And now for Gore?

[Brad De Long]

>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>So now the left tries to keep the developing economies of the world as poor
>>as possible--lest they pollute?
>
>Speaking for this leftist, I think it'd be far better if the human and
>physical resources of the so-called Third World were devoted first to
>feeding, clothing, housing, and educating Third Worlders, rather than
>competing to serve foreign markets. I'm not arguing for autarky by any
>means, but export orientation is a colonial economic strategy. It turns my
>stomach to read the propaganda from the World Bank saying that comparative
>advantage of the poor is their labor.
>
>Doug

I would agree with you were it not for the fact that in the broad Latin
America (and Africa, and India) have done so badly in relative (and, in the
case of Africa, absolute) terms since 1960 and East Asia (and southern
Europe) have done so well. Import substitutions appears to be death to
growth. Or, more accurately, import substitution pursued so far as to make
it very difficult to import capital goods appears to be death to growth
(East Asians grew very rapidly even with high tariffs on consumer
goods--but they let capital goods in on close to free-trade terms)...

Brad DeLong