A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis. CHAPTER 1: INDIFFERENCE TO POVERTY (Part 45). This blog is a continuation of the review of The End of Poverty: How We Can Make it Happen in Our Life Time, by Jeffrey Sachs, published in 2005
Chapter Two: The Spread of Economic Prosperity
The move from universal poverty to varying degrees of prosperity has happened rapidly in the span of human history. Life was as difficult in much of Europe as it was in India or China.
The average income per person in Western Europe in 1820 was about 90% of the average income of Africa today. Life expectancy in Western Europe and Japan as of 1800 was about 40 years.
A few centuries ago, vast divides in wealth and poverty around the world did not exist. China, India, Europe, and Japan all had similar income levels at the time of European discoveries of the sea routes to Asia, Africa and the Americas.
The novelty of modern economic growth
Before 1800 there had been virtually no sustained economic growth. There was no discernible rise in living standards on a global scale during the first millennium and perhaps a 50% increase in per capita income in the 800-year period from A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1800.
In the period of modern economic growth, the global population rose sixfold in two centuries, reaching 6.1 billion at the start of the third millennium, with plenty of momentum for rapid population growth still ahead.
US per capita income rose twenty-five-fold. Total worldwide food production more than kept up with the booming world population (though large numbers of chronically hungry people remain until today).
Gross world product or GWP rose 49 times during the past 180 years. In 1820 the gap between the world’s rich and poor countries was a ratio of four to one in per capita income; in 1998 it was 20:1.
Technology has been the main force behind the long-term increases in income in the rich world, not exploitation of the poor. Economic development is not a zero-sum game in which the winnings of some are inevitably mirrored by the losses of others. This game is one that everybody can win.
On the eve of takeoff
Until the mid-1700s, the world was remarkably poor by any of today’s standards. Life expectancy was extremely low; children died in vast numbers in the now rich countries as well as poor countries.
Many waves of disease and epidemics, from the black death of Europe to smallpox and measles, regularly washed through society and killed mass numbers of people. Episodes of hunger and extreme weather and climate fluctuations sent societies crashing.
What changed was the onset of the Industrial Revolution – with the combination of new technologies, coal power and market forces – supported by a rise in agricultural productivity and food yields in northwestern Europe through improved agronomic practice.
Britain’s advantages were a combination of social, political and geographical factors. Scientific thinking was dynamic. Other parts of the world were not as fortunate and their entry into modern economic growth would be delayed – in some cases until today.
The great transformation
Suddenly economies could grow beyond long-accustomed bounds without hitting the biological constraints of food and timber production. The power of economic growth spilled out from Great Britain to all parts of the world, changing the way people lived in every fundamental sense.
The spread of modern economic growth
Britain’s industrialization spread to other markets by stimulating the demand for exports from Britain’s trading partners, supplying capital to make investments, and by spreading technologies first pioneered in Britain.
The confrontation between rich and poor was stark because the gap of wealth also meant the gap of power, and power could be used for exploitation.
Imperial powers forced Africans to grow cash crops, imposed taxes, compelled Africans to work in mines and on plantations, commandeered natural resources, and maintained private armies to ensure compliance.