G20 Countries Take On Economic Inequality

G20 leaders are heralding their progress last weekend in Pittsburgh as a sign of a new world order, in which they will collaborate as "permanent stewards of the world economy for the first time," monitored and evaluated by the International Monetary Fund to ensure that "economic policies of G20 countries are consistent with 'sustainable and balanced trajectories for the global economy'." This plan lacks any enforceable power - it is a strategy of global goodwill, embarrassment and peer pressure to avoid on-going boom and bust economic cycles - but there is talk of imposing a tax on financial speculation (e.g., derivatives) to curb "excessive risk-taking."

This is a positive if amorphous development for the world and the US.  It signals that we are eager to return to a more cooperative stance in the world, and it is a more overt, collective acknowledgment by nations of the uneven outcomes of globalization that I've seen before.  But what next? Unsurprisingly, the U.S. is loathe to take on Wall Street, and the rift between the developing world's need for better access to markets and less onerous trading conditions and the developed world's desire to protect their unfair advantage in our "free" market economy persists.

Leaders at the summit congratulated themselves on preventing a global depression via stimulus measures, and outlined a voluntary commitment to fight global poverty through improved access to "food, fuel, and finance" for the poor.  What's difficult for domestic anti-poverty activists in global poverty debates is that the U.S. is always in the role of the rich, developed country needing to do more for its poorer global counterparts.  This is a reality, but one that obscures our own problematic economic inequality at home.  Frameworks like economic human rights situate our poverty and inequality in international frameworks - it's unconscionable for us to tolerate such poverty because by doing so we are violating our international agreements.  This is a language slow to catch on at home, given how generally insular we are as a nation.  But in convenings like the G20, we'd do best to remember that our almost 40M poor Americans are part of the global poverty masses - and we should cajole our leaders to prioritize aid and development to Detroit and Appalachia alongside sub-Saharan Africa.

(Photo of activists in Pittsburgh by WoodysWorldTV)