- Golden billion
The golden billion (Russian: золотой миллиард (zolotoy milliard)) is a term, popular in the Russian-speaking world, referring to the relatively wealthy people in industrially developed nations, or the West. [cite web|url=http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/region-ecology/numbers/11/915.html|title=The Specter of Immigration|publisher=Russia in Global Affairs|accessdate=2008-01-14|last=|first=]
Explanation
The proponents of the idea claim that their wealth of the West, including that of the lower classes, is partly based on exploitation of the former colonies in the
third world . They usually advocate restrictions onfree trade , especially with the West, and various state intervention in the economy schemes.The reasoning goes that the differences in incomes in
first-world countries andthird-world countries cannot be explained by differences in individual productivity. For example, the Caterpillar (CAT) factory inTosno ,Russia has the highest productivity of all CAT factories in Europe, but the workers are paid about an order of magnitude less. The difference is even more startling when comparing the wages oftextile workers inUnited States factories and inChina sweatshop s. This means that themultinational corporation s appropriate a disproportionally high share of thesurplus value in "developing" countries. The argument usually holds that the continuation of this exploitation retards the development and prosperity of thedeveloping nations . Hence,globalization and moderncapitalism benefit mostly the golden billion, while people in the so-called "developing" countries are getting theshort end of the stick .History
The term was coined by A.Kuzmich ( Tsirkunov ) in his book "The Plot of World Government: Russia and the Golden Billion", and used in his articles. The main idea behind this term was taken from
Limits to growth - that there are enough resources for only one billion wealthy people on earth. The term was later popularized by Russian writerSergey Kara-Murza .Opponents of the concept
Opponents of the concept often invoke
market efficiency to argue that free trade and capitalism will make everybody wealthy eventually. Proponents counter that the ongoing process ofmultinational corporation s channeling wealth from poorer countries to richer ones dictates that the gap will not diminish.An online search for the terms "gold billion" or "golden billion" suggest that the term is little known in the English-speaking world. On the other hand, it is a very well known and popular concept in the Russian-speaking world. The underlying beliefs and arguments are by no means local to Russia and are very popular in the West, particularly among the
political left , who believe in greater social equality for the poor.ee also
*
First World
*Capitalism
*Globalization
*Free trade References
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