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Impacts- Econ Good- DemocracyEconomic growth key to democracy Friedman 6 (Benjamin, William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University, THE MORAL CONSEQUENCES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH, http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/friedman/files/The%20Moral%20Consequences%20of%20Economic%20Growth.pdf, February 6, AD: 7/6/09) How the citizens of any country think about economic growth, and what actions they take in consequence, are therefore a matter of far broader importance than we conventionally assume. In many countries today, even the most basic qualities of any society— democracy or dictatorship, tolerance or ethnic hatred and violence, widespread opportunity or economic oligarchy— remain in flux. In some countries where there is now a democracy, it is still new and therefore fragile. Because of the link between rising or falling living standards and just these aspects of social and political development, the absence of growth in so many of what we usually call “developing economies,” even though many of them are not actually developing, threatens their prospects in ways that standard measures of national income do not even suggest. The same concern applies, albeit in a more subtle way, to mature democracies as well. Even in the United States, I believe, the quality of our democracy—more fundamentally, the moral character of American society—is similarly at risk. The central economic question for the U.S. at the outset of the twentyfirst century is whether the nation in the generation ahead will again achieve increasing prosperity, as in the decades immediately following World War II, or lapse into the stagnation of living standards for the majority of our citizens that persisted from the early 1970s until the early 1990s. And the more important question that then follows concerns how these different economic paths would affect our democratic political institutions and the broader character of our society. As the economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron once observed, “even a long democratic history does not necessarily immunize a country from becoming a ‘democracy without democrats.’” Our own experience, as well as that of other countries, demonstrates that merely being rich is no bar to a society’s retreat into rigidity and intolerance once enough of its citizens lose the sense that they are getting ahead. The familiar balancing of material positives against moral negatives when we discuss economic growth is therefore a false choice, and the parallel assumption that how we value material versus moral concerns neatly maps into whether we should eagerly embrace economic growth or temper our enthusiasm for it is wrong as well. Economic growth bears moral benefits as well, and when we debate the often hard decisions that inevitably arise—in choosing economic policies that either encourage growth or retard it, and even in our reactions to growth that takes place apart from the push or pull of public policy—it is important that we take these moral positives into account. Impacts- Econ Good- FamineEconomic growth is the only solution to famine . Mahder 8 (Ethiopian Development Website, “Addressing the root cause of famine and poverty in Ethiopia,” September 27, 2008, http://mahder.com/pdf/Addressing_the_root_cause_of_famine_and_poverty_in_Ethiopia..pdf, AD: 7-6-9) It is well established that there is a strong correlation between famine and economic development or growth. Economic growth leads to development and reduction in poverty and famine. Real economic growth embracing and benefiting all the citizens of a country produces safety mechanisms which are of vital importance in alleviating or avoiding displacements and live destruction emanating from famine. The suffering and significant loss of lives resulting from persistent famines which are hitting Ethiopia could not be avoided or even mitigated owing to the shrinking economy or increasing poverty in the country. On the other hand, one can can not avoid but face the irony of Ethiopia failing to be self sufficient and feed its population despite possessing all the potential to do so. Thus a critical examination of the major stumbling block or factor acting as a bottleneck and preventing the country from eradicating or even coping with famine is necessary. Economic development empirically averts famine. Norberg 3 (Johan, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, In Defense of Global Capitalism, p. 33-34, AD: 7-6-9) Such is the triumph of the “green revolution.” Higher-yield, more-resistant crops have been developed, at the same time as sowing, irrigation, manuring, and harvesting methods have improved dramatically. New, efficient strains of wheat account for more than 75 percent of wheat production in the developing countries, and farmers there are estimated to have earned nearly $5 billion as a result of the change. In southern India, the green revolution is estimated to have boosted farmers' real earnings by 90 percent and those of landless peasants by 125 percent over 20 years. Its impact has been least in Africa, but even there the green revolution has raised maize production per acre by between 10 and 40 percent. Without this revolution, it is estimated that world prices of wheat and rice would be nearly 40 percent higher than they are today and that roughly another 2 percent of the world's children—children who are now getting enough to eat—would have suffered from chronic malnourishment. Today's food problem has nothing to do with overpopulation. Hunger today is a problem of access to the available knowledge and technology, to wealth, and to the secure background conditions that make food production possible. Many researchers believe that if modern farming techniques were applied in all the world's agriculture, we would already be able, here and now, to feed another billion or so people. 10 The incidence of major famine disasters has also declined dramatically, largely as a result of the spread of democracy. Starvation has occurred in states of practically every kind—communist regimes, colonial empires, technocratic dictatorships, and ancient tribal societies. In all cases they have been centralized, authoritarian states that suppressed free debate and the workings of the market. As Amartya Sen observes, there has never been a famine disaster in a democracy. Even poor democracies like India and Botswana have avoided starvation, despite having a poorer food supply than many countries where famine has struck. By contrast, communist states like China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and North Korea, as well as colonies like India under the British Raj, have experienced starvation. This shows that famine is caused by dictatorship, not by food shortage. Famine is induced by leaders destroying production and trade, making war, and ignoring the plight of the starving population. Sen maintains that democracies are spared starvation for the simple reason that it is easily prevented if the rulers of a society wish to prevent it. Rulers can refrain from impeding the distribution of food, and they can create jobs for people who would not be able to afford food purchases in times of crisis. But dictators are under no pressure: they can eat their fill however badly off their people are, whereas democratic leaders will be unseated if they fail to address food distribution problems. Additionally, a free press makes the general public aware of the problems, so that they can be tackled in time. In a dictatorship, even the leaders may be deceived by censorship. Much evidence suggests that China's leaders were reassured by their own propaganda and their subordinates' laundered statistics while 30 million people died of starvation during “the Great Leap Forward” between 1958 and 1961. Download 0.75 Mb. Share with your friends:
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