O'Neill: "WB has driven poor countries into a ditch"

Bradford DeLong jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu
Thu Feb 28 09:44:41 PST 2002



>Thanks for your comments. However, your answers below precisely
>prove my point:
>you just oversimplified your characterization. You can lecture me (or us) on
>this, but according to your statement, I could characterize the US, UK, Japan,
>and whatever country I can think of as "state-led development led
>by a corrupt
>anti-developmental state" at SOME POINT IN HISTORY AND under certain
>circumstances, can't I?

Corrupt, yes. Anti-developmental, no. From the very beginning of the Meiji Restoration and ever since, no matter how fierce the faction fights within Japan have been there has been universal agreement that the goal is "a rich country." Possibly you could characterize the Attlee government and its successors as "anti-developmental": the ideas that nationalization would allow for the reduction of prices of coal, steel, transport, and so forth to marginal cost and for investment decisions based on social needs rather than current cash flow went down the drain very quickly, and were replaced by the idea that the accounts of state-owned enterprises were a good place to look for savings to seek budgetary targets.

I don't think you could characterize the U.S. at any time as an "anti-developmental state": even at its worst, the Interstate Commerce Commission's railroad regulations have no counterpart to Juan Peron's doubling of the staffing levels of Argentina's railroads...

Brad DeLong



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