I get the occasional piece of blog "fanmail" & usually tap out a quick response to the sender out of courtesy.   A while ago, I got some from a person who used the alias die_capitalists@yahoo.com;   my response message bounced so I figured I'd respond here instead

Our young rocket scientist asks:

having just read "no logo", [here] i disagree with your anaylisis. First of all, where do you get your stats for defining "poverty" and what makes you think that it is at its lowest point ever? In Canada alone, 5 million people are living below the poverty line. In Africa, poverty is helping to spread HIV which in turns spreads more poverty as people struggle to pay for the costly drugs.

In the Middle East, poverty is at record levels not the least among Palistine and Iraq . In the former Svoiet union, poverty has become a way of life for many people as their newly independant countries are faced with politcal and ecomomic instablity. The large majority of people in Mexico are living at or below the poverty line, the NAFTA has not increased their standerd of living. In Latin America SAPS have all but destroyed the scoil sector in many countries leading to privation, lack of basic services and of course, poverty. In Eudcadour, poverty figures have *risen*, not fallen since the discovery of oil in the rainforests, oil was said to lead them out of poverty. And last and most important, even in the US poverty figures are still high, both in the cities and on the native reservations that dot its landscape....

by saying such a misguided statement about poverty, I can only assume that you must be basing your statement on the measure of various GDPs of different countries.

Shame on you- buying blithy into the IMF and WB retoric without investigating the problem but hey, if it makes you sleep easier in you feather bed and believe the "American Dream",  all captialists need to have their beauty sleep no?

Else how would they get the energy to declude themselves as to the state of the world and dismiss the overwhelming evidence of the left?

Hope I didn't distrub your worldview!

Sweet Dreams!

Dear Mr Die_Capitalist,

Well, first let me give some "facts" airtime:

...World poverty fell more than 20 percent between 1990 and 1999, a decade of aggressive globalization

...Since 1990, 800 million people have gained new access to improved water supplies, and 750 million to improved sanitation. In the last 30 years, infant mortality rates have dropped from 96 deaths per 1,000 live births to just 56.

...Bhalla concludes that the world poverty rate has declined even more dramatically than the U.N. reports, from 44 percent in 1980 to just 13 percent in 2000. Bhalla attributes the decline to progress in China and India, the two most populous nations in the world, and two nations that have made significant moves toward more economic freedom in the last 20 years.

Poverty as a statistical construct will always exist (it's the bottom x% of society).   What poverty *means* changes significantly over time.  For ex., most "poor" Americans have lifestyles that would have been deeply middle class just 20-30 years ago .  Are they Poor?  Well, statistically & relatively yes.   But that's relative to other Americans who are also progressively better off.  I'd wager that there are probably many middle class Ecuadoreans who would willingly trade their lot in life for a "poor" American.

Internationally, Poverty is caused by a bunch of stuff - no question the poverty rate has gone up in certain countries that have imploded but that's a failure of their Political system rather than Capitalism per se.  

Poverty in China is diminishing rapidly because they've maintained some political coherence while very effectively unleashing capitalist forces.  (the UNDP, for ex., estimates that China has moved over 150M out of poverty over the last, capitalistic, decade - that rivals the number of people the previous Worker's Paradise regime starved to death).  At the end of the day, there's a statistical spread - China, India, etc. are exceptionally LARGE cases of countries that are successfully embracing capitalism and cranking up their lifestyles.   

At the other end, places like Russia are dumps BUT are also getting better over time.    The world's a big place and you WILL find individual countries that are retreating BUT, I argue, as with the Russian case (and Palestine, Egypt, Saudi, etc.) it's almost always the result of political mismanagement rather than "capitalism".   The failure, if you will, is a failure to produce the foundations necessary for capitalism to flourish.

The general trendline of Capitalism = better lifestyles is pretty much undeniable  --> the articles I link to are both GREAT reads.  I fear that folks like yourself and myself differ on a fundamental assumption about the origins of Poverty.   I contend that Poverty is the "natural" state of mankind; Wealth is the exception and is created due to human initiative, philosophies, and so on.   And no one has found a better way to do it than global capitalism. 

Folks like you often have the underlying, unstated belief that the reverse is the case - that somehow wealth is automatic and a "natural right" for all.  Well maybe not wealth so much as its by products such as low infant mortality, medicines, clean sanitation, etc. - you don't like the being told that the 2 are necessarily connected.  Your belief systems - whether you recognize it or not - are often predicated on the notion that Poverty is the aberration rather than the rule.  Because of this, you think poverty's existance is the systemic result of some enmity between the rich / white world and everyone else.

I don't suppose that you, Mr. Die Capitalist, have a viable alternative plan for eliminating poverty that survives actual contact with reality?  The standard isn't perfection, the standard is the alternative.  The real, implementable one.

As for IMF / WB - I agree, I'm not their biggest fan.   but probably not for the same reasons you are.    I'm guessing you view them as all powerful puppet masters keeping the poor down.    I view them of clumsy bureaucracies who's accidents & missteps keep the poor down indirectly...

- V