Jeremy Corbyn is Wrong About the British Empire's Wealth | IEA Briefing
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- Опубліковано 15 гру 2024
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In this episode of the IEA Briefing, Editorial Director Dr. Kristian Niemietz discusses Jeremy Corbyn's recent speech in Jamaica about reparations and colonialism. Despite losing the general election five years ago, Corbyn remains influential with 2.6 million Twitter followers - more than the Prime Minister, Opposition Leader, and Chancellor combined. Niemietz explains why Corbyn's social media presence continues to shape public debate.
The conversation examines Corbyn's claim that Britain's wealth was built on slavery and colonial exploitation. Niemietz challenges this view, arguing that while some families got rich from the slave trade, the economic gains from colonialism were relatively small compared to the massive capital investment required for the Industrial Revolution. He suggests that colonial administration and military costs may have actually made the empire economically inefficient.
Looking at solutions for addressing historical wrongs, Niemietz argues against reparations, questioning the concept of inherited collective guilt and suggesting that such payments wouldn't differ meaningfully from existing foreign aid. Instead, he advocates for free trade as a more effective way to help formerly colonised nations develop economically. The discussion concludes by examining how modern political movements, including Corbyn's followers, approach trade policy based on political alignment rather than economic merit.
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The idea of reparations from the general population depends on the concept of "trickle-down" - a concept that has, ironically, been discredited by left-leaning economists such as Thomas Picketty. Slavery made a small number of families very rich, not the general population, and many of those families are still identifiable today. For Corbyn it probably seems easier just to grab it from taxpayers, rather than the hard work involved in getting it from those who should pay.
It's also a factor that the majority of colonised regions were wealthier and healthier during and after the Empire than their neighbours who did not benefit from being part of the Empire, and that those countries were the transatlantic slave trade were destinations, have seen the descendants of those slaves to be an order of magnitude more wealthy and healthy than the countries that sold those slaves in Africa. There is a demand for reparations from the UK and US, yet no mass exodus of African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans back to the utopia of Africa,...because they know they are 10 times better off here than they would be in the land of their ancestors. Want to talk about mafia =-like practices? Look no further than the Afro-centrist activists calling for reparations, 'demanding money with menaces'. We should be laughing at them, not debating them or entertaining them.
Literally the opposite is true. Being allowed to exploit slave labour holds an economy back. The economies of Europe flourished once they banned it.
It’s interesting to me how people who peddle the ‘slavery is the root cause of wealth disparity’ would almost certainly, rightly call out, the ahistorical nature of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, a myth that rests on the central truth that the union states were wealthier because they had abolished slavery.
I always thought the Northern States won because they were established earlier and had a more self sufficient economy with a better developed industrial manufacturing sector. The Southern states were more generally an agricultural economy dependent on exports to fund trade. Over time the Northern blockades of Southern ports would probably have eventually starved the South into defeat.
Jeremy is right!
Nuanced view: wealth was required to fuel Industrialisation, the major early investors had accumulated great wealth EG see their big palace like family homes.
Also, a visionary driving pioneer energy was required. The early industrialised led the way for others to follow. The wealth spread all through our economy.
Re: distribution of the wealth produced. No doubt, a few families benefitted massively. And the general population also benefitted.
There is an argument to give back to Countries that have had the heavy boot of colonisation applied. This could involve a return of lands, metal and mineral rights? Corporations paying their taxes even ?
7:26 trade and extraction are not synonymous
Exactly this!
Jeremy Corbyn is a grifter who never left his student niche.
Or we can take s complex nuanced view eh?