[Tuco-bad]

Free trade with the developing world is good for everyone concerned.

Except for U.S. workers who lose their jobs, or see their income stagnate.

But free trade is good for business, which is why business-funded Cato Institute supports free trade.

[Illbay]

How fortunate we are that our ancestors in colonial America, and then in the newly-fledged United States, weren't hampered by economists. We'd still be living in log cabins, skinning squirrels and makin' moonshine (and babies).

Fortunately, there was no one at that time "enlightened" enough to tell us that what WE needed was an entrenched bureaucracy and unlimited handouts from our sugar-daddies in Europe. As a result, we're the most prosperous nation in the history of the world.

What a coincidence.

[laredo44]

Never heard of Peter Bauer? That’s because his analysis of poverty in the developing world and his solution to it weren’t shared by the political and media establishment or by mainstream development economists, such as Gunnar Myrdal and John Kenneth Galbraith. They all favor socialism for the “third world.”

Myrdal and Galbraith, fools that they were, didn't restrict their damage to the third world. Myrdal's ideas bankrupt the Swedes and Great Society types like Galbraith sentenced two generations of African Americans to poverty as wards of the state. These men and their ideas should be forever enshrined in the same Hall of Infamy with the perpetrators of 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and other atrocities.

[avg_freeper]

There was a very good documentary on PBS earlier called "Commanding Heights".

It discusses the failures of state planned economies seen in the last century.

The entire documentary in three parts is now on their website:
Commanding Heights

I have found it to be very informative about economic issues.

[OfByForThePeople]

Peter Bauer could run rings around John Kenneth Galbraith [and he did]. The media just never noticed. I'm sad to say I didn't even know he died last month.

[Semper Paratus]

Hong Kong was a British possession with little democracy until 1997

What?

[Teacher317]

A recent post that reminded me of the destructiveness of the Left, and the blessings of Liberty:

"Fix your governments first. Aid to Zimbabwe, which was a food exporter until recently, makes no sense whatsoever with Robert Mugabe running the country."

As an example of what can be done, recall the so-called "Point 4" program during the Truman administration.

Truman promised what is now known as the Third World with aid and food under the caveat that they also had to learn and apply modern agricultural methods -- a program that was spearheaded by our land-grant colleges.

Accordingly, the Ag School at my alma mater, Oklahoma A&M (at the time), formed a relationship with Ethiopia around 1950. Okie State set up and helped staff what became known as "Ethiopia A&M", while also starting a network of experimental farms and a nationwide extension service.

By 1960, just ten years later, hunger had largely disappeared and Ethiopia was a net food exporter!

This success was followed by a Marxist revolution...and Ethiopians have been starving ever since.

In today's political climate, this approach would never work, of course. It involves a presumption that the U.S. system of agriculture and capitalism is superior to the indigenous methods...and that would be "judgmental", would it not?

And these tinpot dictators don't want practical assistance, anyway. They want cash! Like Democrats, they've no interest in solving the issue, only in prolonging their stay in the welfare line.