The Independent (UK) interviews the Zambian-born conservative economist about her new book, How The West Was Lost: "It would be easy to dismiss Moyo's book as yet another take on the China story, about how great they are, how they'll soon be taking over the world, in some sense, and how we in the West are all going to be poorer as a result, at least in relative terms. That particular tale has been well told and is the subjects of scores of 'Big Picture' airport bookstore works. Moyo reprises that, but much of her tract is about what the West did wrong rather than what China did right. She cleverly assembles bits of the economic jigsaw to throw up some revealing insights. For example, the West's obsession with housing, and the encouragement that governments have given to home ownership through explicit and implicit incentives, has been an expensive delusion, she says. 'Let's compare 1950 to 1980 when the world was pretty closed and protectionist, to 1980 to the 2000s. The growth rates in these two periods have been roughly the same, but real wages in this globalised period have been roughly flat in places such as the UK, Europe, US."
Dr. Moyo continues opening about globalization: "'So what that tells me is that globalisation may not have been as beneficial to the average Westerner as promised. And I would say housing is probably one of the main reasons we are seeing this. Real wages didn't actually rise. Instead the people who hold labour actually got more access to debt and that debt was essentially diverted towards housing. So look at the portfolio of wealth in the United States – 30 per cent plus of American's income over wealth is tied up in housing, so they have not participated in this huge benefit from globalisation. The only Westerners that have benefited from this globalisation are the ones that hold capital, not the holders of labour.'"
More about Dr. Moyo: "Moyo agrees with the environmentalists that the earth does not, on current consumption patterns, have the resources needed to give every Chinese the standard of living now enjoyed in the West. Still, she is certainly admiring of the Chinese, even to the extent of now learning Mandarin. 'They are innovators in the sense that they have had no problems in moving away from what was essentially a communist system into a capitalistic system,' she explains. 'I actually have the confidence that they are flexible enough, certainly in the economic realm because they are not hamstrung by politics. They can implement policies tomorrow that we cannot in Britain or the United States because of the democratic issue. It's those types of things that make their economy, which to me gives them a good chance.'"
The article continues: "What's truly startling in Moyo's thinking is her suggestion, which almost creeps on one unawares, that the West might benefit from the Chinese way of doing things: 'Although I love democracy – I do not think it is a pre-requisite for economic growth,' she says. This is as deeply pragmatic a view as that, appropriately, formulated by Deng Xiaoping. Three decades ago he ditched Maoism and isolation by simply declaring: 'It doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.' If you wanted to caricature Moyo's argument it would be that nations must simply choose the economic system most likely at any given time to deliver the economic goods and thus geo-political clout – whether that is Scandinavian-style social democracy, Stalinism, Hitlerian autarky, Thatcherite laissez-faire, South Korean/Japanese corporatism, or whatever. That's unfair to Moyo, who lives in London, at least in the sense that 'it's where my clothes and books are', and enjoys her freedoms. But saying the West has anything to learn from China on politics as well as economics – at a time when we never stop lecturing them on human rights – is the sort of thing that only a public intellectual could get away with. I don't believe it for a second, but I'm glad she's said it."
FYI, we find out in this article that Dr. Moyo is a very private person. Journalist Sean O'Grady asks her about her marital status, and gets this response LOL: "Anyway I have a bit of a stark choice ahead of myself; do I ask Moyo the personal stuff – 'colour' – as we call it in the trade, at the start or the end of the interview. I had been warned beforehand that Moyo doesn't 'do personal – never have, never will' but after we'd kicked around the rise of China for an hour or so I thought I'd broach the subject with the most innocuous possible enquiry. 'Are you married?' 'What's that got to do with Chinese inflation?' was the instant knock-back, a high-brow version of 'what's that got to do with the price of fish?' but equally useful to shut nosey parkers up. It's not so innocuous at all, she counters, pointing out that her critics 'feel free to make ad hominem attacks' if she leaves them the slightest clues. I explain that her right to privacy is assured, but that she seems unusually reticent about such things. Probing a little, I discover that she was particularly stung by another public intellectual [liberal economist Jeffrey Sachs, her former professor] who derided her views on international development because 'she didn't have a child in rural Africa'."
FYI, you can listen to the interview that Dr. Moyo did today on BBC Radio 4.
Dambisa Moyo: "Globalization May Not Be As Beneficial To Westerners As Promised"
