Official Corruption and Poverty: A Challenge to the Eurocentric View

A vast literature exists on the causes and cures for global poverty. The Eurocentric view is that poverty occurs when an economy lacks capital, new technology, education, managerial ability, and work ethic to build factories and farms. The purpose of my paper is to challenge this view and argue that poverty, anywhere and everywhere, is mostly, if not exclusively, the result of official corruption. Nobody wants to live in misery and in general people want to work hard to improve their living standard. However, dominant groups in society may expropriate the fruit of people’s efforts for personal gain, leading to large-scale poverty. For instance, the United States does not lack capital, new technology, education, entrepreneurship, and the work ethic; yet almost 39 million Americans lived below the poverty line in 2008, while an equal number were hard pressed to maintain their lifestyle. The only reason was official corruption, whereby laws are passed to favor business interests in return for junkets and campaign cash. These laws in turn generate falling real wages, while profits and CEO wages sky-rocket.