Andrei Martyanov

It would also give a huge boost to the illegal drug trade. Opium production in Afghanistan in 2008 came to 7,700 tons, more than 40 times that of 2001, when international forces arrived.

One could reasonably accurately count cars, refrigerators and tons of beef or chicken produced by the national economy. This count would give an accurate impression of the nation’s economy and would constitute its real Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But not in the new American “economic” paradigm, which turned everything upside down because the financialized American economy was still supposed to remain largest in the world while simultaneously producing less and less.

When Brazil, with a population of 210 million, that is, two thirds the size of the U.S. population, has five times fewer people living in the streets in 2017 than the United States, one has to question the U.S. claim to be a first world country.