Key Ideas in Structuralism
Structuralism explains how international economies have affected the growth of developing economies. Developing economies export raw materials to developed economies cheaply as opposed to importing processed goods that are expensive. Structuralism promotes the development of new technologies. This could make the states industrialize in order to produce finished goods that could help them attain a better income. Weak economies are attributed to over-reliance on industrialized countries that exploit less successful states in trade by selling industrial goods expensively. Economic growth, therefore, can only be achieved through government intervention by imposing tariffs on imported goods and services to make them expensive as opposed to goods produced locally. This aspect is aimed at making consumers buy locally manufactured goods (Contreras 4).
Key Ideas in Neo-Marxism
Neo-Marxism shows how the developed world exploits developing economies. It focuses on the relationships between factory owners and their workers, displaying the unfairness of the managers towards the latter. It shows the unequal exchange between countries. Raw material exports kill the growth of local industries. Capitalists have promoted underdevelopment in developing countries, so as to get cheap labor and market for their products. Neo-Marxism promoted mass engagements in socialist revolutions that would eliminate worker exploitation. It explains that developing poor economies must engage in collaboration with the developed world (Contreras 10).
Key Ideas in Neoliberalism
The Neoliberalism theory contradicts the neo-Marxist ideas regarding the underdevelopment as an effect of oppression by developed nations. It states that underdevelopment was as a result of poor planned economic policies with interference by the states. It encourages governments to remove market sanctions and restrictions so as to create a larger market space that could stimulate the domestic economy. State intervention was to be minimized by privatizing state owned enterprises, reducing restrictions on foreign investments and reducing government regulations that affect the market. These aspects were aimed at promoting development, in static economies (Contreras 12).
Importance of Millennium Development Goals
Millennium development goals are aimed at improving the living standards of people. Poverty deprives individuals of capabilities to achieve their goals (Dreze and Amartya 35). Learning, in its turn, improves social interaction and personal progress, as well as aids in fulfilling personal aspirations. It enhances basic healthy discussions of social life. Formal education has helped to eradicate child labor. Schooling brings people together and it helps in sharing ideas that broaden the horizons in thinking. Education is an essential part of such growth, as well as the power to resist oppression and make strong political organizations that can bargain for better deals. Better education options for female students reduce gender based inequalities, therefore, triggering the introduction of democracy into a range of establishments, where chauvinist moods used to persist (Dreze and Amartya 39).
The child mortality rate has been eradicated by the improved health care standards. Life expectancy has been extended due to the availability of health care centers with well trained workers. Disease control and prevention has been made possible through campaigns that promote various treatment options (Dreze and Amartya 41).
Through education, poverty rates have been reduced. Education can earn one a job and make use of the economic opportunities that can improve one’s economic status. Moreover, good health is vital in enabling one to participate in activities that generate income. Thus, a rage of innovational strategies can be promoted in major companies, which is bound to reinvent the principles that the current economies are based on (Dreze and Amartya 39).
In a very explicit manner how each of the dimensions of the life of a 21st century citizen are connected to each other: improvements in the education system allow for more options in terms of employment, which, in its turn, leads to the drop in unemployment rates and an increase in the organizational efficiency of major companies. Thus, a rapid economic growth can be expected.
Major Controversies in International Trade Policies
Despite the international trade advocating fair trading conditions, it is evident that the facilitation of such conditions will affect less skilled workers in a negative way, increasing the unemployment rates among them. They have encouraged the exploitation of cheap labor by allowing companies to view manufacturing as less significant than other organizational processes. Most trade pacts empower businesses, but looks down upon workers. They prohibit governments from restricting foreign ownership of firms by use of acts that make them immune to run businesses in any country. They encourage participants to open up financial markets in foreign countries and reduce cross-border money movement (Brown 108).
The trade agreements are bound to weaken the labor standards. This aspect has allowed firms to take jobs to countries that do not protect their workers so as to exploit them. They give less attention to indentured labor and child labor. They subject workers to long working hours, poor wages, poor working conditions and poor compliance with workers’ rights and freedoms. Moreover, they give less attention to environmental issues, such as pollution. They allow firms to set up factories and businesses in countries that do not restrict the production activities leading to pollution (Drusilia 110).
Trade pact agreements have imposed rules on developing countries so that firms from developed countries could have a monopoly and thus could be given power to charge high prices for their commodities. They have achieved this control in monopoly by subsidizing their firms through cheap access to credit, direct payments and tax reduction (Brown 111). The necessity to maintain the liberalization commitments that were made previously has led to the need to come up with elaborate designs for avoiding the protectionist pressures. The resulting ambivalence of the WTO states leads to a consistent breach of the principles of agricultural liberalization and, therefore, jeopardizes the very concept of free trade.
Works Cited
Brown, Drusilla K. International Labor Standards in the World Trade Organization and the International Labor. St. Louis, MO: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review. 2000. Print.
Contreras, Ricardo. Competing Theories of Economic Development. Iowa City, IA: The University of Iowa. 2013. Print.
Dreze, Jean and Amartya, Sen. India Development and Participation (2nd edition). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 2002. Print.