>When there is a large GDP and a high growth rate of 9% a year, you
>will say that
>the economy is great and the financial officer will be proud of it. But I will
>still say that the economy is bad. It is because poor people's
>living standards
>haven't been raised. They don't have work. They have been left out
>of prosperity.
Not all poor people don't have work; lots of them work very hard and are still poor.
It's not the case that GDP growth does nothing for the poor. More poor people can read and live longer lives than poor people 100 years ago. But over the shorter term, the last 20 years have been really awful for the world's poorest. Absolute poverty in Mexico - measured by ability to meet basic nutritional needs - is worse now than in the Salinas days. Poverty rates are up in lots of Latin American countries despite GDP growth. Global income distribution keeps polarizing.
I'd be very interested to hear if poorer Chinese think they're better or worse off than 20 years ago. Do people like what you have to say?
Doug