Tax-exempt globalization propaganda by the Bertelsmann Stiftung

04.03.2019 | Norbert Häring | norberthaering.de |

The Attac organization, which promotes a financial transaction tax and participates in various campaigns for reforms in the supposed public interest, has been deprived of non-profit status. The Bertelsmann Stiftung, which thanks to its massive political and media influence makes politics, often for the benefit of the Bertelsmann Group, and all too often with manipulative studies, is quite different. Here is a new example.
This is what the Foundation has just published on its website, based on a study on the benefits of globalisation:
“Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force, the country has been “open for business”. Mexico’s real GDP per capita rose by 2,070 euros between 1990 and 2016. Around 270 euros of this is due to increasing globalisation. The results speak for themselves: the new economic opportunities have helped to significantly improve the quality of life in the country in recent years. The main beneficiaries here were education, health and the labour market.”
The gross domestic product per inhabitant has thus risen by 270 euros or a sensational 10 euros per year as a result of globalisation. This is about 0.1 percent per year, well below the measurement error and very far below the exchange rate fluctuations. These 10 euros per person and year have thus significantly increased the quality of life in the country, from which education and health in particular are said to have benefited.
It’s such ridiculous propaganda, you almost don’t know what to say. If one then also takes into account that the already extreme income inequality has increased, then this means that for poorer Mexicans and probably for the majority of the population no increase in prosperity has resulted from globalisation and probably even a decline. This is what a Òxfam report from 2015 says:
“Although the Mexican economy showed little growth between 2005 and 2014, the average wage remained stable and the number of people living in poverty increased, the billionaires managed to increase their prosperity by an average of five percent a year.
This is a thrust that we also know from Attac, i.e. not charitable political education, but campaigning; and thus something quite different from the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s selfless initiatives to manipulate opinion in a group-friendly way.