The Recovery: Rich vs. Developed

by Adil Dhalla (@CreativityKTR)

Is greed good, again? For a brief moment in time – the recession – Greed was the villain whom we attributed our lamentable situation to. Greed’s friends, Incompetence and Indolence also helped out, but at best they were Greed’s goofy sidekicks. Like a formulaic sequel, not only is Greed back but many are ironically rooting for Greed as recovering our lost wealth becomes the new obsession.

How soon we forget.

Greed’s return, despite our best intentions to date, stems from our priorities. Global leadership has always been ‘awarded’ to the country who could afford the largest army. Although we’d like to think we have evolved greatly from our barbarian past, the reality is that we still cede power to the man with the biggest gun and fattest wallet. In my lifetime, this man has been Uncle Sam.

Having risen to global dominance by being the richest and strongest, it’s hard to fathom that the United States will dramatically change their ways in a post-recession world.  Sure, safeguards are in place and a great degree of incompetence has been removed from its internal leadership. But as the health care debate rages on, we are sorely reminded that the United States of America is not the most developed country in the world and in fact, is far from it.

Curiously, there is no definitive measure of development but on the closest agreed upon measure, the Human Development Index, the US ranks 14^th. Accessibility to health care is not a given as we now know; it ranks 17^th in the world for literacy rates and up to 17% of its citizens pre-recession lived in poverty. Of course, by providing just this data I am guilty of perpetuating bias-blog-journalism but the point of this piece is not to provide a balanced debate about American’s greatness. America is great for many very many reasons. It already knows that.

The point of this piece, however, is to ask out loud if we can put a desire for development ahead of a desire for wealth and by doing so, turn to a new chapter in global leadership. In the context of recovery, this is a question which we must answer because if we follow the path of greed again then history is likely to repeat itself.

Instead, if we seek to learn more about countries like Norway, Germany and Canada – all of whom who enjoy higher levels of development with less resources than the US – then this is a real recovery. These aforementioned countries are not devoid of greed but in their respective ways, they have put development ahead of wealth. Their citizens live longer and are, on average, more prosperous. They are far from perfect but much closer to being a role model than old Uncle Sam.

We are always told we need good people to be our role models. Maybe it’s time to demand the same from the countries we look up to.