April 08, 2004

Beating Poverty. "``This is the first generation in all of recorded history that can do something about the scourge of poverty. We have the means to do it. We can banish hunger from the face of the Earth.'' -- Hubert Humphrey, 1965

Turns out, Humphrey was wrong. At the time, we really did not ``have the means to do it'' because we did not yet know how to banish poverty and hunger. Today we do.

The answer is not foreign aid, which is corrupting and often worse than useless. In many cases, it actually further impoverished an already poor country. Enriched urban elites bought luxury goods, while donated food and socialist controls drove down the local price of food, ruining the farmers on whom these subsistence economies had depended.

We now know that the secret to curing hunger and poverty is capitalism and free trade ..

.. free markets and free trade are lifting tens of millions of people out of poverty in India and China. And what has been the Democratic reaction to the prospect of fulfilling Humphrey's (and their party's) great dream? Fear and loathing. Democrats today thunder against the scourge of ``outsourcing'' ..

[What we are witnessing today is] a radical reversal of the older liberal vision of America as helpmate for the poor and suffering of the world. Interestingly, the Democrats have enough residue of this old vision that they cannot admit to having betrayed it. They pretend they are engaged in altruism. They say what they really want is for trade agreements to grant foreign workers the same labor and environmental standards that American workers enjoy ..

Unfortunately, the ruse is transparent. Everyone understands that imposing U.S. standards on Mexican or Chinese factories is a way to make them noncompetitive. They lose their one comparative advantage: radically lower costs. The factories will shut down. And their workers, rather than being helped, will be sent back to the rural destitution they had fled in hope of a better future. You can say, too bad. You can say, Americans count for more. What you cannot deny, however, is that the Democrats have given up the mantle of tribune of the world's poor .. ". More CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER. Posted by Greg Ransom | TrackBack