Ricardo Hausmann — Why Are Rich Countries Democratic?

Here's another Harvard professor that needs a refresher course in critical thinking.

Even the correlation he proposes between so-called democratic states and national wealth doesn't hold. Greece, the birthplace of the Western intellectual tradition and Athens, the birthplace of Western democracy, are basket cases, while the oil-rich despotic states of the Middle East are extraordinarily wealthy.

Nothing about distribution, nothing about the relationship of wealth and political power, nothing about what constitutes democracy.

Conflation of capitalism with democracy as propaganda for neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Propaganda.

The one thing he does get right but doesn't admit is the correspondence of market price and the price of politicians.

Project Syndicate
Why Are Rich Countries Democratic?
Ricardo Hausmann, a former minister of planning of Venezuela and former Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, is a professor of economics at Harvard University, where he is also Director of the Center for International Development