What warmongering westerners could learn from the East

From: Dr David Hill, Chief Executive, World Innovation Foundation, Huddersfield.

WHY is it that western governments get it so horribly wrong and their eastern counterparts get it so right? For over the last quarter of a century there has been two wars going on – one military and the other economic.

The irony of the former is that it has also been economic under the guise of war.

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Indeed, has anyone ever wondered why China has marched on economically and why the West has decisively gone backwards?

Using common sense gives us great insight into what has happened.

Whereas China has not gone to what is commonly known as conventional war, the USA, UK and its western allies have.

Joseph Stiglitz, former World Bank economist and others, have estimated recently that the real cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars at the end for the USA alone will be in the range of $4 trillion to $6 trillion. To put matters into perspective the United Nations considers that $30bn a year would end world hunger.

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Therefore for the average of $5 trillion, why not end world hunger for 167 years?

But these wars have cost the UK dearly also and some place the costs at the end to over £100bn (or around $150bn).

For other western allies collectively the wars have most probably cost them at least $50bn and a total projected cost to the West of between $4.2 trillion and $6.2 trillion.

But if we add in the wars that the West has been involved with since the end of World War Two in real terms, the cost to the West moves towards $10 trillion.

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Therefore whilst the West has been going to war and countries like China have not, the West 
has got poorer by the year and where China is marching 
on to eventual economic supremacy.

Add in again the $15 trillion of Western bank debt and we can see why our governments have got it so horribly wrong and 
why China et al have got it so right.

Indeed, while China has been building up its nation through the economic war of the last quarter of a century, we in the West have been fighting the wrong wars, even it has to be said unfortunately for our servicemen who died in fighting for our own kind of western war. Which politicians have intelligently run their nations, it has to be asked?

From: Allan Ramsay, Radcliffe Moor Road, Radcliffe, Manchester.

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IF world leaders are going to find a solution to poverty, those who actively contribute should be identified for the villains that they are. Google, Amazon, Apple and Starbucks have been accused of aggressive tax avoidance.

Some film and sports celebrities, and it’s odds-on bookmakers and money lenders, are also in on the act. Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Anguilla, Montserrat, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man have been identified amongst 80 so-called ‘tax havens’.

If a person indulges in aggressive mugging or burglary, they are seen as the low life of their community. Aggressive tax avoidance surely amounts to the low life of the planet.

When a person resorts to mugging/burglary, it’s out of desperation. When a person resorts to aggressive tax avoidance it’s out of greed.

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Where there’s poverty there’s homelessness, desperation and depression; thieving; drug and human trafficking; the selling of body parts; the slaughter of endangered species; a trade in children; no health care; no care for the elderly; limited screening for breast cancer; no screening for prostate cancer. Isn’t greed the worst cancer of all? Is there anyone it doesn’t affect?

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