Abstract
The global economic system, like the systems within advanced industrial nations, does a lot of people a lot of good. Many people benefit from the international division of labor which calls for certain kinds of products and services to be produced in some places while others are produced in other places. Likewise, many people benefit from international trade. International lending programs, both official and private, have helped many industries and programs, and thus have benefited many people. There is hope that the structural adjustment programs pressed on developing nations by the international financial institutions since the early 1980s will, after a difficult transition period, help to modernize stagnant economies and integrate them into the global economic system, and thus help to pull people up out of their abject poverty.
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Notes and References
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The literature is abundant. See, for example, Susan George, A Fate Worse Than Debt: The World Financial Crisis and the Poor (New York: Grove Press, 1988);
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as reported in Beth Ebel, Patterns of Government Expenditure in Developing Countries During the 1980s: The Impact on Social Services (Florence, Italy: UNICEF International Child Development Center, 1991), p. 41
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The argument is made for the United States in Mary A. Jensen and Stacie G. Goffin, eds., Visions of Entitlement: The Care and Education of America’s Children (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1993).
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© 1995 George Kent
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Kent, G. (1995). The Global Economy. In: Children in the International Political Economy. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375536_2
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