Poverty

"To be continued." Proof positive you shouldn't stop for dinner when you're on a roll. But I knew that already from the red-haired inmate with the beard in The First Circle.

Just in case I go way off the philosophy bent and more into the poverty end of economics: I was tossing most of my long-term todos today that had expired, and I came across the Fraser Institute's student essay contest (topic: free trade's relation to poverty), and thought I'd take a look at their suggested bibliography:

http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:wwCB5vqxSaEJ:www.fraserinstitute.ca/studentcentre/files/Resource_Guide03.pdf+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

(In HTML to make it easy to copy and paste to check out addresses.)

Weighing these articles against what I learned in GS102 last term and read in that Canada Watch special was interesting, to say the least. I think that I have a few leads:

a) I need to continue in mathematics, otherwise I cannot have an opinion either way on some of what the WTO says. Some of the stats calculations they do look familiar, but some I've never heard of. On the other hand, you need not have passed grade twelve mathematics to see that their newer "more comprehensive" development index is heavily flawed when there are negative changes for a number of countries in every area besides technology (the heavyweight champion of categories), yet every country's overall index comes out with positive change. If technological prowess isn't leading to improved education, health care, GDP, etc. for a particular country, how could it possibly outweigh those categories in a so-called Human Development Index on "its own merits"?

b) I need to keep in mind the power of primacy and recency, and be more objective. Both sides of the globalization issue have fun with the stats to some degree, both sides ignore some key issues of the other, and both sides seem to ignore the spiritual side of the equation (at least when talking about the "real" issues) altogether.

c) It might be worth exploring the idea that free trade might actually be the best way to go (for everyone), provided that social considerations are put first, and that it's not selectively applied as it is now, with Northern states bullying the South into "one-way free trade" by allowing just enough of the particular protectionist element to have it both ways.

d) Mexico is way more important in all of this than my old dim thought debris might've had me guess.

I'll have to get back to you on those some day.