This post is about Haiti. No it is not an article about the horrible earthquake that flattened their capital. It is not about the predicted thousands of people who died. And it is not about the heroic struggle of individuals trying to survive. This article is about Haiti's future, why they are so incredibly poor, and how this event could completely destroy the country.
First I must point out that the basis of Haiti's economy is agriculture. Two thirds of their population depends on the agricultural sector. They have a massive trade deficit and little to no outlook economically. Because of a shrinking economy, the government has little money to invest in infrastructure and is in massive debt. The result is horrible poverty. Haiti's poverty is so incredibly bad, their poor have begun eating dirt.
But wait a minute. Why is the economy stagnant?
The answer is not pretty.
It's kind of our fault.
See, the US has lots of these things called subsidies. A subsidy is when a government supplements the income of corporations or workers in an industry in exchange for a lowering of the price of the good that the industry produces. Subsidies are good for the country because they make their product more competitive on the global market. The consequence of these subsidies unfortunately is that countries will import the subsidized good over the non subsidized good because it is cheaper. This ends up being devastating for the poorer countries that cannot afford large government subsidies of their own.
Below is a chart showing the different agricultural products that the U.S subsidizes.
Now let me list the agricultural exports from Haiti in 1990:coffee and sugarcane; rice, corn, sorghum, mangoes
The US makes some of the top money making crops virtually useless because we spend more on subsidies than they can ever dream of. Add to that the Brazilian and Venezuelan subsidies on sugarcane, a tightening of outside investment following an economic crash, and a little political turmoil, and you get a severely disadvantaged country.
What this earthquake has just done is demolished most of the infrastructure built over the last twenty years. Haiti is already strapped for cash and doesn't have enough money to even come close to fixing this mess. Hospitals crumbled, schools crumbled, lives crumbled and at best the stability and future of this country look bleak.
7 comments:
All of this is quite true. The French before they were driven out, took much of value during the Revolution and then they left and imposed reparations on Haiti. They themselves decimated the entire interior by burning up all the trees for charcoal. The dictators that followed l'Overture, down to "Baby" Doc Duvalier, looted the treasury and left or were driven out. I once, stood on the old French fort at Cap Haitien on the highest ridge in the north and looked at the interior of the country. Nothing but red barren hills as far as the eye can see.Haiti has never had a chance and, now they must get all the aid a free country can give them. Why can we afford to kill people (Iraq, Afghanistan), but not afford to aid our neighbors and support a struggling little democracy like Haiti?
Considering the state that Haiti is in environmentally, economically, etc. I think that it might be best for some countries to adopt the living haitians, and then let the land recuperate. The country is so barren it seems like it doesn't have that much prosperity left for anyone.
Jake, let me clarify I would never have the Haitians forced out of their homeland. They have fought bitterly for that half of Island and their freedom, and I would never I have them leave against their will. I also believe that everything should be tried to get them back together before such an action was even proposed.
What I do believe is that there is so little left in Haiti that not much CAN be done. What I said was also a bit of an exaggeration. There must be steps that can be taken to recuperate the land with people still on it. Letting the land recover with no people residing on it would be the absolute extreme.
Could you say what you think recuperating the land would do? And how they would do it within their budget?
Sure. Essentially what the Haitians have done over the course of their post-imperial history is try to compete with larger world powers by stripping the land of whatever resource they could, and try to turn it into money. They tore down their forests, and mangrove swamps, which are both sources of food such as fish and game, to turn them to charcoal. Now this bad, but they can survive without environment and wildlife by farming, but what really hurt them here is that they deforested many hillsides, and with no roots to keep erosion at bay the Haitian suffered from many mudslides that have potential to destroy quite a bit.
So now you can see here that Haiti has little natural resource left, and about all they can do is farm, which saps much of the nutrients from the soil without use of crop rotation and other farming techniques, but with the current state of their economy even that can be difficult. Over all if the land were allowed to recover it could allow for better soil for farming, new industry in perhaps controlled logging or tourism, and thusly a better economy.
Now to answer your question as to how they could afford it. If humanity left that half of the island alone it would eventually heal itself over time, but as you stated the people would not leave their land and of course no one should force them to leave against their will. They could also try help the nature along, or to cultivate only certain parts of the country so that the other pieces of land could re-grow. This however might take money, which they really don't have. In all honesty though the Haitian government can't do much at all right now, and needs foreign assistance to solve the more pressing problems of ensuring the Haitian people's safety.
What I'm trying to say is that they really can't afford it, or much of anything else for that matter. In fact in order of Haiti to really get back on their feet they most likely need some kind of, and probably a lot of, assistance.
I would add to this that it may not even be that good for the US in anything other then the "political marketplace" because in order to subsidize one industry, you have to tax either another industry, or the American consumer. Considering as we have a progressive tax structure (taxing industry) I'd say we'd have much larger manufacturing and other capital intensive sectors if we didn't subsidize agriculture and hurt Haiti even more then we hurt ourselves.
Still, good job on a great focused, activist article, and I'm really glad more people are making this point!
@Gary: Some of the most barren places I know of are some of the richest. Los Angeles, Pheonix, Pittsburgh.... And it's not like LA was ever exceptionally naturally endowed. I agree that what Haiti's dictators have done to it is awful, but it is not irreparable, and the argument here is that before we even start giving aid, we should look in the mirror at the ways we ourselves are actively hurting the nation of Haiti and our own people.
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