A "filosofia da miséria" e os seus aliados

"Support for more foreign aid, debt relief and debt forgiveness comes from all sides and is becoming more vocal. From rock stars, to the “anti globals”, to religious organizations, to various advocates for developing countries, to the UN. The pressure is mounting and the recent G8 meeting has devoted much attention (or paid lip service, depending on what side you are) to the question of aid. The “story” put forward by the pro aid movement is simple and appealing. Differences in income per capita in the world are extreme; globalization is increasing income inequality; the poor are becoming poorer and poorer and they starve to pay their debt. So they need more aid and more debt forgiveness, since the rich of the world get rich at the expenses of the poor. Aid and debt forgiveness will lift the poor countries out of poverty.

This story is almost completely wrong. The only part that is true is that differences in per capita income are extreme. All the rest is false. Globalization is not responsible for the poverty of the third world. Corrupt and inefficient governments of developing countries are. There is not one shred of evidence showing that more openness to trade increases poverty, but anti global do not need facts to interfere with their ideology. More trade makes both sides of the transaction wealthier. Even if globalization did increase inequality, a big if, since nobody has shown it convincingly, it still would reduce poverty; that is, it would increase the income of both the poor and the rich side of than trade transaction, but more the side of the rich. The anti global alternative would be to make both sides poorer. Inequality may be lower, perhaps , but poverty higher for sure. This does not seem appealing.

In fact it is simply not true that in the last decades all the poor countries have become poorer. There are many examples of countries that have lifted themselves out of poverty, from South Korea to Costa Rica to Botswana. Others have squandered immense wealth of natural resources like Nigeria or Venezuela, the latter, incidentally, recently following protectionist policies. There is no evidence that increasing foreign aid to government of developing countries improves their economic performance and lifts them out of poverty permanently. In fact, more aid is likely to increase corruption, because it augments the amount of resources over which elites fight over. The same goes for debt forgiveness: its only effect is to encourage countries to borrow more and more, often for the benefits of local elites. A recent widely cited book by William Easterly a former economist at the World Bank and an expert of aid and development provides mountain of shocking stories about local elites squandering foreign assistance. The pro aid coalition should read it carefully.

Those who really care about reducing poverty should be much more willing to put the blame in the right place: the government and the bureaucracy of many developing countries, especially in Africa and Latin America. Traditionally, instead, foreign aid has paid no attention to the virtues of the receiving countries and has not discriminated in favor of the “good governments”. Donors have typically favored their former colonies, irrespectively of the nature of their regimes. In fact one of the worst offenders in this respect is France. (...)

Before giving more aid or debt forgiveness two conditions need to be met. One is an “institutional conditionality.” Only governments that show some serious progress in reducing inefficiency, robbery of public property and corruption, should receive any aid.

Unfortunately in most cases the poorest countries, where aid is more needed, are also the most corrupt. Then a second condition must apply: in these cases aid flow should be kept completely out of public channels and administered by non local groups not associated with local elites and governments.

Finally, other polices of rich countries may be much more beneficial than aid. The main one is to stop protecting the agriculture of the rich. In fact the worst enemies of the poor countries of the world are the farmers of the rich countries. Defeating the lobby of the French farmers should be the top priority of the pro poor coalition of Europe. We suspect, instead, that the anti global will care more about the charm of French agricultural towns, threatened by globalization, that is, by the agriculture of struggling poor countries.

Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi, The Politics of Foreign Aid, September 2002.

Dois anos depois, Tony Blair e Bob Geldof continuam a desviar as atenções da origem do problema (o proteccionismo dos países mais ricos) e a contribuir para a propagação da miséria da filosofia neo-marxista, que só servirá para prolongar indefinidamente a miséria nos países mais pobres. Até quando?