In a new report on “global governance” and “policy space for development,” the dictator-dominated United Nations blasted free markets and said it was time for what the outfit described as an “international ‘New Deal.’” The wild demand, issued by the UN “Conference on Trade and Development” (UNCTAD) in its recently released annual report, also included attacks on tax competition, along with calls for more wealth extraction from citizens to fund bigger government, abolishing financial privacy worldwide to facilitate global taxation, and much more. Critics promptly ridiculed the UN outfit and its latest comments as obnoxious, inaccurate, and ideological. But the UN agency, which has previously called for global taxes and a world currency, has no intention of giving up.
From the start, the latest UNCTAD report makes the theme clear — global, centralized Big Government under any pretext is the goal. “UNCTAD’s 50th anniversary falls at a time when, once again, there are calls for changes in the way the global economy is ordered and managed,” said the UN outfit, founded in 1964 amid demands from Third World regimes and autocrats (called “developing countries”) for more wealth redistribution from Western taxpayers. “Back in 1964, the international community [sic] recognized that ‘If privilege, extremes of wealth and poverty, and social injustice persist, then the goal of development is lost’.”
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The controversial UN bureaucracy, perhaps most infamous for its decades-old push to build what it calls a “New International Economic Order,” goes on to blast so-called “market liberalism,” more commonly known in the United States as free markets. “Almost everywhere in recent years, the spread of market liberalism has coincided with highly unequal patterns of income and wealth distribution,” the report continues, claiming that governments and international outfits cannot keep ceding more “space” to market forces. “As the international community frames an ambitious development agenda beyond 2015, the moment is right to propose another international ‘New Deal’ that can realize the promise of ‘prosperity for all’.”
When the UN speaks of the “international community,” of course, what it really means is the UN and its collection of member governments, oftentimes ruthless dictatorships, and sometimes even genocidal mass-murderers. That includes, for example, Cuba’s Castro, Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, Sudan’s Bashir, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, and many other likeminded despots and psychopaths who barbarically oppress and impoverish those whom they rule over. UNCTAD, the UN agency that released the report, is a crucial organ of the dictator-dominated UN General Assembly, where Castro’s vote carries the same weight as Obama’s. Its calls for a global “New Deal” and changing the way the global economy is “managed,” then, should be understood with those crucial facts in mind.
The reference to a “New Deal” in and of itself should also spark alarm. That “progressive” plot, orchestrated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the mid-1930s, involved the unprecedented explosion of the federal government and its powers far beyond any semblance of constitutional or even legitimate governance. Indeed, much of the scheming was launched using “executive orders,” despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution grants no legislative powers to the president. The New Deal also expanded federal power far outside constitutional bounds, seizing huge swaths of the economy while empowering armies of lawless bureaucrats to control the rest.
Now imagine such a plot at the global level. It would necessarily require independent revenue streams (taxes) for the UN, mass wealth redistribution, enforcement operations, kangaroo courts, and much more. In addition, it would require powerful bureaucrats and rulers to administer the whole planetary regime. And like in the United States, a global “New Deal” would produce nothing but out-of-control government and more poverty, only on a much larger scale.
Of course, as countless studies and mountains of empirical evidence show clearly, the best way to create “prosperity for all,” as UNCTAD put it, is to allow free people in free markets to produce and trade freely. History has shown — often with tragic and deadly results — that government “development agendas,” wealth redistribution, and costly bureaucracies determined to restrict liberty actually produce the opposite of prosperity for all. Instead, the victims of such machinations can attest that such schemes produce misery for virtually all and prosperity for the dictators, criminals, and psychopaths who managed to claw their way to the top.
For instance, North Korea, Zimbabwe, and Cuba, all ruled by regimes that are UNCTAD members, have plenty of government planning, a robust “public sector,” massive government revenues relative to the size of the economy, and virtually every other characteristic touted in the UN report as the recipe for success and prosperity. Yet the suffering people of those nations are among the poorest on the planet, not to mention the gulags and other tyranny. The UN knows it, too — it constantly sends food aid to those regimes, which ruthlessly oppress populations that might very well starve due to the socialism as countless millions have before.
By contrast, the nations that enjoy the greatest levels of economic freedom — Hong Kong, Canada, Switzerland, the United States, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, and others — have the highest standard of living anywhere. Even those who pass for “poor” in economically free nations are far richer than average people in places that lack economic freedom. For the UN, though, promoting anti-market machinations at the national level is not enough. Like the communist zealots and their useful idiots of the last century, they insist that the whole world must be run on their half-baked principles to ensure “prosperity” and “equality.”
“Moreover, long-standing development issues — from sovereign debt problems to improved market access in a fairer international trading system, and from commodity price stabilization to financial markets that serve the real economy — can only be addressed through effective multilateral institutions supported by (and this is no small proviso) sufficient political will on the part of the leading economies,” the UNCTAD report continues. “Added to these persistent challenges, today’s interdependent world has thrown up a variety of new ones, such as health pandemics, food insecurity, and global warming, which require even bolder multilateral leadership and collective action.”
“Multilateral leadership” and “collective action” mean just what you think they do — Big Government schemes run by the UN, other unaccountable globalist outfits, regional regimes such as the various transnational “Unions” sprouting up worldwide, and politicians who have no experience running a lemonade stand, not to mention a real business. UNCTAD boss Mukhisa Kituyi’s background, for example, appears to include nothing related to actual trade or investment, other than positions in government bureaucracies and government-funded “think tanks” trying to control and plunder those who actually produce the wealth.
“You would think an institution that focuses on trade and development would be advocating free markets and small government,” observed liberty-minded economist Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute focusing on tax policy. “But UNCTAD takes the opposite approach… They even want us to think big government deserves the credit for prosperity in Hong Kong and Singapore. So you know the bureaucrats are either very stupid or very dishonest. I suspect the latter, but it doesn’t matter. All we need to know is that they are willing to make very preposterous claims to advance their agenda.”
It is not the first time that globalist members of the political class have proposed a global “New Deal.” In 2009, then-U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who regularly demanded what he called a “New World Order,” even used the term “global New Deal” to outline his plan to empower the UN and impose Big Brother-style governance on humanity. “As far as the common interests that we’re pursuing — look, there is the possibility in the next few months of a global New Deal,” Brown told reporters in the Oval Office, with Obama standing proudly at his side.
Going further, Brown said the New Deal would involve “all the different countries of the world” — read governments and dictators — “coming together to agree to expansion in the economy.” For the “first time,” he added, “international institutions” such as the UN would be “reformed in such a way that they can do the job that people want them to do.” It was not clear what people “want them to do” or how Brown determined people’s views on the matter. More likely, though, he was referring to what governments and globalists “want them to do” — extract more wealth from taxpayers to infringe on their rights and fund a wide array of totalitarian-minded measures.
Speaking to the U.S. Congress, Brown said that “every continent” would have to play “their part in a global New Deal.” The three elements of the plot he cited: global financial rules, coordinated monetary-policy gimmicks, and more “international cooperation” on everything from restricting what scientists call the “gas of life” (CO2) to “helping emerging markets rebuild their banks.” In other words: Global government with unrestrained powers over humanity.
What the world needs to create prosperity for all is not a new New Deal, UN reports, Big Government, global regulation, wealth redistribution, or further attacks on liberty. In fact, if prosperity was truly the goal, the discredited UN agency would be prescribing the exact opposite — free markets, small government, as well as regulatory and tax competition between jurisdictions to stimulate good governance. If Americans hope to remain prosperous and free, ditching what remains of the domestic New Deal, along with the UN and virtually all of its fellow globalist outfits, would be a great recipe for success.
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is currently based in Europe. He can be reached at [email protected]Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.
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