A few weeks ago, I threatened myself that if the quality of the Republic's physical environment did not improve, I would emigrate. I now know where to go. Canada.
Canada is the place where human development is most advanced, according to the Human Development Report 1999 released by the UN Development Programme this week.
Canada is only the 12th richest country by income per capita, but because of its record on life expectancy, adult literacy, and education, it comes out top of the human development rankings. We are 20th in human development and in the same place on the income ranking.
What if the Republic topped the list - would we have "won" anything? There would still be plenty of issues yet to be tackled in the Republic, as there are, I am sure, in Canada presently. To know that your country is the most developed according the UNDP measurement is interesting, but not of very much practical value. To know we are 20th in the ranking is also of little practical value, especially since we are already well aware of the issues which urgently need addressing, and which cause us to fall on the list. Our adult illiteracy rate, in particular, is appalling, according to Tanaiste Mary Harney. A top priority in the revamped Programme for Government?
In a special contribution to the report, Nobel prizewinning economist Amartya Sen says that he was sceptical about the crudity of the human development index, but concedes the argument that its use is essentially to draw attention to the rest of the analysis in the report, and away from another crude index, GNP per capita. Whether comparisons are made in order to pull ourselves up to others' standards, or to help bring up those below us, the wider the scope of the comparison, the more generalised, and ultimately useless, the policy prescriptions that can be made.
Launching the UNDP report in the Republic, the Minster for Family and Community Affairs, Mr Dermot Ahern, mentioned a study of a local authority housing estate by the Combat Poverty Agency. The residents of the estate "didn't want extravagant new leisure facilities. They just wanted a public phone, a letter box and a few litter bins." Basic facilities, which, in addition to employment, are surely now deliverable and democratically-mandated. He has set some simple measurable targets for himself, arising from the wishes of that community. Note that the residents did not ask for Internet connections, mobile phones or computers. Nor did they ask to be protected from the effects of globalisation. Neither they, nor the Combat Poverty Agency, nor, thankfully, the Minister, said that the key task in poverty elimination at the macro level was improving the architecture of global governance.
The views of that local authority community echo those of a health worker in Katmandu, quoted in the report, "Our priorities are hygiene, sanitation, safe drinking water . . . how is the Internet going to change that?" No real answer from the UNDP, the lead agency for world development within the UN system.
The point about democratic mandates jumps out of the pages of the report and its prescriptions for global governance, i.e. global regulation and taxation. So little regard is paid to the democratic legitimacy of centralised planning on this, the grandest scale of all. One could make the same criticism of a lot of multilateral agencies.
Behind the trendiness of including a chapter on "Care and the Global Economy", much of the old UN gut instincts remain. The report is anti-World Bank, anti-IMF, anti-US, pro-Nordics, sceptical about, if not explicitly anti-, profits; replete with instances of market failure but sparing about public sector failure (still less at the level of the UN itself); full of ideas for more taxes on Internet traffic and patents, for example, with no mention of any positive impact, anywhere, of lower tax rates.
The section about the Republic's social partnership should have mentioned the role of reduced income tax in delivering real wage growth. The information sourced from our National Economic and Social Forum omitted any mention of the progressive lowering of income and corporate tax rates in the Republic. That would have fitted uncomfortably beside an assertion that markets squeeze public finances and cause a deterioration in public services. The opposite is the case in our cash-laden Exchequer. Alright, so the Human Development Report is provocative, and set out to be so. One could say, cynically, that no-one will pay attention to it anyway. Still, the idea that there is one way, the UNDP, big plan, global government, taxing and regulating way, to show solidarity with developing countries, with developing regions of the State or with the poor among us, is a great disservice to effective policy-making.
Alright, so the Human Development Report is provocative, and set out to be so
