Well, I must say I respectfully disagree with what you say. Throughout the past thirty years, we have seen examples where massive debt has destroyed nations. However, over the past thirty years we have also seen a phenomenal growth of economies throughout the third world. The regions of the world where we have seen the most impressive growth, are the regions of the world that have finally opened up to they western world :asia. Last year, the chinese economy grew by ten percent. Indeed, standards of living are increasing at every level of society from the richest of the rich to the poorest of the poor. Even in India, we have seen the calorici intake of the average farmer go up by nearly twenty five percent.

Of course, it would be flawed to ignore your arguments completely. The world has seen the World Bank and IMF to advise nations to make fiscal austerity measures. However, the key to economic growth in the nations I have mentioned above has been foreign direct investment. While the actions taken by the government may seem heartless, macroeconomic stability is essential for attracting global investment.

Yet, there are nations that have become impoverished in Africa. However, free trade had little to do with the impoverishment of these nations. For instance, let us look at the situation of the Congo. The U.S government placed Mobuto Seke Seke into power for geopolitical reasons during the cold war. During his regime, he succesfully bankrupted the nation sucking in billions of dollars worth of foreign aid while plundering his nation which is extremely rich in natural resources. If the IMF tried to recollect its loans, the economy would collapse and that is exactly what we are seeing today. Yet in the end, it was the actions of Mobuto which created economic chaos and not the world bank. Thus, in cases where poverty has increased one can blame external factors such as poor government.

In the end, the only adequate solution for ending poverty we have seen is well governed nations following the free markets (of course, there are exceptions, yet that is how ninety percent of the worlds global poverty that has been reduced, has been reduced) The solution you suggest is fair trade. While fair trade sounds excellent on paper, it is a plan marred by many flaws. First, the vast majority of consumrs are unwilling to pay double the price for goods made in fair trade since tht is often what fair trade demands: higher prices. Instead, market forces will continue to support sweatshop. Yet as terrible as the working conditions of these people seem, they would be worse were they living under older models of subsistence agriculture. Indeed, in India I have many close family members making barely a dollar a day, yet compared to many others in the streets their income is solid. Yet more dangerous to the economies of these nations would be if fair trade was largely accepted. Why would that devestate economies so strongly? Because with prices higer, foreign nations would be completely unable to compete against western producers. Today, America is the worlds most efficient producer of agricultural products. In Europe, high subsidies make it difficult for africans to compete. If fair trade was fully instituted, thousands of Africans and other third worlders would be out of work. The precarious economic gains that have been made in the past few decades would disspear and the subsistence economic model (people not producing cash crops, but crops for eating. Something now first world nation does because it is an extremely inneficient means of production that could never feed the world because of the massive growth of population)sending millions into destitute poverty.

So, as one can see, it simply does not to me make sense to lambaste free trade. To me, it is the only hope for economic growth in the third world. Economic conditions in many nations such as India are awful. Whenever I visit India and walk in the streets, I see beggars happy to get a fraction of a penny. I see children I know are not getting enough food, yet blaming the west for these ills is unfair. The blame resides in inneficient economic models of the past. Of course, I don't pretend to be an expert on global poverty and I am willing to accept any solution that will end poverty.

p.s- Sorry for the long paper, but this is a subject I'm passionate about as well.

Do you understand that euro gov'ts subsidizing their farmers who then sell cheap stuff to foreigners amounts to a gain for the foreigners, at the expense of euro taxpayers?

You don't go into why Poor Farmers can't just convert their land back.

As long as there are enough people who are true believers in Fair Trade, or for some other reason prefer buying fair trade goods to cheaper "free trade" goods, enough to be willing to shell out the extra cash, then fair trade will work just fine. However, "fair trade" can't bend the laws of economics; if supply exceeds demand then either prices go down or some farmers go out of business.

Just complaining about working conditions in multinationals' factories doesn't serve you at all. What were these people living like before? Sometimes they were living better, but found themselves desperately unemployed because of predatory gov't policies -the World Bank and IMF have a hand in this kind of thing - but even on the idyllic, pre-whitey brown people farms, kids had to work long hours, and work conditions were pretty unpleasant and unsafe.