In Defense of Global Capitalism

In his book, The Capitalist Manifesto ( published in Germany in 2003, the Swedish original Till världskapitalismens försvar released in 2001 ), the Swedish political scientist Johan Norberg is in favor of global free trade and calls for the abolition of protectionism in the form of trade barriers and tariffs.

Norberg vehemently denies the allegations of globalization critics that it 'll go the poor get poorer world. He refers in, inter alia, to UNDP statistics showing that the number of people living in absolute poverty, have been reduced by 200 million, and that in a few decades. Norberg writes: "The UNDP, the United Nations Development Programme, has found that within the last 50 years, the global poverty has decreased more than in the previous 500 years combined. "

The reason for this is capitalism, so Norberg: " The higher the degree of economic liberalization in a country, the greater the chance for more wealth, faster growth, higher living standards and longer life expectancy. In the countries with the greatest economic freedom, people are almost ten times as rich as in the countries with the least freedom and live more than 20 years longer! "

Book Reviews

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of December 21, 2003 was one of the work of the ten best business books of 2003.

Norbert Blum, Federal Minister for Labour and Social Affairs in the government of Helmut Kohl, opened his review with the sentence: "I have read so much rubbish piled rare in a book as in Norberg ' capitalist manifesto '.