Talk:When Corporations Rule the World/Archives/2014

Third World Traveler

I'll try to add this link, called Third World Traveler, but might not do it right, so I'll need help. It has excerpts from this & many other same topic books: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/index.html Hillmon7500 (talk) 19:20, 12 May 2014 (UTC)>

Forced to need money

I think this should be added:

“One of the major challenges faced by colonial administrators was to force those who obtained their livelihoods from their own lands & common areas to give up their lands & labor to plantation development; that is, to make them dependent on a money economy so that their resources, labor, & consumption might yield profits to the colonizers…

“Forced labor was piously justified as ‘developmentally beneficial to the enslaved’.....

“The black does not like work ….It is therefore necessary to use….slavery to improve his circumstances … (1901)

“In many colonized countries, the imposition of taxes payable only in cash was used to force people into the cash economy…. In Vietnam, the French imposed taxes on salt, opium, & alcohol. The British in Sudan taxed crops, animals, houses, & households. In their West African colonies, the French punished tax evasion by holding wives & children hostage, whipping men, burning huts, & leaving people tied up without food for several day. Development was a hard sell in those days…” p 252

Also this: Guaranteed Income Pg. 318

"An idea long popular with both conservative and progressive economists, a guaranteed income merits serious consideration. It involves guaranteeing every person an income adequate to meet his or her basic needs. The amount would be lower for children than for adults but would be unaffected by a person’s other income, wealth, work, gender or marital status. It would replace social security and existing welfare programs. Since earned income would not reduce the guaranteed payment, there would be little disincentive to work for pay. Indeed, if some people chose not to work at all this should not be considered a serious problem in labor-surplus societies. Although some wages would no doubt fall, employers might have to pay more to attract workers to unpleasant, menial tasks. It would allow greater scope for those who wish to do unpaid work in the social economy. Such a scheme would be expensive but could be supported in most high-income countries by steep cuts in military spending, corporate subsidies and existing entitlement programs and by tax increases on upper incomes, luxuries, and the things a sustainable society seeks to discourage. Combined with an adequate program of universal publicly funded health insurance and merit-based public fellowships for higher education, a guaranteed income would personally increase the personal financial security afforded by more modest incomes. In low-income countries, agrarian reform and other efforts to achieve equitable access to productive natural resources for livelihood production might appropriately substitute for a guaranteed income."

This is in "About the author," no page number. “Korten came to believe that the deepening crisis of deepening change, growing inequality, environmental devastation, and social disintegration he was observing in Asia was also being experienced in nearly every country in the world –including the United States – and other 'developed' countries. Furthermore he came to the conclusion that the United States was actively promoting –both at home and abroad – the very policies that were deepening the global crisis. For the world to survive, the United States must change.” Hillmon7500 (talk) 02:59, 10 May 2014 (UTC)