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#1605: "The Phrase" : Gill asks Driver and Bell replies
From: madison bell <mbell@goucher.edu>
The theory is that keeping wages low in Haiti is advantageous for US
economic interests not so much because the US outsources so much labor to
Haiti but because Haiti provides a rockbottom wage floor for the whole
Western Hemisphere. This US interest prefers that Haiti should be
dependent on imported (from the US, typically) food and other products,
rather than working toward agricultural selfsufficiency (which is still
possible if current trends could be reversed)-- because in this paradigm
Haitians have to keep working for those low wages in order to purchase
imported food (perhaps other goods too once starvation has been addressed),
rather than working directly to feed each other and themselves as would be
possible with a model of agricultural selfsufficiency. How do Haitians buy
the stuff? At the cost of great trouble and sacrifice, obviously. Most
food is currently imported (and priced in US dollars) so Haitians have to
find some way to buy (at a hugely unfavorable exchange rate). Otherwise
they get no food and then they die.
For details, see HAITI AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER by Alex Dupuy
msb