to remain first local, for Economic and Policy Research, unpublished pa- then regional, then national, turning to the global per, September 2005. See also Ravi Kanbur, “Eco- economy only for goods and services not available at nomic Policy, Distribution, and Poverty: The Nature these other levels. of Disagreements,” World Development, vol. 29, no. 6 45. Eric Holt-Gimenez, Campesino a Campesino: (2001), pp.1083–94, and “Extract from Growth and Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement Trade: The Last Redoubt?” available at www.cornell. (Oakland, CA: Food First Books, 2006). edu/poverty/kanbur; , The Global Gover- 46. Cavanagh and Mander, eds., Alternatives to nance of Trade As If Development Really Mattered (New Economic Globalization, p. 170. York: United Nations Development Program, 2001);

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