Harvard economist Ken Rogoff offers an impassioned defense
of genuine capitalism.
Rogoff notes:
“Nor will it do to
appeal to moral superiority to justify why someone born in the West enjoys so
many advantages. Yes, sound political and social institutions are the bedrock
of sustained economic growth; indeed, they are the sine qua non of all cases of
successful development. But Europe’s long history of exploitative colonialism
makes it hard to guess how Asian and African institutions would have evolved in
a parallel universe where Europeans came only to trade, not to conquer.
Many broad policy issues are distorted when viewed
through a lens that focuses only on domestic inequality and ignores global
inequality. Thomas Piketty’s Marxian claim that capitalism is failing because
domestic inequality is rising has it exactly backwards. When one weights all of
the world’s citizens equally, things look very different. In particular, the
same forces of globalization that have contributed to stagnant middle-class
wages in rich countries have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of
poverty elsewhere.
By many measures, global inequality has been reduced
significantly over the past three decades, implying that capitalism has
succeeded spectacularly. Capitalism has perhaps eroded rents that workers in
advanced countries enjoy by virtue of where they were born. But it has done
even more to help the world’s true middle-income workers in Asia and emerging
markets”
Related:
http://vivekjayakumar.blogspot.com/2015/04/controversies-surrounding-sustainable.html