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Tanzania 10,5986
Zaire 17,2542
Nigeria 57,8436
Bangladesh 89,5116
Ethiopia 36,0314
Rest 172,2797
The European Union at 50
Source: our own calculations from UNDP, 1996 and the data-base of this work
Globalization negatively affected the lives of around 1.5 thousand million people
on earth, whose per-capita incomes were lower than in earlier decades. These
1.5 thousand million people live in around 100 countries; while 15 nations
experienced rapid capitalist development over the last decade. Among the
world's desperate nations, 43 countries had a per-capita income which was lower
- in real terms - than that of the 1970s. The poorest 20% of the world saw their
share in global product reduced from 2.3% to 1.4% over the past 30 years. The
share of the richest 20% rose from 70% to 85%, with the differences between
these two rising from 30:1 to 61:1 (UNDP, 1996). In the developed core
countries of the world economy alone, 100 million people are categorized as
poor, and 30 million are homeless. In the Federal Republic of Germany alone,
900000 people are homeless, nearly 5 million people officially have no job, and
7.5 million are poor (Orientierung, 60, 1996: 204). 385 persons on our globe
- 358 billionaires- have an income that is greater than the yearly income
of the combined poorest 45% of our globe. The wave of the world recession
- or as we prefer to say, the Kondratieff B-phase - first hit Africa in the 1970s,
and rolled on to hit Latin America and the Arab world in the 1980s and Eastern
Europe in the 1990s. Even in the highly industrialized countries, capitalist
development became more and more
(i) jobless: in the countries of the European Union in 1993, there were 16.86
million unemployed people. In the industrial countries as a whole, there are 30
million people out of work.
(ii) ruthless: global GNP grew by 40%, but the number of poor grew by 17%. In
the European Union, the ratio between the richest 20% and the bottom 20% is
now 7.5 in France, 9.6 in the UK, 7.1 in Denmark, 5.8 in Germany, and 6.0 in
Italy. Each year, damage to forests due to air pollution leads to economic losses
of about $35 billion - about the annual GDP of Hungary. In Europe, the number
of poor people increased within half a year from 50 million to 80 million (Afheldt,
1994)
(iii) voiceless: human and political rights performance on a global scale has
deteriorated in many countries according to the well-known Freedom House data
series (Stiftung, 1996); even in the countries of the European Union, the
following performances in 1993 were below the maximum value '1'
Germany: civil rights 2
France: civil rights 2
Entelequia. Revista Interdisciplinar · CAEI Arno Tausch / 21