Thinking Poor or Poor Thinking?

What are the causes of Poverty?

Flickr by royryap

By: Luis Fernando Arce, Senior Online Editor

OUR POOR THINKING
The thought of poverty usually moves most of us to tears. We all know the devastating effects that this cancer has on people, and despite political or ideological differences, we all agree that it must be eradicated. … So why is most of the world still gripped so tightly by it?

It’s not in our best interest to claim to have the solution to this problem. In fact, this is the reason why the Left and Right are continuously battling it out in the political arena like fighting cocks. And it is that debilitating political clash that in large part maintains 80% of the world living on $10 a day despite an economic prosperity that only the 21st century can boast on a global scale.

When people run into this wall head-on they usually knock themselves out. Little progress has been made in regards to poverty precisely because of political prejudices…Hell, remember the frigidity of the post-WWII period?

A COLD PAST
As the capitalist system evolved through the 19th century and raised the living standards of the succeeding generations, more and more people were pushed to the fringes of society while a gradually decreasing number of people owned larger portions of the economic pie, a context in which the middle class emerged.

The system’s jaw-dropping economic prowess and swift rate of growth prompted most of the world to adopt one form of it or another and the system in its totality went unchallenged for a long time.

Though the Bolsheviks had taken over what would become the USSR, the glorious ‘20s reminded people in the West of the wonderful life that that the power of unfettered Capitalism, Industry and Investment made possible. Fascism arose for a while as a viable alternative, particularly as the economy in the 1930’s was decimated, and then the Second World War broke out. We all know the ending to that…

But the Union of Soviet Satellite Republics (USSR) had consolidated its power since the October Revolution of 1917 and for just as long had brought onto the international arena the reality of a Socialist Agenda in regards to economics, politics and culture. They purported to reverse the poverty that – they claimed – the Capitalist Bloc had created. Lamentably, by the 1950s, the USSR under Joseph Stalin had deteriorated into a totalitarian regime, leaving no room for individual freedom and a looming bureaucratic menace ripped right out of Orwell’s 1984 as its legacy.

The end of the Cold War, amongst other things, convinced the world to denounce the idea that Socialism could solve the problem of poverty. And understandably so, because its ambassador ended up creating more poverty, inequality and state corruption than before.

Victorious Western Capitalism is today exported practically worldwide. It’s thought that the fantastic wave of neo-liberalism will lift the Third World out from the bottom of the sea. But a venomous concoction of hyped-up political antagonisms and unfettered neo-liberalism has caused adverse effects.

HYPED-UP GROWTH & CONCEALED WOES
When that fantastic wave of economic growth came, the Third World seems to have been sucked down by the undertow rather than being lifted. Floating comfortably above sea level, our analytical and critical perspectives have been blindsided by staggering economic growth. Today, we believe the neo-liberal theory of trickle down economics so deeply that we often fail to internalize clear signs of its potential to create dependency and poverty.

In Ecuador – a small Third World Andean country in South America – 33.1% of people live below the poverty line, according to the CIA Factbook. Claiming that the dollarization (U.S.) of the national currency has helped revitalize the “investment climate, reassured potential investors and potentially increased the capacity of the economy to create employment and reduce poverty,” the UN’s Report on the Assessment of Poverty in Ecuador and other promoters of neo-liberalism stand by this decision with their lives.

However, the same Report also explains that despite further subduing hyperinflation at home, families’ lifetime savings were “often swept away,” and the miniscule reduction in cost of the average consumption basket ended up helping mostly only the non-poor, considering the particular consumption patterns of the poor.

Right here in Industrialized Canada, Prime Minister Harper’s personal ideas have been that the best long-term strategy to combat poverty is “sustained employment of Canadians” – a noble idea to espouse would the unemployment rate not be about 3% higher than that of Ecuador’s. But it isn’t only that a country with a $1+ trillion GDP still finds 8% of people jobless; there are also 3+ million Canadians who are poor, of which 610,000 are children, as reported by an article in The Economist.

[pullquote]We believe the neo-liberal theory of trickle down economics so deeply that we often fail to internalize clear signs of its potential to create dependency and poverty.[/pullquote]

And Canada seems to have a poor record when it comes to children. As an article from Street Level Consulting Ltd. reports – a counseling and consulting company set in Calgary, Alberta:

Despite a period of unparalleled economic expansion in the mid 1990s, this decade was one of failed expectations and broken promises for children and their families…[A]t a time when governments had a growing capacity to invest in a long-term vision for children — as they had promised to do— they chose instead to cut taxes and dismantle much of the social system that protected families.

According to an activist group called Campaign 2000, in 2010 the rate of child poverty was as bad as two decades ago.

Public spending cuts have also been criticized by various circles. In Canada, part of the reason why child poverty was high through the ‘80s and ‘90s and why it remains there today, is because massive public spending cuts was the prescribed medicine for a sickly economy, which was being challenged in those decades by recessions.

The 1980s’ blow was mildly softened by government spending still covering some areas, but the ‘90s’ cuts went blood-deep: federal and provincial cuts to employment insurance and social assistance gutted the social safety net and it inflated the magnitude and duration of poverty. Today, after the brutal 2008 – 2010 recession, around 48% of the jobless continue to cope without jobless benefits.

The nature of the Canadian Social Welfare System also seems to be like a boulder weighing down people trying to come up for air. Apart from public spending cuts, ‘90s’ policy also required individuals to renounce most of their personal assets in order to qualify for welfare. Though the idea was to make the program available only for the most destitute, an article by the Ottawa Sun reports that “generally people looking for welfare have to spend their retirement savings before they qualify,” with small details varying from province to province.

In the same article, John Rook, Chairperson of the National Council of Welfare, argues that with low asset limits, low-earning exemptions and low welfare rates people become trapped and doomed to precarious financial situations, “especially…single people”. Adopting a program like Manitoba’s, where families can keep up to $16,000 in savings, is something Rook has recommended to other provinces.

Poverty, like religion, is usually discussed very superficially, lest people’s politics get in the way and cause fall-outs. Though we recognize it is a cancer, the boulder is often left unturned in a casual setting due to our political ambivalence. Summoned in a formal manner, such as by an Economist or a Politician, the topic usually gets muddled in a political swamp.

Take Ecuador once again. Former President Osvaldo Hurtado, of the political right, undermines 64% of the electorate that by all accounts legitimately approved a 2008 referendum calling for a Constitutional Amendment by incumbent President Rafael Correa, a left-leaning politician, when he unfoundedly asserts that the election was won through “control of advertising and propaganda, manipulation of voters, and sophisticated election frauds.”

He also insists that President Correa is attempting to create a Dictatorship – like Chavez’s, he says – despite the fact that since his coming to power $15+ billion have been reinvested in public works, helping reduce poverty by almost 6% from 2009 to 2011, as reported by Prensa Latina.

This political division has capped much of the progress the world could have experienced otherwise. Precisely because Economic Liberalization has reached such staggering heights and complexity, writes J.W. Smith, an independent Economist, “few of today’s powerful are aware of the waste and destruction created by the continuation of this neo-mercantilist struggle for markets.”

And it’s not just the powerful. Our personal economic advancement has conditioned us to subconsciously defend this way of life (part of the reason why, like poverty, we abhor socialism) and in the process to continue reproducing the conditions for global poverty.

The framework within which we work and look for answers to the problem of poverty is designed to alleviate the problem – not to fix it – and hope to get better.

But this is just a bandage over a gash…what happens when the gash deepens and the outpouring blood overtakes the bandage?

LIBERALIZING POVERTY
Like a powerful avalanche, globalization grows massively as it goes and its force is like a stream overtaking us all. We can’t help but giggle with excitement at the idea of connecting with virtually everyone around the world through our keyboards. The economic impact it’s had on our lives practically tickles us silly. But the avalanche has also trapped many under the rubble.

While its advantages are magnified, the repercussions of Free-er Trade amongst countries are vaguely pointed out as sad but inevitable. Though consumers save money as rabid competition between Canadian and foreign companies ensues, we often ignore that people will inevitably be let go as companies close and outsource to Third World nations, where workers can be paid a fraction of Canadian laborers’ wages for the exact same work.

While it is almost a worthwhile endeavor to lay-off Canadian workers in order to provide poorer people with paid work, paying them meager wages for back-breaking and often life-threatening and environmentally-unsound work seems counter-intuitive. A more pressing issue, however, is the fact that locals are often more than willing to do the work in the face of absolute poverty.

In Ecuador President Correa has put forth an initiative to leave 846 million barrels of petroleum ($7 billion worth) untapped in the Yasuní National Park, “the most bio-diverse swathe of rainforest on earth.” This would avoid 407 million tones of CO2 emissions and help raise life-expectancy levels. However, ravaged by absolute hunger and poverty, locals from bordering towns often have confused feelings about it as many feel that any income supersedes no income, a National Park, or the environment.

A destitute and uneducated people, these locals fail to understand neo-liberal economics as the root of their poverty. Coca, for instance, one of the destitute towns bordering the Yasuní National Park, has demonstrated impressive economic growth since the 1960s, when Texaco struck oil there. In true capitalist spirit, the government of the time took a hands-off approach, boasting a growing employment rate thanks to the private company’s interest in the land. The result, as reported by Enrique Morales, Director of Environment for the local provincial government, has been an over-dependent population on companies causing the very deforestation, contamination, and uncontrolled immigration that maintains locals poor and unhealthy.

The contaminated areas and the excess waste were left to be attended – as a paying job, thank god – by the locals. Cleaning contaminated oil spills (as much as 3,000 cubic meters a year), digging trenches, and clearings roads have become their life-savers.

It has also been widely recognized by many circles in the world that neo-liberal economic policies pushed on the world by the IMF and the World Bank, like for example the Washington Consensus and the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), have reproduced the conditions necessary for poverty to take root and perpetuated economic crises around the world.

To receive loans from these institutions, countries have given up tremendous amounts of sovereignty and autonomy. Just like Canada was pushed to make public spending cuts in the ‘80s and ‘90s by the IMF to make the country more business-attractive, poor countries have historically agreed to cut public spending on social programs and give tax-cuts to wealthy individuals to foment foreign investment, which has caused local businesses to compete with multinational corporations and come out on the losing end.

If globalization is indeed like an avalanche engulfing us all, the worse ones off have got to be the ones at the bottom – the Third World – which will most likely be saved last.

THE TOP, THE BOTTOM, AND THE POWERFUL
Though the USSR’s socio-cultural experiment may have had its roots in a Marxist notion of universal equality, the beast grew so out of control that it eventually confused equality with uniformity. Because it sought to brutally quell any sense of personal, creative expression or dissidence, USSR Socialism came to be internationally recognized as a system of mind control directed by oppressive dictators.

Today, our recognition that we are all born with different mental and physical capabilities, different interests and, perhaps most importantly, into different socio-economic and political backgrounds, has allowed the entrepreneurial spirit to soar and to cause huge socio-economic progress. And the Capitalist Economic System thrives on this.

But what happens when this spirit soars too high? What happens when, in our consumerist society, individual interests of those at the top trump the individual needs of those at the bottom?

Despite a global economic upsurge in the last two centuries, the gap between the rich and the poor has paradoxically grown larger. It seems the entrepreneurial spirit has had a runaway effect, allowing few individuals to consume, own and control an increasingly larger share of the economic pie than the majority of the world does.

The World Bank Global Poverty Estimate puts around 80% of the world under $10-a-day living standards, which includes much of the First World. To put this in perspective: 76.6% of the world’s goods are consumed by the Top 20%, while the Bottom 80% shares a dismal 14% of the world. In the U.S. alone, the top 1% earns more than the bottom 40%, part of why in 2009 almost 44 million Americans (nearly 15%) lived in poverty.

Inequality and polarization help reproduce poverty. As the world continues to adopt unfettered neo-liberalism, a larger section of it finds itself in its throes. Indeed, a UN Habitat’s State of the World’s Cities in 2008-2009 report found that India, as many other Third World countries, is becoming more unequal as a direct result of economic liberalization and globalization.

The same report also found that economic growth exacerbates poverty in more unequal places rather than reduce it. For example, in the U.S. – where it’s been proven that some cities are as unequal as African and Latin American cities – social upward mobility is damn near impossible. In a study done by The Equality Trust in 2009, the U.S. was at the low end of the spectrum for social mobility when compared with 40 other rich countries. In Scandinavian countries, according to the GINI index, which measures the equality of income distribution in a nation from 0 to 1, the equality rates are around the 0.23 mark, placing them near the top of the same graph.

In today’s unequal societies, the higher echelons have created their own communities, their own schools, their own health centers, their own shopping malls, all in an attempt to maintain separated from those of the lower classes, whom the former fear may at any moment harm or rob them. This has vital psychological effects. The lower classes may foster feelings of resentment, of inferiority and even of antagonism, which as many studies have proved can and does lead to higher rates of poverty and crime.

The answer is not in gating ourselves off. As Michael Camdessus, the former head of the IMF and a hard-line conservative suggested, the widening gaps between rich and poor is “morally outrageous, economically wasteful and potentially socially explosive.”

Particularly explosive is the effect that inequality has on access to life-opportunities. Despite the fact that we are all humans with the same rights, concentration of wealth and inequality drives a wedge between the elite and the layman, and it gives the former more access to life opportunities than the latter.

Though various sources have undisputedly proved that education and health are imperative to socio-economic progress, access to these two continues to be the hardest thing for poor people to have. A Business Week Magazine article reported in 2002 that the U.S. ranked 10th out of 17 industrialized countries in literacy rates, part of why there is so much inequality. The same article reported that the largest chunk of those people who had no access to education or to very poor education were visible minorities and new immigrants – precisely two of the poorest groups in that country.

In another article in the Street Level Consulting Ltd. website, a study from Kevin Lee, from the Canadian Council on Social Development, is cited, concluding that “persons with less than high school education were more likely to be poor than those with a post-secondary level [of] education.”

The blow is 100-fold in the Third World because as a Rural Poverty Report 2011 states, although urbanization has historically been on the rise, “poverty remains largely a rural problem, and a majority of the world’s poor will live in rural areas for many decades to come.” This is the case in Ecuador, where the largest segment of the country’s population includes peasants and subsistence farmers, informal sector vendors and agribusiness employees. President Correa’s administration is fighting to bring education and health centers to these historically ignored areas as well as the favoritism shown to urban schools over vocational and manual skills schools when it comes to public funding.

Because where Economic Power is concentrated so is Political Power, and against a global background of political bickering, those with economic power seem to have the greatest leverage. As such, the privatization of most services and programs has been on the rise, including education and, in a tentative move not yet solidified in Canada, health, too.

The access to education in industrialized nations is getting ever more difficult. In Canada, a four year university degree in say, Political Science, will cost around $25,000 – $30,000; depending on the program and the institution, the cost can go up to $80,000 – $100,000. In London and other parts of Europe massive and often violent protests have broken out because of austerity measures implemented to alleviate the economic blows they’ve suffered – measures that ultimately affected students, amongst other parts of society.

If indeed the knowledge economy is on the rise and in effect generating higher paying jobs requiring more acute levels of knowledge and skills, the number of people that are able to access these jobs is decreasing, and most of those who can access them must indebt themselves and their families for the better part of their life.

Against this background it is hard to envision any progress in the field of education and health – specifically, in making them more accessible to people so that they may pull themselves out of poverty – until a radical approach to it is taken.

In the spirit of true cooperation – political, economic and social – it would bode well for the Western Capitalist World to observe and pick some of the best aspects from their lifelong sworn enemies, and for the re-emerging 21st Century Socialist Bloc to return the favor.

LEARNING TO DANCE TOGETHER: DRAWING LESSONS AND CONCLUSIONS

Real Progress in the Left
In the 21st century, the Latin American continent has finally begun to work together after centuries of regional conflicts stemming from racial and political prejudices. Yet, sadly, because of that political separatism, clear and evident advances made in that part of the world are obscured, undermined and, in the most extreme cases, outright denied.

As we saw above, despite the gradual progress that Ecuador has been making in terms of reducing poverty and providing more social security to the most vulnerable groups of society, figureheads like ex-presidents continue to undermine the progress, calling the president a cunning liar and in the process bashing Venezuela’s progress, as well.

But claims that there is no democracy in Venezuela have been continuously debunked under overwhelming evidence of the contrary. After 12 elections since 1998 (including referendums and presidential elections) that have all echoed the people’s wishes in the returning/continuation of President Hugo Chavez, the claim is simply a bad joke. In an article written in Foreign Affairs Magazine, a report is cited from the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, where it is stated that between “2002 and 2006 Venezuela decreased poverty by 18.4 percent and extreme poverty by 12.3 percent.”

The fact is that the 44% figure of government spending in 2007, coupled with massive contributions that the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, has committed to the country, including $1.7 billion in 2007 for social programs, have propelled the nation forward. (And if we’re talking reinvestment into the country, Canada’s very own Newfoundland has helped to cut its poverty levels by half (to 6.5%) precisely with royalties from oil and mining companies.)

Similarly, the claims that Ecuador is a dictatorship also crumble in front of the evidence. As mentioned above, since President Correa’s administration took power, $15+ billion have been reinvested in the country, reducing poverty slowly though gradually. Also, in 2011 just over 15% of the nation’s GDP rather than half goes towards paying a foreign debt it claims has amassed through SAPs and adherence to the Washington Consensus; the rest is reinvested into the country. Unemployment rates have dropped and currently reside at 5%. And with the state funding post-secondary education, the literacy rate is now at an impressive 91% of the population.

The Cuban Socialist Model has also made great strides forward. Rather than focusing on economic growth alone as a determinant of social progress, the government has stressed the importance of social development policies and the Central Role of the State in implementing and enforcing them. Though the Cuban government has been widely criticized around the world and denounced by many as a dictatorship, the country has made impressive steps forward in terms of reducing absolute poverty, providing social security and, most importantly, creating a society where all individuals share an aspiration to equal outcomes despite their income levels, precisely because of the level of access to all of society’s services, such as education and health, and the ability to voice their opinions at local committees.

Under the Human Development Index, Cuba has gradually been climbing since 1998 and is currently 50th, meaning it is among highly developed nations. In the Human Development and Equity Index, Cuba is among the top five countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the 1990s, as the USSR and most of the Socialist Bloc lost momentum, Cuba went through what is now known as the “special period” – an era of tremendous economic hardships that saw the re-emergence of relative poverty, something that since the Revolution’s triumph in ‘59 had been practically eradicated.

The volatility of the next years, coupled with the illegal economic and commercial embargo that the United States has sanctioned on Cuba since practically the outset of the Revolution, exacerbated the problem. People nevertheless had access to doctors, particularly the rural areas where after the revolution a medical center had been built in practically every sector of the country, even in the remote mountains; they still had access to free education; and food was provided to a certain extent by the State. Things were tough, definitely, but manageable because of the social spending that provided safety nets for people displaced or simply not able to find work. According to the UNDP Human Poverty Index, in 2007 the people below the poverty line were at 4.7%, down from 5.1% in 1997. Unemployment was at an impressive (and continues to be below) 1.9%, down from 7.1% in 1997.

The government had also pledged to reduce the rate of hunger by half between 1990 and 2015, and followed through by increasing the food availability between 1999 and 2003, from an average of 3007 kilocalories to 3165 per capita per day, effectively bringing the malnutrition rate down to 2% of the population. By 2007, the food levels had increased by 37% and the protein levels were increased by 25% thanks to government farming programs.

Social programs also see to it that the most vulnerable groups of society – children, women, elderly and the disabled – never go without food. Indeed, through the entire country not a single person lives on the street or goes hungry any night. Cuba has perhaps the best health record in the world, and some of the best professionals come out of their free education system which allows anyone who wants to enter and who has high enough grades to do so.

The government increased the number of Municipal Universities during this period by 700. For those who don’t get into universities, the government has built vocational and trade schools all over the country, particularly in remote, rural areas. For instance, a new program called “Superación Integral” (Integral Advancement) has been implemented around the country so that anyone from 18 to 29 years of age that is not working or attending school can learn computer or other vocational skills.

Income redistribution has also played a key role in Cuban society. Apparent in the GINI Index is the fact that equality among people has risen, being at 0.56 in 1953 and 0.22 in 1986; the ‘special period’s’ economic reforms caused the figure to rise to 0.33 in ’98. Factors like the declining purchasing power of salaries due to price hikes, the introduction of the double currency, and the dual market system with different prices, currencies and qualities of product, amongst others, contributed to the rising inequality in the country. Also, income sources became diversified and salary scale gradually separated from work effort. Inequality in terms of material well-being had begun surfacing.

Shortcomings on the Left and Coaching from the Right
In a study cited in the Journal of the Research Group on Socialism and Democracy, a sociologist Mayra Espina found that:
Without producing a mechanism for restoring the relations of exploitation or of private property on a large scale, the Cuban [‘90s] reforms…led to re-stratification, providing the context for the growth of poverty as a social problem, the expansion of the at-risk segments of the population, and a general trend of widening socioeconomic inequalities.

Economist Viviana Togores is also cited, who found that about 49% of the Cuban population fell under the category of income-poverty when measured under a Baskets of Goods approach. Unemployment is at a mere 1% as of 2008, so this has nothing to do with it. Nominal wages have not kept up with increases in consumer prices – this is the main reason. Coupled with other hardships, such as having too many dependents and on the levels of inequality that lamentably still exist in the country also add to the fire.

The University of Havana has found that there are inter and intra regional inequalities, like for example the quality of housing, access to consumer goods and some social services, and in respect to the level of socio-economic development provided to some regions over others. It further states that a large part of these problems are caused by spatial inequalities inherited from before the Revolution and because of controversial and faulty economic reforms taken in the 1990s. In any case Togores’ study finds that the “redistributive effect of social expenditures – in education, health, social assistance, etc. – while it does not compensate for the loss of purchasing power, does have a favorable effect on the population, especially those in more needy sectors.”

And that is perhaps Cuba’s main lesson to export – a commitment to work from the ground up, to help develop the poorest individuals first. The safety net provided for workers and their families and for people whose needs aren’t being met because of health reasons, has grown stronger over the decades and has helped to sustain a healthy and educated society, albeit taking small economic strides forward.

In 2007, for instance, out of 11+ million Cubans, social security beneficiaries were 1,571,924, and the number of people receiving social assistance was at 595,181. Contrary to what most of us believe in the West, this does not create lazy people asking for hand-outs from the government. Some Cubans who receive assistance still work, but need the assistance in the face of the economic hardships. Others cannot work due to health circumstances.

Under the administration of Raul Castro new steps have been taken to open up the markets a bit more. A reform to allow the setting up of small businesses – which do have to pay a tax – and which looks to reduce unnecessary bureaucratic power in the country has recently been passed. The main objective is to reduce the government’s roles in areas of agriculture, retail and construction. The buying and selling of automobiles and homes is also being discussed.

The vision is to allow small, private businesses to step in and inject a much needed jolt into a stagnating economy. In an attempt to reverse the separation of salary-scale from work-effort, farmers no longer receive equal pay from the government, but rather “moral incentives have given way to productivity-related pay,” according to a BBC article. Over 8,000 plots of unproductive state-owned land are now being leased to individual farmers.

The important thing is that the steps being taken to open up the economy maintain Human Development at their core. The notion of Moral Obligation over Individual Enrichment has been fundamental in the educational system of Cuba. Concerns from all sides of the political spectrum often warn of the potential for the inequality and concentration of power of which we’ve spoken to arise because of these reforms; but as I spoke with many Cubans, the general feeling was one of visible confidence in the sustainability of the values and social development that the Revolution has made possible.

There are other parts of the world that have also shown impressive Human Development records and that have reduced the level of inequality and of poverty to record-low levels. The Scandinavian countries, for instance, have been historically revered for not only their neutrality but also for their commitment to social programs and for the high standard of living that practically everyone enjoys. Redistribution of income levels are in big part to thank for this.

Income equality across the Scandinavian countries has, in average, brought everyone to the same level-playing field, therefore giving them all access to the same opportunities. China also has strong social institutions that offer the most vulnerable sectors safety nets to keep from falling into absolute poverty. Of course, the democratic record in the country is questionable, but the fact that people in China do have access to more social assistance than we do here is undeniable.

Given the magnitude of the economic growth the last couple of centuries have been endowed with, the global poverty that continues to exist is appalling. In this new age – and in these dire circumstances – it is time for us to divorce ourselves from political prejudices and past antagonisms that hinder any compromise and any progress.

Currently, the United States is a prime example of what happens when two opposing political ideologies solidify a concrete wall between them and neither side can get through. As things stand, it seems the President has fully caved in to the Republicans as the so-called “balanced approach” seems to only cut nearly $3 trillion in social programs while refusing to raise any revenue by taxing the richest individuals in the country. If working together is what is prescribed for the world to reduce poverty, looking at current U.S. politics may be the most venomous drink we can take.

Some poets believe that only through constant personal turmoil and emotional agony can their creative-self emerge. The world is reaching such poetic levels of poverty and insecurity that time has come for its inhabitants to work together. Long has it been since we realized the Economic Prowess that Capitalism boasts; long has it also been since we witnessed the Juggernaut that Soviet Socialism was. But in this new century of hope and progress, it is due time for us to realize that where the former fails in social development, the latter compliments it; and likewise, where Socialism impedes economic prosperity and individual growth, Capitalism picks up the tab.

ARB Team
Arbitrage Magazine
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