#1605: "The Phrase" : Gill asks Driver and Bell replies

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

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