„[…] The disintegration of the world, wage-wise
The first is that countries’ per capita GDPs have diverged: rich countries have, until about 2007, experienced higher growth rates than poor countries. This fact was not much noticed because it was eclipsed by the extraordinarily fast rise of China, and more recently India.
The talk of the global middle class made us forget that ten African countries, with a combined population of 150 million and counting, currently have per capita GDPs lower than at the time of independence.
We are also unaware that in the 20 years between 1980 and 2000, Africa’s average per capita growth rate was zero. Thus, today the gap between rich countries like the United States and poor countries like Madagascar is 50 to 1. That is up from a ratio of 10 to 1 in 1960.
[…] As a recent UBS “Prices and Earnings” report shows, for exactly the same job of bus driver, the real hourly wage rate (adjusted for the cost of living) is $20 in Amsterdam and only $3 in Mumbai.
[…] People in today’s crisis-stricken Europe forget how much richer Western Europe is compared to most of Asia, and practically all of Africa. To give just one example: The poorest 1% of the Danish population has an income higher than 95% of the people living in Mali, Madagascar or Tanzania. […]“
aus:
The Economic Causes of Migration
After Lampedusa: Should the world be composed of gated communities?
By Branko Milanovic, The Globalist, October 22, 2013