What’s the SD on this movement? I keep hearing about it but I am not familiar with its meaning. Something about an Old Testament passage indicating Israel’s debts should be dropped? Also, something about being anti-globalization.
Speaking of that, I think of the fundamentalist SDMB members mentioned the evil of a one-world government. What’s up with that & is there any relation between the two movements?
Jubilee 2000 is a pretty mainstream movement to forgive the debts of various third-world nations. The basic reasoning behind is that a large number of such countries acquired large and burdensome debts under despotic regimes, frequently abetted by international institutions and that a greater chance of prosperity in those countries could be achieved at a relatively small cost to the OECD countries. IIRC the programme has achieved quite a lot of debt relief, but that the programme is currently stalled.
The “Jubilee” aspect is a matter of timing: various religious groups with a philanthropic bent coalesced around the year 2000 as a convienient time to push for such a programme. AFAIK the sorts of christians who are involved are of the “love thy neighbour” type rather than the ummm… other type.
The anti-globalism thing is more complicated. Most reputable people from poor countries (Mandela for example) believe that globalisation represents an opportunity for the third world as long as there is support for the rule of law in poor countries.
In other words, if the poor country’s government is more like Sth Africa or The Phillipines and less like Nigeria, then globalistion means access to markets, investment and technology. The populations of those countries can start from their low base to make themselves better off. Debt relief would help them do this.
[as a disclaimer I should identify myself as a left-wing, pro-market economist]
picmr
Curious. I’m not much on American history, so forgive me if I sound sarcastic - I’m actually ignorant.
Where Americans ever given any sort of debt relief early on? Surely a new, poor, nation formerly held by a tyrranical empire could’ve used the help. Or did we just work our way out of it?
Nope. We stiffed 'em.
When the Revolution hit France, the U.S. decided that the debt was only owed to the old regime and we quit paying. When the old regime was finally restored (sort of) after Napolean’s ouster, we conveniently forgot to go back and start up the payments. (I suspect that we did something similar to Spain after Napolean conquered that country.)
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Be careful with the characterization of Britain as tyrannical, there.
For the most part, Grenville and succeeding Chancellors of the Exchequer pursued normal mercantilist policies with respect to the American colonies. The colonial uprising was precipitated largely by three conditions: the distance of the American colonies from Britain; the fiscal problems faced by Britain in the wake of the Seven Years War (including heavy taxation at home, in part because of expenses incurred defending colonial borders); and the overriding desire for autonomy possessed by certain American colonists.
Because the colonies were so far from England, it was difficult for Parliament to administrate mercantilism in America–a system which ostensibly provided for the prosperity of the entire empire, not just Britain. The thousands of miles between England and the New World also made it difficult for the British government to understand the needs and sentiments of those in America. Often, it seemed to the colonists as if the king and Parliament were willfully challenging their authority with sinister policies, when in fact the negative effects of and reactions to those policies could not be seen by Britain for months, if ever. The Stamp Act, for example, was repealed by the newly constituted Tory government as soon as it became aware of the American reaction–but by that time, it had caused a hell of a lot of dissent.
Most of Grenville’s policies were directed towards recouping revenue from the colonies to relieve England’s domestic tax burden without directly taxing the colonists–a practice that was discouraged by the Magna Carta. Unfortunately, some colonists viewed these policies nearly universally as attempts to infringe upon their autonomy (an autonomy basically borne of benign neglect more than any institutional independence). Examples include the King’s Proclamation of 1763, which temporarily prohibited American settlement beyond the Appalachians in an attempt to preempt costly native conflict; the Plantation Act of 1764, which reorganized the century-old Navigation Acts to reduce smuggling and corruption; and the Currency Act of 1764, which prohibited the colonists from printing paper money. Colonists had been using a large amount of paper money, depreciated in value, to pay their British debts–contributing to the economic woes of the empire.
Then Grenville passed the Stamp Act, which actually was a colonial duty on certain products. The proceeds of the Act were to go directly to the defense of American frontiers, however, and Grenville offered American lobbyists in Britain several alternatives to the direct taxation of the Stamp Act, all of which were declined. Upon the passage of the Act, Americans reacted far out of proportion to its effects–John Adams called it “an enormous engine fabricated by the English Parliament for battering down all rights and liberties in America,” which is a little much, I feel. And though members of Parliament did rescind the Act as soon as they learned of the American reaction, they resented the colonial challenge to their authority. The subsequent passage of the Declaratory Act was meant to send a message that Parliament had legal power over every colonial matter–in essence, “We could have kept the Stamp Act, we just didn’t want to. In fact, we can pass whatever acts we want.” This was true, but enumerating it only proved all the more inflammatory.
In the end, then, neither side was really to blame; England and the colonies got caught up in an escalating cycle of antagonism. The colonists viewed every Parliamentary act as a tyrannical imposition, part of a larger conspiracy to wholly subsume American autonomy. Parliament, for its part, felt that the colonists had overstepped their bounds. The problem was that the English government had left the colonies enough to their own devices before the fiscal crisis that the actions of Grenville and Parliament, however rationally based, appeared as a drastic assault upon American liberty. And among the colonists themselves there was little willingess to accept responsibility when it came to the expenses incurred by Britain in the colonies–the autonomy to defend their own borders from foreign attack wasn’t really a part of American self-determination. 
Parliament was attempting to solve a tangible problem in cautious fashion, while the actions of the colonists were dictated primarily by the desire to be free of unwanted interference. So I wouldn’t necessarily call England’s empire a tyranny. Tom, please correct me if I’m wrong.
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I agree with the assessments of picmr and tom~ regarding Jubilee 2000, by the way. grin