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How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor
 
 
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How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor (Hardcover)

by Erik S. Reinert (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Constable (25 Jan 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1845293266
  • ISBN-13: 978-1845293260
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.8 x 4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 478,927 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Publishing News 1 September 2006

Reinhert presents a revisionist account of economic ideas based on free
trade.


The Sunday Telegraph

It lands powerful punches and leaves the thoughtful free-marketeer
wondering indeed whether we've forgotten so much economic history that what
we think we know today ain't actually so. Moses Abramovitz would be proud
of his protege.
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Customer Reviews

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant attack on 'neoliberalism', 31 Oct 2008
By William Podmore (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor (Paperback)
Erik Reinert, Professor of Technology, Governance and Development Strategies at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia, has written a most remarkable book. He has shown that the free trade creed - the free movement of capital, deregulation and privatisation - doesn't work. As Keynes wrote, "the worse the situation, the less laissez-faire works."

The American economist Paul Samuelson won a Nobel Prize for `proving' that under free trade prices paid to capital and labour tend to be the same across the world. But in the real world, free trade has led, not to the levelling up of world wages and the end of poverty, but to growing inequality and poverty. Half the world lives on less than $2 a day. In many countries, real wages peaked 30 years ago.

Reinert proves that the mode of production determines social forms, and that the technology and mass production of industry are the key to economic growth, not capital, property rights and the rule of law. Industry also has good economic, social and political effects. As he writes, "Creating and protecting industry is creating and protecting democracy."

But how can countries build industry? They need to protect their infant industries and to subsidise their industries.

Countries need to have an industrial policy that provides work for their educated people. Otherwise Western countries, outsourcing their education costs, will take them away - education for migration.

For example, 82% of Jamaica's doctors practise abroad and 70% of university-educated Guyanans work abroad. Their remittances fund consumption and dependence, not investment and industry.

It is better to have an inefficient industry than no industry at all. Reinert points out that the Soviet countries were better off before the 1990s counter-revolutions which deindustrialised and then depopulated them. In 1991-95 Mongolia pastoralised, cutting 90% of its production; wages fell, but the finance, insurance and real estate sector grew.

The old empires all banned manufacturing industry in their colonies. Now the World Bank and the IMF ban industrial policy. They lie to third world countries -open up to imports of goods and capital, be competitive, make your labour markets flexible and you'll grow. The European Central Bank tells EU members the same story.

Welfare colonialism, with $2.3 trillions in aid since 1950, has failed. The Millennium Development Goals will fail too. Aid is a means of control, not of growth, keeping the third world dependent. Palliative economics, which is supposed to ease poverty's symptoms while ignoring its causes, does neither.

Of course, the true market faithful believe that the economics are right, but then the question arises, why are the poor still poor? If the theory is right, there must be something wrong with the people. So some say that it must be race - Keynes was, shamefully, a vice-president of the English Eugenics Society.

Reinert writes, "a major financial crisis is increasingly likely." But the true market faithful are still in power and are making the workers of the world pay for their failed system. How much longer will we allow this?


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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, 29 April 2007
By Ragnar (Europe) - See all my reviews
This is truly a great book, a classic. Everyone interested in issues of economic development should get it and they won't be disappointed. It is a first book perhaps in last half a century (or more) that makes an original contribution to our understanding of why some countries get rich and why some stay dismally poor. The author argues that we have forgotten how now-developed countries got rich, and our current efforts -- from Washington Consensus policies to Live 8 debt relief -- are doomed to fail because of fundamentally misunderstanding why countries, regions develop in the first place and how innovation comes about and what are its various effects. We should relearn development. I think the mixture of historical and theoretical analysis with personal stories makes the book particularly nice and easy to read. It touches issues that are and should be interesting for readers in developed and developing countries alike (the book uses case studies from Norway to Mongolia; from 15th to 20th century).The book doesn't necessarily require much beforehand knowledge, but also for those well-versed in economics this is certainly an illuminating reading and clearly a must.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Don't do what America tells you to do, do what America did., 18 Aug 2008
By Jeremy Williams (Luton) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor (Paperback)
That's a recurring refrain here as Erik Reinert looks back over the history of economics and examines exactly how rich countries made their wealth. He concludes that they did it through protected manufacturing industries, strategic monopolies and tariffs. In other words, the opposite of the IMF prescription for development that is currently forced on poor countries.

In fact, Reinert digs up economic advice from the 1700's that expressly recommends advocating free trade to distract the colonies from trying to develop competitive manufacturing. It's one of many facts, anecdotes, and studies that point away from current economic orthodoxy as a route to development. If you want to haul a country out of poverty today, the best you can do is ignore everything the IMF say.

This is a long and complicated book. It's not academic, but it does require a certain knowledge of economics, and for these reasons, it's not for everybody. If you know your Ricardo from your Schumpeter, pick up a copy, because there's material here that you just won't find anywhere else - the result of a lifetime dedicated to piecing together the ignored and forgotten wisdom of overlooked economists.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars "No Reality Please, We're Neo-Classical Economists"
Erik Reinert hits the nail on the head in this well written, historically aware criticism of the Neo-Liberal Washington Consensus that has become the global orthodoxy over the... Read more
Published 6 days ago by S Wood

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Eye Opener
This book was a great eye opener for me. As a non economist, I was able to follow the argument quite easily. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Dr. M. S. Nkolokosa

4.0 out of 5 stars Questioning economic assumptions
In this book Erich Reinert questions the current Anglo-American consensus of free-market economics.

He looks at the line of economic thinking from Adam Smith, David... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Graham James Mummery

1.0 out of 5 stars A bizarre book...
The previous review of this book is hard to fathom, unless the author wrote it himself. This book is far from a classic. Read more
Published on 16 Jun 2007 by Kate Martindale

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