Karl Marx explained that capitalism would make the rich richer and the poor poorer. If someone was to gain, someone else had to lose in the free market. The middle class would become proletarians, and the proletarians would starve. What an unlucky time to make such a prediction. The industrial revolution gave freedom to innovate, produce and trade, and created wealth on an enormous scale. It reached the working class, since technology made them more productive, and more valuable to employers. Their incomes shot through the roof.

What happened was that the proletarians became middle class, and the middle class began to live like the upper class. And the most liberal country, England , led the way. According to the trends of mankind until then, it would take 2 000 years to double the average income. In the mid-19th century, the British did it in 30 years. When Marx died in 1883, the average Englishman was three times richer than he was when Marx was born in 1818.

The poor in Western societies today live longer lives, with better access to goods and technologies, and with bigger opportunities than the kings in Marx’ days.

Ok, said Marx’s evil apprentice Lenin. We might have been wrong about that. But the working class in the West could only become richer because they are bribed by the capitalists. Someone else would have to pay the price for that bribe – the poor countries. Lenin meant that imperialism was the next natural step of capitalism, whereby poor countries had to give up their work and resources to feed the West.

The problem with this argument is that all continents became wealthier, albeit at different speeds. Sure, the average Western European or American is 19 times richer than in 1820, but a Latin American is 9 times richer, an Asian 6 times richer, and an African about 3 times richer. So from whom was the wealth stolen? The only way to save this zero-sum theory would be to find the wreckage of some incredibly advanced spacecraft that we emptied 200 years ago. But not even that would save the theory. Because we would still have to explain from whom the aliens had stolen their resources.

It is correct that colonialism often was a crime, and in some instances led to horrible acts. But globalisation in the last decades shows that the existence of wealthy, capitalist countries facilitates development for poor countries if they participate in a free and voluntary exchange of ideas and goods. Globalisation means that technologies that it took wealthy nations billions of dollars and generations to develop can be used straight away in poorer countries. They can sell to wealthier markets and borrow capital for investments. If you work for an American company in a low-income country, you receive about 8 times the average income in that country. Not because multinational companies are more generous, but because they are globalised, and bring machines and management that raise the productivity of the workers, and consequently also their wages.

Therefore, opportunities for a poor country with open, market-friendly institutions increase as the rest of the world becomes more developed. It took England 60 years to double its income from 1780. 100 years later, Sweden did the same in just 40 years. Another 100 years later, countries like Taiwan , South Korea , China and Vietnam did it in no more than 10 years.

During the 1990s, poor countries with about 3 billion inhabitants have integrated into the global economy, and they have also seen their annual growth rates increase to almost 5 percent per capita. It means that average income doubles in less than 15 years. Compare this to the much slower growth in rich countries, and the negative growth in developing countries where 1 billion people live. These countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa , are the least liberal, the least capitalist and the least globalised. It seems Lenin had it upside down – poor countries that are connected with the capitalist countries with trade and investment grow faster than those countries, those that don’t become poorer. ...

Let’s have a short look at the statistics to see the greatest untold story ever. The proportion in absolute poverty in developing countries has been reduced from 40 to 21 percent since 1981. Almost 400 million people have left poverty – the biggest poverty reduction in mankind’s history. In the last 30 years chronic hunger has been halved, and so has the extent of child labour. Since 1950 illiteracy has been reduced from 70 to 23 percent and infant mortality has been reduced by two-thirds. ...

Just 200 years ago ... By our standards even the richest countries were extremely poor. The average chance of surviving your first year was less than the chance of surviving to retirement today.

Of course we'd have to make the game board larger with more properties.

1. Deep Deep Depression
2. Just Depressed
3. Recovering
4. Boom Time!
5. Runaway Inflation! - and then back again.

It's an easy ride from Deep Deep Depression through to Runaway Inflation! But watch out going from Runaway Inflation! back to Deep Deep Depression. The inflationary bubble bursts, and the government is forced to issue a new more stable currency at a 90% devaluation of your old currency. Ouch! Major bummer! You just lost 90% of everything you had!

But guess what? You could have sheltered your wealth in your Offshore Bank Account. Here's a quote from the rules: "Just like in the real world, where the big boys like to have a stash hidden somewhere that the IRS and other thieves can't get at, so it is in the world of InflationDeflation." Any money you had hidden away in your Offshore Bank Account is unaffected by the crash and you can comfortably weather Deep Deep Depression as a rich man (or as a rich person).

How did InflationDeflation come about?


Some time ago an associate of Professor Mobius (spokesperson for InflationDeflation ) was trying to find a way to demonstrate cycles of inflation and deflation to his nine-year old son, Charlie. Just telling Charlie about it wasn't sufficient. The concepts were too foreign to Charlie's world. His dad then hit on the idea of using Monopoly® as a base system that was already familiar to his son - Charlie and his friends loved Monopoly® and played it often. One day, Charlie's dad got the kids' permission to manipulate the flow of money in their game. (Just like your Uncle Sam in 1913.) So, by increasing the flow of money to the players by raising their salary passing GO, and also by having payments normally made to the Bank flow back to the players via Free Parking, Dad as Banker caused the amount of cash in the system to keep increasing. Once the kids were having a ball all being rich, Charlie's dad would step in. He would announce that a stock market crash had wiped out most of their cash and that the bank was reducing their salary at GO and also shutting down Free Parking. Luckily there were no windows for the kids to jump out of - but they had definitely learned the difference between inflation and deflation. (They also started wondering how wise they had been to let "Good Ol' Dad" get control of their money supply.)

Professor Mobius saw that the kids actually enjoyed all aspects of the cycle: the inflationary ride to riches; the uncertainty of when the crash would come; and even their shared poverty after the crash. And all the while they were still engrossed by the familiar give and take of the core Monopoly® game. The Professor then pressured and encouraged Charlie's dad to expand the game to include other factors of modern economic and political concern.

The result, InflationDeflation , is a labor of love. In a gentle tongue-in-cheek style the game includes various aspects of our fast paced turbulent world. Wall Street, the IRS, Banks and Washington, among others, are the targets of thought-provoking ridicule. What began as a means to teach kids about inflation and deflation, evolved into a rich assortment of modern themes humorously presented in a dynamic economic model.

Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union have witnessed a significant decrease in poverty since the Russian financial crisis of 1998-99. Almost 40 million people moved out of poverty from 1998-2003. Three key factors contributed to poverty reduction: growth in wages, growth in employment, and more adequate social transfers. But poverty and vulnerability persist: more than 60 million people live on less than $2 a day.

In their recommendations, the report's authors urge countries to continue with enterprise sector reforms, boost rural growth, promote opportunities in lagging regions, increase access to good quality basic services, and produce better social safety nets especially for the working poor and children.

G20 Commits to Trade Liberalisation and Fighting Protectionism
The G20 group of nations which includes Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey, as well as the advanced G7 nations, has agreed that a...



Despite it being the clearly stated wish of the most populous nations in the developing world to fight protectionism, left-wing Western NGOs still oppose free trade. Unelected, politically motivated, anti - capitalist, anti - globalization activists claim to speak on behalf of the developing world's poor: in reality they speak a language of neo-colonialism, telling the elected representatives of a great democracy like India that they are wrong to seek to engage increasingly in world trade. In reality anti-globalization NGOs like the World Development Movement are a vocal but politically-marginalised minority who cloak themselves in pro-poor language whilst advocating protectionist policies which favour the few producers over the many consumers. The developing world's governments are right to ignore their siren calls.

The apparel industry has been widely criticized for “exploiting” Third World workers in sweatshops, but the data show that these workers are better off than most people in their countries.

...In 9 of 11 countries, the reported sweatshop wages equal or exceed average income, doubling it in Cambodia, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Honduras (at 70 hours). However, these figures do not include non-monetary compensation. Nike’s employees in Indonesia, for example, receive free health care and meals in addition to their wages...most of the jobs that some anti-sweatshop advocates protest raise their workers' standard of living above their nation's average.

Woop, here comes the spam again.

And I suspect that you're a moron.

These countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, are the least liberal, the least capitalist and the least globalised.

Oh, did you write that study? I didn't see your name on it.



I think you should get a better grasp of what censorship is before throwing around words like that.

Failed economies breed totalitarianism. In that aspect Africa's problem is everyones problem.