cessful indigenous development. .In Indonesia these measures forced large numbers of native-owned industries to close down due to contraction of the money supply ,and favoritism given to foreign industry. In the Philippines the result was an increase in profit taken out of the country from $200 million to $990 million in five years and an increase in foreign debt from $275 million to $737 million. In Argentina the results· of s_uch an auste~ity pro~ram were a 20 percent decline in per capita consumption, a flight of capital and a 400 percent increase in the cost of living. 4 . , In contrast, the achievements of the few countries that have been able for a significant period to resist the pressures and lures of debt-financed, trade-centered development and to.demonstrate the viability of self-reliant economies and self-development are impressive. Compared to that of India an~ o~her cou1:tries with problems of far less ,magnitude, Chma s self-reliant development of the last thirty y6ars has . b~en. astounding. In the 195Os, when they were able to exercise import and exchange controls, the Philippines sustairied a growth rate of 10 to 12 percent per year. After the Koi-ean yv~r, North Korea performed a bootstrap develop~ent, giving ~t m ~~ yea~s an eco1;1omy comparing favorably with anything m Asia outside Japan. Chile under Allende and Ghana under Acheampong registered equally significant g~ins. 5 Successful self-reliant development has occurred within both capitalist and socialist philosophies. That the mo~t dramatic o~ th.ese achievements have'been socialist is only because few ca~1talist countries have been willing ,to directly deal with the basic problems associated with equitable development. As St~ve Weismann no·~es, "~;i.pitalist development geneq1.lly . builds ':m the best, mvestmg where the rate of return is great- ~st. Th.is fav~>rS those who already have skills and. capital, and 1t provides first for those who already have the income to generate demand. The Chinese Comm1,mists built on the worst. :~ey attac~ed the worst forms of poverty tirst: malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalor, unemployment, and ine_qualities. The Chinese worrie,d less about how much was produced and how fast, more about what to produce and for whom. De- . velopment t:ickled up, n<:1t down. That was the first principle. The second 1s even more impressive: they did it, and without us."6 July 1979 Within national and local economies there are similar.exploitive structures resulting from trade economics. Money is drained out of local communities by franchises, chain stores, bank{ng conglomerates and unequal impacts between taxation and the services they provide. Unfair terms of trade exploit certain ~ectors of society. In farming, people work long h,ours at low mcomes to sell in competition with each other to monopolized m~rketing st:uctures while having to buy monopolistically pnce_d _farm mputs. In the fast food industry workers are kept at n:1m1mum wages and prevented from unionizing, while havmg t:o b~y consumer.goods at corporate-determined prices. Wealth 1s shifted from rural areas to cities by public policies maintaining low food prices at the expense of farmers. Centralization of public services such as hospitals, schools, and universities again gives more real wealth t·o urbanites while shortchanging rural and small town residents. Tax loopholes for the wealthy increase inequities and burde1;1 the poor with the cost of public services. Corporations and the wealthy move outside governmental boundaries to escape taxation just as MNCs do on the international level. Real and threatened plant closings destroy local economies and the bargaining power of workers. States and local communities are forced into expensive competition for location of the few large industrial plants being built. Restrictive regulation of professional services such as doctors, lawyers, architects or plumbers results.in excessive charges relative to the wages of others. Mechanisms similar to those on the tnternational level force people from self-reliant economies into trade economies-unjust taxation, interstate commerce regulations prohibiting protective tariffs, credit bias towards large investors and governmental regulatio·ns and selective non-enforce- ~ent o! laws that make unionizing difficult and trust-busting 1mposs1ble. In these ways and more, trade economics move cmntrol of basic aspects of our lives out of our controlwhether on a personal, commu~ity or national level. Ill. Americans have benefitted more than probably any other cou1:try from the "gun point barter" of trade-based economics, and lt may seem odd that we are starting at this late date to be concerned with fairness, equity, and the protection of underdogs. The reason lies in basic shift occurring i.n the global Collage by Jill Stapleton - - - - .•• ~ . ..,;,
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