IN SEPTEMBER 2000 the heads of 147 governments pledged that they would halve the proportion of people on the Earth living in the direst poverty by 2015, using the poverty rate in 1990 as a baseline. It was the first of a litany of worthy aims enshrined in the United Nations “millennium development goals” (MDGs). Many of these aims—such as cutting maternal mortality by three quarters and child mortality by two thirds—have not been met. But the goal of halving poverty has been. Indeed, it was achieved five years early.

b_b:

So the UN pledged to cut poverty in half in 25 years and it happened in 20. The question is what evidence exists to support the UN's role in this effort; there certainly isn't any in the article. The only evidence they point to is growth in developing countries. Where has this growth come from? Trade. Freer, global trade, more specifically. This is the other side of Neoliberalism that modern liberals loves to gloss over, because these policies have been not-so-good for the middle class in developed countries (pretty shitty for us, actually). Clearly, they have been very good for the developing world, whose manufacturing base has exploded in recent decades (and let's not be unclear, all of the meaningful growth in these countries has been manufacturing jobs for export to rich countries). Detroit's and Cleveland's and St. Louis' losses have been Mexico City's and Beijing's and Hanoi's gain. We can pledge to do whatever we want, but that doesn't mean that our pledges amount to shit. People need to work in decent, dignified jobs; end of story.

posted 3977 days ago