Tsunami Economics for Lefty Loons

I don't know where to start with this editorial by George Monbiot in the Guardian.

Monbiot begins with a few self-congratulatory paragraphs before moaning about how we (meaning everyone in the West but him) routinely supress our capacity for emapthy. But the generous response to the tsunamis demonstrates (to him) that we cannot utterly destroy our empathic sense. I think he means this as a compliment, however backhanded. But he goes on to ask what seems to him to be the obvious question:

Why must the relief of suffering, in this unprecedentedly prosperous world, rely on the whims of citizens and the appeals of pop stars and comedians? Why, when extreme poverty could be made history with a minor redeployment of public finances, must the poor world still wait for homeless people in the rich world to empty their pockets?

Jaw, meet floor.

Why must poverty be relieved with public finances? There are plenty of independent organizations assisting with poverty relief. And according to this article, as of last Saturday, UK citizens had donated $115 million -- $20 million more than their own government. Private donations from Germany totalled $40 million -- also more than Germany had committed. And a series of telethons in Sweden raised $60 million.

And what's with the "homeless people" crack (which appears twice in his column)?

Monbiot apparently thinks that money should come from governments (read: taxes) in order for it to count. In this, he's right in line with certain UN officials.

The obvious answer is that governments have other priorities. And the one that leaps to mind is war. If the money they have promised to the victims of the tsunami still falls far short of the amounts required, it is partly because the contingency fund upon which they draw in times of crisis has been spent on blowing people to bits in Iraq.

The figures for war and aid are worth comparing because, when all the other excuses for the invasion of Iraq were stripped away, both governments explained that it was being waged for the good of the Iraqis. Let us, for a moment, take this claim at face value. Let us suppose that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had nothing to do with power, domestic politics or oil, but were, in fact, components of a monumental aid programme. And let us, with reckless generosity, assume that more people in Iraq have gained as a result of this aid programme than lost.

To justify the war, even under these wildly unsafe assumptions, George Bush and Tony Blair would have to show that the money they spent was a cost-efficient means of relieving human suffering.

Pardon me, Monseuir Monbiot, but I had no idea that relieving human suffering had to be cost-effective in order to justify it. I guess this explains why so many of our European friends are hastening the day when they can just kill off the inconvenient among them. After all, they must ensure that relieving suffering is cost-effective. I also wasn't aware that freedom and democracy had a quantifiable price tag. I beg you, please tell me what it is. How much is freedom worth to you? 2 million? 1 million? Would you trade it for 50 cents and a pack of Luckies?

And why is it always either/or with these people?

As it was sufficient to have made a measurable improvement in the lives of all the 2.8 billion people living in absolute poverty, and as there are only 25 million people in Iraq, this is simply not possible. Even if you ignore every other issue - such as the trifling matter of mass killing - the opportunity costs of the Iraq war categorise it as a humanitarian disaster. Indeed, such calculations suggest that, on cost grounds alone, a humanitarian war is a contradiction in terms.

But our leaders appear to have lost the ability to distinguish between helping people and killing them. The tone of Blair's New Year message was almost identical to that of his tear-jerking insistence that we understand the Iraqi people must be bombed for their own good. The US marines who have now been dispatched to Sri Lanka to help the rescue operation were, just a few weeks ago, murdering the civilians (for this, remember, is an illegal war), smashing the homes and evicting the entire population of the Iraqi city of Falluja.

It gets worse from there. He even manages to bark out Halliburton for good measure before his rant is through. (I'm just waiting for Halliburton to jump into the tsunami relief effort, for which they'll certainly be called "profiteers.")

While this appears at first to be a rant about poverty and tsunami relief efforts, Monbiot is really just taking the opportunity to write an anti-war rant. He is simply using the tsunami for political purposes.

But it's clear that Monbiot wants nothing more than a global redistribution of wealth -- a sort of international socialist system whereby wealthy countries pour millions into poorer countries, so that we call all achieve some sort of worldwide financial parity.

Of course, he ignores the fact that we do pour millions into developing nations. And he fails to acknowledge that one thing shown to genuinely relieve poverty is Western-style liberty and democracy. We've recently learned that on the whole, worldwide poverty is, in fact, decreasing, thanks to liberty, democracy, and . . . Capitalism! (See also this earlier entry.)

The recent success of developing countries at fighting poverty could be an Economics 101 lesson for today's American classroom. In East Asia and the Pacific region alone, the number of poor dropped from 472 million in 1990 to 271 million in 2001. By 2015, that number should shrink to 19 million, according to the World Bank.

The bank predicts that the total number of those living in poverty will be halved between 1990 and 2015. Globally, that means that those living on $1 per day or less would drop from 1.2 billion in 1990 to 622 million in 2015.

It is undeniable that 2004 was a great year for the poor. The World Bank's prediction that global poverty will continue plummeting is particularly encouraging. But if we are ever to wipe poverty from the face of the Earth, our next generation of leaders must first understand what makes the global economy tick -- the fundamental relationship between free trade and economic growth.

As David Brooks wrote so succinctly in this piece, "Write this on your forehead: Free trade reduces world suffering."

(But using the tsumanis for an opportunity to slam Bush and Blair makes us feel so much more . . . empathetic.)