Bush's Breathtakingly Economically Literate Proposal to Alleviate World Poverty

In this slump of bad news, allow me to explain why this unnoticed proposal is a potential godsend:

Saying poverty breeds terrorism and despair, Bush challenged world leaders on Wednesday to abolish all trade tariffs and subsidies ? worth hundreds of billions of dollars ? to promote prosperity and opportunity in struggling nations.

"Either hope will spread, or violence will spread, and we must take the side of hope," Bush told more than 160 presidents, prime ministers and kings gathered for three days of UN General Assembly meetings aimed at combating poverty and reforming the world body.

The primary reason the U.S. became the world's engine of prosperity and freedom is that the Constitution forbids interstate tariffs. History's largest true free trade zone has been a perfect demonstration of the virtue of Adam Smith's theories, whereby the uncoerced trading of unequally distributed blessings leads to a perpetual machine of wealth generation.

All societies are hurt by high trade barriers, but those who have the least have the least to lose. Enormous barriers to the poor's raw materials and simple manufactured goods are in place in wealthy nations. Why is it that those who speak for the downtrodden tend to act against the foreign poor?

The most important aspect of Bush's long-shot proposal is that it demonstrates a deep understanding of the one crucial point to understand about economics--a society's prosperity is directly proportional to its economic freedom. It is classic Bush to spend political capital now that he no longer faces reelection to attempt ideologically contrarian initiatives to radically restructure approaches to intractable problems. If Bush's Social Security reform is flirting with the "third-rail" of American politics, eliminating trade barriers and subsidies for America's farmers is like dancing with the oncoming train.

No nation has successfully shut out the dangers of foreign cheap labor. There appear to only be two choices: importing shrink-wrapped products or importing immigrants and their dangers to society. Here is a citation, for example that 70% of French prisoners are Muslim. Here is a must-read article by Heather Mac Donald on the Illegal Alien Crime Wave. Here is another.

The Palestinians have this week accomplished something rather constructive--debunking the connection between foreign aid and economic development. Handouts invariably support the Uday Husseins and Moussa Arafats, who in their crusades against virtue, tend to slay many geese who lay golden eggs. I would guess that if the Jewish philanthropists who donated $14 million dollars worth of greenhouses were to appear personally in Gaza, they would not be properly thanked.

Foreign aid, the top-down approach, sabotages prosperity by empowering political parasites. This is why government designation of areas as "developing" seems to be a kiss of economic death (cf. "developing countries" and Israeli "development towns"). The wholesale elimination of trade barriers throws aid upside-down and directs the power of wealthy nations to the bottom--the beleaguered economic producers.

Of course, no one is perfect. Bush peddled in the quote above the discredited left-wing mantra that poverty causes crime and ignored the conservative understanding of terror as primarily ideologically motivated. Of course that is also signature Bush compassionate conservatism. In throwing liberals a bone he has gained the support of leftists such as Sir Bob Geldoff (hat tip: Soccer Dad).