WAPE 2025: geopolitics, economic models and multi-polarity – Michael Roberts
“My own paper (above) concentrated on the failure of the poor countries of the world to ‘catch up’ with the rich countries after 80 years of the post-war world order. I tried to gauge the gap between the rich and poor countries ie the imperialist core and the dominated periphery. To do this, I measured 1) the average per capita income in each country (taking into account, where we can, the inequality of incomes within countries); 2) the level of labour productivity; and 3) ‘human development’ as defined by the UN. Then I extrapolated the current average growth in these measures to see when the periphery might catch up.
“I found that the countries of the Global South (6bn people) are not ‘catching up’ with the Global North (2bn people) and never will in the foreseeable future. The main reasons are that wealth (value) is being persistently transferred from the South to the North AND profitability in the Global South is falling faster than labour productivity growth is rising. However, I did find that China may be the exception because its investment growth is less determined by profitability than in any other major Global South economy. ..”
Q – If one substitutes the ‘bottom 50’ for the Global South and ‘top 15-20%’ for the Global North, would the flows of value be similar within the US political economy?