I realise I
haven’t posted for a while. I’m currently engulfed in reviewing two books on
Marxian economics, The Endless Crisis and
The Failure of Capitalist Production –
which is a bit of a challenge. In the meantime, I thought that, as this blog
was originally intended to review books about capitalism in an in-depth way,
I’d share some counter-intuitive and little known facts I’ve encountered along
the way.
1 Between 1980 and 2007 the global labour force grew from 1.9 billion to 3.1 billion, a rise of 63%. 73% of the labour force is located in the
developing world and 40% in China
and India
alone. This has happened primarily because of ‘depeasantisation’ – peasants leave
or are forced to leave the land and urban slums expand dramatically. 46
million workers join the labour force, across the world, every year.
2 In every region of the world, economic growth was higher between 1950 and 1973 than between 1973 and 2008. Growth more than halved in Western Europe,
Latin America and Africa. Overall world growth
stood at 2.9% between 1950 and 1973 and 1.8% between 1973 and 2008. (This data is gleaned from a table on page 53 of Andrew Kliman's The Failure of Capitalist Production)
3 Due to the expansion of credit, in the four years before the financial
crisis (2003-2007), global growth averaged 4-5%, higher than at any time since the 1960s.
4 The 2008 crash was the second largest economic crisis in history, after
the Great Depression of the 1930s. Without government bail-outs and stimulus,
it would have been the largest.
5 Depression is now the condition most treated by the National Health Service in the UK. According to the UK
government in 2000, one in six adults was suffering from a neurotic disorder, usually depression or anxiety or both.
6 7-8% of the labour force in Brazil and 9% of the labour force in Egypt are employed as domestic servants. In England and Wales it is 0.3%. 30-50% of the non-agricultural workforce is self-employed in developing
countries, in developed countries it is 12.8%. But as proletarianisation is
increasing in the developing world (see point one) and self-employment increasing in the developed world,
this balance will likely change.
7 35% of the workforce in Britain in the
early 1970s worked in manufacturing. Now it is just over 10%.
8 0.1% of the Chinese and Indian populations are thought to be
psychopaths. In Britain and America it is between 2 and 4%.
9 “The Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism” is on MI5’s (Britain’s state security service) list of targets to be safeguarded against subversion.
10 Life expectancy for civilians
increased in Britain
by twice as much during the First and Second World Wars, as it did during the rest of the twentieth century.
11 Trade union membership peaked in Britain at 13.5
million in 1979. By 2009, it was down to 6.7m.
12 Had the share of GDP going to wages in the
1970s been maintained, UK consumers would currently have an extra £100 billion at their disposal, and US
consumers £500 billion.
