Newspapers / The Carolina Times (Durham, … / Aug. 20, 1977, edition 1 / Page 5
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SAT., AUGUST 23,' 177 TH5 C Lf 'f A ' T3 8 TEib Cdso; 60 "- Mr. President; Your Ex- cellencies; Ladies and Gentie- ii men. 1 'v v.v I amgomgio speakto you about Poverty, or more gpecilV cally, the relations between the Haves and the Have-nots of the .World. Your country is the richest in the world . With some , 6 per cent of the world's popu lafion I am told that vou use ' over 30 per cent of the non- J..- t-1- j- n i. ' icncwsoie. resources avauaoie in a year. My own . country, Tan zania, has the doubtful dis tinction of being included among the United Nations list of the 25 poorest countries of me .world, remaps it: is not surprising, therefore, that I am , one of those people who com plain bitterly about the pre sent world economic system' and loudly demand that it should be changed. I would .like to try to explain what, as we see'it, the problem is, and whythe poor nations. are de manding fundamental changes. It is through contact with what are called the Developed ; Mttket Economies that we in the, Third World have become conscious of the twentieth cen tury world. During the Second World War our soldiers in Burma and North Africa were told they were fighting for Freedom; in the , : colonial Schools we heard of the de mand "No taxation without representation.", These teach ings made the anti-colonial struggle , intellectually logical and reinforced our own. in stinct for self-government. The ' call for human equality and justice was - and is incompa tible .with racism; it therefore from the developed nations to the poor onesV A life of poverty, and inequality was King rejected HeveryWhere in the world The political demand for freedom, leads to a separation of the colonized . and the colonizer, But . economically the situation i very different; our nations arelocked together. It is not possible, much less desirable, for a newly inde pendent nation : to cut all economic ..links with its metropolitan trading t part ner or other developed nations. But a re-examination by the new state of the economic relationships which grew up during the colonial period in inevitable. Experience, combined with analysis, then quickly teaches the young and poor nations that the present international economic systems works automatically and inevitably to their dis advantage. There is an auto matic transfer of wealth from the Poor countries, where it is needed to provide the neces sities of Hfe, to the Rich countries where it is spent on creating and meeting new wants... bwks uo our natural ooooat--.:ilice'-'l not willing to tin to SMPf Weed, the' racial discrimination of jwhfch vehicles will wait in stock and it luCbeirttais for so "Tanzania' wfll continue with- tong Also! the Sand for a transportation. ; welfarrstate7and the " to" the ork of tion of poverty, reverberated products isfixed by - ' " tMiMhtdAM TU ma: II -l 1 1 ' f BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION . ACCOUNTING . MANAGEMENT AND COMPUTER PROGRAMMING . SECfSfXRIAl SCIENCE FA5H50N MERCHANDISING RECREATION TECHNOLOGY BUSIES TECHNOLOGY OFFIC ADMINISTRATION GENERAL EDUCATION OFFICE DATA PROCESSING CAREER COUNSELING AND FREE JOB PLACEMENT SERVICE , FINANCIAL AID IS AVAILABLE. DAY AND EVENING CLASSES OFFERED. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT OFFICE OF ADMISSIONS 312SFAYETTEVIIUST. DL7HAM,N.C.277C7 i - ftb Poor INTERNATIONAL : ECONOMIC STRUGGLE The dominant philosophy f international exhcnage which we met at independence - and which still prevails - is that of a "free 'market In 1 theory this means unfettered competition 1 and bargaining ) between' equals, with prices being the result of the corn- bined actions and wishes of tl J 1 I scucn sno uuycrs. ui piatubc international exchange does not operate in such 'a free manner,; Yet the theory con tinues to be taught and ad vocated, and the young coun- tries are lectured on its virtues ana aamonisnea nor 10 uy iu interfere with it; Unfortunately the theory bears little : relation to fact, t Equality between nations , of f the modern world is only a I legal equality. It is not an economic reality. Tanzania and America are not equal. A man who needs to see his labor in order to buy bread and the man who' controls both his employment and the price of bread are not equal. Their re lationship is one of depen dence and dominance. . Nor isf it true that prices are determined by the opera tions of a free market, that is, by ,L discussion : and compro mise '; between sellers and buyers. The price of manu factured goods is fixed by the producers; if an competition enters into the situation at all, it is between firms like Ford, General Motors and Volks wagen. It is certainly no use the Tanzanian Motor Corpora tion trying to argue with any of these firms . about their " fv.. ducerspuf)n the market what- ever mey have managed to or to W th goods are often perishable, and nwtffau are desperate tor toreign exchange and have nd facilities for storage - known facts which further weaken their bargaining position) A small number of purchasers then decide how much they will buy, at what price: Only if - natural kn maI tti' rf'year's"''aappry uhnauyiiov will their competition push the price up. The primary producing countries which need to import manufactured goods are thus price-takers, not 'price makers, both as seller and as buyer. We seB cheap and "we buy dear, whether we like it or not. This is the position of most Third World coun tries - with the recent ex- ception of the oil producers, who do now fix their own prices for the oil they sell. It is perhaps not surprising there fore, that the terms of trade between the developing and developed countries have moved so steadily and consis tently , against ' the former; OR CALL 4S3-2541 TOIL FREE NATIONAlLYACattDniD JUNIOR COLLEGE 1 rw- CD - J$, . :,:::!' WiWV ..n i i. u.i.u n' rri tijfriri nimii. in i , , 7 "-am " -N-.H ' - w i ft-T , ., . Till I I -y- INTRUDER Napoleon R. Divine tries to get in a little television watching while waiting for a tow truck to ex tricate the automobile from the wall of his baserhent recreation room. The auto crashed into the house knocking out a portion of the brick wall. (UPI). taking 1963 as a base the World Bank gives the Commo dity Terms of Trade index as 87 for 1972 - it was 122 in 1953! We in the poor coun tries don't think in such sta tistical terms or even under stand them. What we know is that we have to sell more and more sisal, cotton, or copper, to get the foreign exchange needed to import identical machines in successive years. To break out. of this foreign exchange trap and at the same time to benefit from . the multiplier effect of ex- banded economic activity, the poor countries endeavor to ; build up their industrial sector to become price-makers , even in a small way. Naturally we start with the processing of 6ur own primary products. It : seems logical to export cloth rathr . tnan nnftnn lint ann rather than cotton lint, and twine or .rope rather than sisal; and such simple manu facturing processes can pro vide a little platform for further industrialization. Having established these fac tories at enormous expense, We discover that processed commodities, and simple manufactured goods, are not so easy to export as raw products. They meet tariff barriers, quota regulations, or A nther rfcvirp! intended to keen them ttut of the markets of the rich. The "free market" becomes less free!. For these goods are said to be the pro ducts of sweated labor, al though the employees in such factories have higher incomes than workers who produce the quite acceptable raw commo dities. The President of the World Bank has estimated that the under-developed nations could sell an extra S33 billion work of goods to the developed world if existing trade barriers were lifted. Even allowing for the ' inevitable inaccuracy of such figures, it does appear that such actions could enable us to reduce our beggary to some extent! Further, the poor "nations . l4CO-e72-C03$ have to ship both their imports and their exports in ships owned and managed in the developed countries. The freight rates are mostly fixed by a shipper's cartel - OPEC did not invent the idea of combining to fix the price of a vital commodity! This cartel has an apparently ineradicable bias against carrying processed . r. ' cr, a ,;,.. ZyZ t , 1 s,- iill pitlpl! J - lis . ' ' 'i 1 I 1 n --lit p" IT 5 raw sisal and $73 to ship twine put of a crop when electricity from and to the same port, and good roads exist; but in with similar differentials frastructure needs money be between cotton lint and tex- fore it can be created. The rich tiles, hides and leather, and so can supply security for loans on. and are a g6od credit risk; the POVERTY BREEDS poor are less educated, less POVERTY experienced - and therefore Success breeds success and more likely to fafl in new riches breed riches. Poverty Js. beeds poverty It is easier and cheaper to start an indus- Further, it has to be PS - ' ; delicate pastels andljold accents. ilr.d::ts are available f tary dial or pushbuttons in Touch-Calling areas. , ' So get the phone that doesn't yell "telephone! It's a gr; tion piece; Call our business oflce today. , enterprises; also they have little or nor collateral. wealth to otter as mi t i Ififtll : :! ;Jiii!.4:l..; iill M4 " acknowledged - that - poverty breeds inefficiency, corruption , and social unrest, aQ of which are 'mimical to ' economic development. For example, if a poor country gets desperately short of foreign exchange no unusual occurrence! - it cannot buy and stock spare parts which may never be , needed, and ft does sot have a spare transport capacity in case a crop is larger than normaL Also such a country wQI usually be short of technicians to deal with mechanical break downs when they occur. Try ing to husband scarce resources and allocate them in accor dance with human need, means that licenses and permits abound - with aQ the tempta tions for corruption they bring. Nor are people suffering from endemic diseases famous for their hard work and initiative - or their resistance to spurious promises of quick salvation! The poor nations of the world remain poor because they are poor, and because they operate as if they were equals in a world dominated by the rich. The tendency is not different within nations; the farming communities and the urban poor remain poor, and become progressively worse off relative to the rich, because they operate within an economic structure dominated by the latter. Birt within nations - even within capi talist America - counteracting steps are taken by the state. Progressive Income Tax. Wel fare payments. Medicaid. f v ',, , 1 'i.r 3 f'q Farm i--ctt ftcmt, u we3 aa AO-Tru kSon, 'etc., mry t?3 be poII'JcaTy contentious fcsies; may or may sot be very tctent fa faLiif their purposes. But hasHy anyone icrJxt the seed for some orpsized counter railing power, some method of counteracting the buHt-ta ten dencies for the rich to get richer because they are rich and for the poor to get poorer because they are poor, . . THE NEED FOX INTER v NATIONAL ACTION Very, many ' economic experts and expert Commis sions have analyzed the. in ternational situation . I have been talking about today, and there is widespread intellec tual agreement in principle as well as agreement among the poor - about what needs doing. First, and m some ways the most fundamental, is that the poor nations should have a greater voice in the world's economic decision making. The economic policy of the United States (including the creation of credit and so on) is domi nated by the Federal Govern ment of this country, m which aQ citizens and aQ states are represented. There is no com parable government of the world. But is imperative that institutions like the IMF and the World Bank should cease to be under the almost ex clusive control of the rich and powerful states. It is absurb, if not immoral, that the re presentation of the poor on the Continued On Page 71 i-
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