For example, China is commended for restricting the free movement of villagers into booming conurbations while India is praised for its democratic government.
However, Beattie has a tendency to put forth apparently conflicting ideas. The subject matter in False Economy is fascinating, particularly for those with an interest in the perennial problem of diverging prosperity. In a comparison of the US economy with that of Argentina, Beattie predicts, chillingly: “If it does not address the flaws that brought its financial system into crisis, the US could soon end up like Argentina.” Since then it has experienced no tangible change to its natural resources yet, just over 100 years later, it is on the verge of collapse thanks largely to political upheaval and economic mismanagement. Islam is stereotyped as the antithesis of capitalism yet Muslim-dominated Malaysia is in far better economic shape than the Philippines, where Catholicism is the main religion.Īt the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, Argentina sat proudly as one of the most prosperous nations in the world. In Zaire, for example, corrupt government officials have wrecked the local economy while in South Korea it is an accepted part of doing business to offer some sort of bribe, according to Beattie.
But Beattie believes the problem of inequitable wealth distribution is mostly about people. Various reasons have been bandied about historically – geography, culture and natural resources, among others. Argentina, meanwhile, has spent much of the past 15 years as possibly the most unreliable sovereign debtor in the world.īeattie is a former Bank of England economist and world trade editor at the Financial Times so he is well qualified to theorise on why some countries thrive while others fail – one of the biggest questions in economics. The downturn left Greece teetering on the verge of collapse while Spain and Ireland both struggled. This week, we look at Alan Beattie’s book, False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World, which examines this issue and discusses what the world’s poorer nations can do to catch up with the rest.ĭuring the most recent global financial crisis, some countries felt the heat more than others. Sadly, it has become an accepted cost of capitalism that, on both micro- and macroeconomic levels, some people lose while others gain. The inequitable distribution of global wealth is no new phenomenon.
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