>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.
>
As I said, I don't think it's possible to quantify the benefits of economic
imperialism. If all the countries of the world attained a rough equality,
then we would be trading raw goods and finished goods on an equal basis with
Southern countries. Since these countries would not be focused primarily on
producing basic commodities for export, these goods would be more rare and
more expensive. At the same time, the kinds of products we export would be
more common and therefore cheaper. To make a serious effort to calculate
the benefits of imperialism, you would have to remove from our current
economy most of the raw goods we get from the South, as well as most of the
sales we make in finished goods back to the South. You would also have to
take into consideration the greatly reduced cost of production currently
derived from exploiting Southern labor and trashing Southern land, air, and
water. On top of that, we would no longer have so much cheap immigrant
labor to depend on. Once these benefits are removed from our economy, their
absence would have a ripple effect. Many of the people in the "knowledge"
industry who are responsible for so much of our recent economic success
would instead be busy working in mines or factories or fields or in the
homes of the rich as servants and maids. Or maybe they would just be
unemployed in this sick and stagnant economy. It's this ripple effect that
makes the calculation all but impossible. We would be living in a totally
different world. Exploitation would come home. We would all be subjected
to police-state repression. This would further reduce our standard of
living.
It's to avoid this situation that we go to so much trouble to keep the South undeveloped and undemocratic. This is why America spends 5% of its GDP on a global military presence (and why Europe puts up with permanent military occupation). We get a lot back on that investment. It could be a two-fold return. It could be a ten-fold return. Nobody knows. It's what has enabled us in the last century to extend the "Western" frontier beyond our borders, without which capitalism, saddled by its growth-imperative, would be finished.
Ted Dace