>Imports from countries with GDP per worker levels less than half
>that of the U.S. amount to 0.9% of U.S. GDP. Even if all those goods
>were obtained by the U.S. at a price of only 1/3 their fair value,
>that still means that less than 2% of the American standard of
>living comes from exploitation of the Third World.
Has anyone ever tried to quantify the contribution of imperialism to the First World standard of living? The jokers in the Maoist Internationalist Movement - who, I'm told by people who knew them in Ann Arbor are mainly upper-middle and upper-class kids looking for a fresh reason to hate the American working class - claim to have done it, but they'll only share the info if you pay 'em $10. I don't doubt at all that imperialism contributed a lot to Europe's initial rise to wealth, but what's the contribution today? The MIMsters claim that most value production goes on in the Third World, with the First World (including the working class) living off that value. Seems to me that the poor countries are poor mainly because little value production goes on there (another illustration of Robinson's law, that under K'ism, the only thing worse than being exploited is not being exploited). So who's right?
Doug