Growth Instability and Inequality
The impact of these economic links has a prompted enormous debate and controversy. Amid the swirl of contending opinion one thing that seemed reasonably clear was economic globalization accompanied and arguably helped generate the most remarkable court of economic growth in world history. On a global level, total world output grew from a value of $7 trillion in 1950 to $73 trillion in 2009 and on a per capita basis from $2,652 to $10,728. This represents an immense rapid and unprecedented creation of wealth with a demonstrable impact on human welfare. Life expectancies expanded almost everywhere infant mortality declined and literacy increased.
Far more problematic have been the instability of this emerging world economy and the distribution of the wealth it has generated. Amid overall economic growth peridics crises and setbacks have shaped recent world history. Soaring oil prices contributed to a severe stock market each in 1973-1974 and great hardship for many developing countries.
But nothing since the great depression more clearly illustrated the unsettling consequences of global connectedness in the absence of global regulations than the old wide economic contractions that begin in 2008. An inflated housing market or bulb in the U.S. collapsed triggering millions home foreclosures growing unemployment the tightening of credit and declining consumers spending. Soon this will rippled around the world and Iceland rapidly growing economy collapsed almost overnight as three major banks failed the countrys' stock market dropped by 80% and its currency lost more than 70% of its value all in a single week. In Africa reduced demand for exports threatened to halt a promising decade of economic progress. Sierra Leone for example some 90% of the country's diamond mine workers lost their jobs. The slowing of China's booming economy led up to unemployment for one in seven of the country's urban migrants forcing them to return to already overcrowded rural eras.
Visual source 23.1
Globalization has bound the various peoples of the planet more tightly together and in some respects has made us more alike. Almost all of us for example live in a nation state and see the health wealth and prosperity that modern science and technology promise. And there are other ways we are different divided and conflicted. There is a big gap between wealth and the rich countries of the global recent rift in the human community.
The experiences of globalization for some peoples living in Asia, Africa etc has been that of working in foreign owned productions facilities. Companies in wealthier countries have often found it advantages to build such facilities in places where labor is less expensive or environmental regulations are less restrictive. The worst in them in terms is child labor low pay few benefits and dangerous working conditions have been sweatshops. Abuses generated an international movement challenging those conditions.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Monday, April 18, 2016
chapter 22 documents
progress islam- In the early 21st century Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaeda organization launched the attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001 and called for the overthrow of compromised governments in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Islamic world. A lot of Muslims shared a bin Laden's outage at the sorry state of many Muslim societies as well as his opposition to heavy U.S. backing for the state of Israel and to American military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bin Laden and his followers were certainly not the only voices laying claim to Islam in the aftermath of 9/11. All across the Islamic world others argues that Muslims could retain their distinctive religious sensibility while embracing democracy women rights technological progress freedom of thought and religious pluralism. Thinkers were following the tradition of the 19th century Islamic modernism even as they recalled earlier centuries of Islamic intellectual and scientific achievement and religious tolerance.
Abandoning islam
Most muslims has been evolution of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali immigrant to the Netherlands and later to the U.S. who repudiated much of her Somali culture and Islamic faith. She was born in 1969, she was the daughter of a prominent political opponent of the Somali government. Fleeing the country with her family, she spent much of her childhood in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya where she was attracted for a time to a strict form of Islam. As a teenager she was willingly wore a hijab the traditional covering often prescribed for muslim women. Later in 1992 she had an arranged marriage to a man she regarded as a bigot and an idiot and found political asylum in the Netherlands. She was disowned by her father. In the Netherlands she flourished moving from work as a cleaner to the of a translator in a refugee center and obtaining a masters degree in the process.
Bin Laden and his followers were certainly not the only voices laying claim to Islam in the aftermath of 9/11. All across the Islamic world others argues that Muslims could retain their distinctive religious sensibility while embracing democracy women rights technological progress freedom of thought and religious pluralism. Thinkers were following the tradition of the 19th century Islamic modernism even as they recalled earlier centuries of Islamic intellectual and scientific achievement and religious tolerance.
Abandoning islam
Most muslims has been evolution of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali immigrant to the Netherlands and later to the U.S. who repudiated much of her Somali culture and Islamic faith. She was born in 1969, she was the daughter of a prominent political opponent of the Somali government. Fleeing the country with her family, she spent much of her childhood in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya where she was attracted for a time to a strict form of Islam. As a teenager she was willingly wore a hijab the traditional covering often prescribed for muslim women. Later in 1992 she had an arranged marriage to a man she regarded as a bigot and an idiot and found political asylum in the Netherlands. She was disowned by her father. In the Netherlands she flourished moving from work as a cleaner to the of a translator in a refugee center and obtaining a masters degree in the process.
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
chapter 22
All across the world efforts to crate political order had to contend with a set of common conditions. Populations were exploding and expectations for independence ran very high often exceeding the available resources. Many developing countries were culturally very diverse with a little loyalty to the central state. Nonetheless public employment mushroomed as the state assumed greater responsibility for economic development. In some conditions of widespread poverty and weak private economies groups and individuals sought to capture the state or part of it both for the salaries and status it offered and for the opportunities for private enrichment that public office provide. This was for setting in which developing countries had to hammer out the new political system.
As conical rule drew to a close European authorities in many places attempted to transplant democratic institutions to colonies they had long governed with such a have and authoritarian hand. They established legislatures, permitted elections allowed political parties to operate and in general anticipated the development of constitutional parliamentary similar to there own. It was in India that such a policy system established its deepest roots. There Western style democracy including regular elections multiple parties and peaceful changes in the government has been practice almost continuously since independence. But the struggle for independence in India had been a prolonged affair thus providing time for an Indian political leadership to sort itself out. The British began to hand over power in a gradual way well before complete independence was granted in 1947. A large number of Indians had useful administrative to technical skills than was the case elsewhere.
Elsewhere in the colonial world democracy proved a far more fragile transplant. Among the new state of Africa for example a few retained their democratic institutions beyond the initial post independence decade. Many of the apparently popular political parties that had led the struggle for independence lost mass support and were swept away by military.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
chapter 21 and documents
Russia: Revolution in a single year
The communists in Russia , communists came to power back o the revolutionary upheaval that took place within a single year in 1917. The immense pressures of the world war 1 which was going very badly for the Russians, represented the catalyst for that the revolution as the accumulated tensions of Russian society exploded. Much exploited and suffering from wartime shortage, workers men and women alike took to the stets to express their outrage at the incompetence and privileges of the elites. In St. Petersburg, some of 100,000 wives of soldiers demonstrated for bread and peace. Activists from various parties many of them socialist recruited members organized demonstrations, published newspapers and plotted revolutions. By February in 1917 Tsar Nicholas II had lost almost support and was forced to abdicate the throne thus ending the Romanov dynasty, which had ruled Russia for more than three centuries.
This was the social revolution and it quickly demonstrated the inadequacy of the provisional government which had come to power after the tsar abdicated. Consisting of middle class politicians and some moderate socialist leaders that government was divided and ineffectual unable or unwilling to meet the demands of Russia's revolutionary masses. Now it was willing to take Russia out of the war as many were now demanding. Impatience and outrage against the provisional government provided an opening for more radical groups. The most effective were the Bolsheviks a small socialist party with a determined and charismatic leader, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, more commonly known as Lenin. He had long believed that Russia despite its industrial backwardness was nonetheless ready for a socials revolution that would he expect spark further revolutions in the more developed countries of Europe.
During the civil war 1918-1921 the Bolshevik harshly regimented the economy seized grain from angry peasants suppressed nationalist rebellions and perpetrated bloody atrocities as did their enemies as well. But they also integrated many lower class men into the Red Army, as Bolshevik military forces were known and into new local government providing them a fresh avenue of social mobility. By battling foreign troops, the Bolsheviks claimed to be defending Russia from imperialist and protecting the downtrodden masses from their exploiters.
Living through collectivization-
For Russian peasants and the of other nationalities as well the chief experience of Stalinism was collectivization, the enforce brining together of many small scale family farms into a much bigger larger collective farms called kolkhozy. Thus the private ownership of land was largely ended, except for some small plots which peasants could till individually. That process generally began with arrival of outside agitators or community party officials who sought to persuade or necessary to force the villages to enter the kolhoz. They divided peasants into class categories rich peasants were to be excluded from the collective farms as incipient capitalist poor and middle peasants were expected to join.
The communists in Russia , communists came to power back o the revolutionary upheaval that took place within a single year in 1917. The immense pressures of the world war 1 which was going very badly for the Russians, represented the catalyst for that the revolution as the accumulated tensions of Russian society exploded. Much exploited and suffering from wartime shortage, workers men and women alike took to the stets to express their outrage at the incompetence and privileges of the elites. In St. Petersburg, some of 100,000 wives of soldiers demonstrated for bread and peace. Activists from various parties many of them socialist recruited members organized demonstrations, published newspapers and plotted revolutions. By February in 1917 Tsar Nicholas II had lost almost support and was forced to abdicate the throne thus ending the Romanov dynasty, which had ruled Russia for more than three centuries.
This was the social revolution and it quickly demonstrated the inadequacy of the provisional government which had come to power after the tsar abdicated. Consisting of middle class politicians and some moderate socialist leaders that government was divided and ineffectual unable or unwilling to meet the demands of Russia's revolutionary masses. Now it was willing to take Russia out of the war as many were now demanding. Impatience and outrage against the provisional government provided an opening for more radical groups. The most effective were the Bolsheviks a small socialist party with a determined and charismatic leader, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, more commonly known as Lenin. He had long believed that Russia despite its industrial backwardness was nonetheless ready for a socials revolution that would he expect spark further revolutions in the more developed countries of Europe.
During the civil war 1918-1921 the Bolshevik harshly regimented the economy seized grain from angry peasants suppressed nationalist rebellions and perpetrated bloody atrocities as did their enemies as well. But they also integrated many lower class men into the Red Army, as Bolshevik military forces were known and into new local government providing them a fresh avenue of social mobility. By battling foreign troops, the Bolsheviks claimed to be defending Russia from imperialist and protecting the downtrodden masses from their exploiters.
Living through collectivization-
For Russian peasants and the of other nationalities as well the chief experience of Stalinism was collectivization, the enforce brining together of many small scale family farms into a much bigger larger collective farms called kolkhozy. Thus the private ownership of land was largely ended, except for some small plots which peasants could till individually. That process generally began with arrival of outside agitators or community party officials who sought to persuade or necessary to force the villages to enter the kolhoz. They divided peasants into class categories rich peasants were to be excluded from the collective farms as incipient capitalist poor and middle peasants were expected to join.
Monday, April 4, 2016
chapter 20 and documents
The great depression
The most influential change of the postwar decades lay in the great depression. If world war 1 represented the political collapse of Europe this catastrophic downturn suggested that western capitalism was likewise failing. During the nineteenth century that economic system had spurred the most substantial economic growth in the world history and had raised the living standards of millions but to many people it was a troubling system. Never had the flaws of capitalism been so evident or so devastating as during the decade that followed the outbreak of the great depression in 1929. All across the Euro- America this economic system seemed to unravel. On the day that the American stock market initially crashed eleven wall street financiers committed suicide some by jumping out of skyscrapers. Banks closed and many people lost their life savings. Investment dried up world trade dropped by 62% within a few years and businesses contracted when they were unable to sell their products. For ordinary people the worst feature of the great depression was the lost of work. Unemployment soared everywhere and in both Germany and the U.S. it reached 30% or more by the 1932. It spreader from the Americas to Europe and beyond and its continuation for a decade has been complicated economy during the 1920s. In a country untouched by the Great Wa, wartime demand gad greatly stimulated agricultural and industrial capacity. Ending of 1920s its farms and factories were producing more goods than could be sold because of the highly unequal distribution of income meant that many people could not afford to buy the products that American factories were churning out.
The great depression also sharply challenged the government of industrialized capitalist countries which generally had believed that the economy would regulate itself through the market. The markets apparent failure to self correct led many people to look twice at the Soviet Union. There the dispossession of the propertied classes and a state controlled economy had generated an impressive economic growth with almost unemployment in the 1930s even as the capitalist world reeling.
Nation and Race
There are some truths which are obvious the for this reason are not seen or at least not recognized by ordinary people. Every animal mates only with a member of the same species. Any crossing of two being not at exactly the same level produced a medium between the level of the two parents.
The most influential change of the postwar decades lay in the great depression. If world war 1 represented the political collapse of Europe this catastrophic downturn suggested that western capitalism was likewise failing. During the nineteenth century that economic system had spurred the most substantial economic growth in the world history and had raised the living standards of millions but to many people it was a troubling system. Never had the flaws of capitalism been so evident or so devastating as during the decade that followed the outbreak of the great depression in 1929. All across the Euro- America this economic system seemed to unravel. On the day that the American stock market initially crashed eleven wall street financiers committed suicide some by jumping out of skyscrapers. Banks closed and many people lost their life savings. Investment dried up world trade dropped by 62% within a few years and businesses contracted when they were unable to sell their products. For ordinary people the worst feature of the great depression was the lost of work. Unemployment soared everywhere and in both Germany and the U.S. it reached 30% or more by the 1932. It spreader from the Americas to Europe and beyond and its continuation for a decade has been complicated economy during the 1920s. In a country untouched by the Great Wa, wartime demand gad greatly stimulated agricultural and industrial capacity. Ending of 1920s its farms and factories were producing more goods than could be sold because of the highly unequal distribution of income meant that many people could not afford to buy the products that American factories were churning out.
The great depression also sharply challenged the government of industrialized capitalist countries which generally had believed that the economy would regulate itself through the market. The markets apparent failure to self correct led many people to look twice at the Soviet Union. There the dispossession of the propertied classes and a state controlled economy had generated an impressive economic growth with almost unemployment in the 1930s even as the capitalist world reeling.
Nation and Race
There are some truths which are obvious the for this reason are not seen or at least not recognized by ordinary people. Every animal mates only with a member of the same species. Any crossing of two being not at exactly the same level produced a medium between the level of the two parents.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)