[yaacov]

IMF/World Bank stuff actually works, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalisation_in_I... as an example. “Trying things” is good, but more countries should try IMF reforms like India’s.

> From 1992 to 2005, foreign investment increased 316.9%, and India's gross domestic product (GDP) grew from $266 billion in 1991 to $2.3 trillion in 2018[6][7] According to one study, wages rose on the whole, as well as wages as the labor-to-capital relative share.[5]

> As an effect of the liberalisation in 1991, extreme poverty reduced from 36 percent in 1993-94 to 24.1 percent in 1999-2000.[8]

[icu]

The question is, at what cost, and with what legitimacy?

Too often despots and their cronies get countries into economic trouble, countries that have been taken advantaged by Western interests for hundreds of years.

When the country collapses, the IMF and World Bank subjugate the country to Western interests further often to the destruction of the environment and detriment to upward mobility of the population.

Using statistics like reduction of extreme poverty or wage growth when not taking into account other factors like inflation or mortality for example does not help when discussing the complex topic of the IMF and the World Bank and if these institutions are a net benefit to the impoverished.

[yaacov]

> Too often despots and their cronies get countries into economic trouble, countries that have been taken advantaged by Western interests for hundreds of years.

Agreed.

> When the country collapses, the IMF and World Bank subjugate the country to Western interests further often to the destruction of the environment and detriment to upward mobility of the population.

Can you give me any concrete examples of IMF reforms making a country worse off economically?

> Using statistics like reduction of extreme poverty or wage growth when not taking into account other factors like inflation or mortality for example

Okay, mortality in India has fallen steadily from 1% in 1991 to 0.7% in 2020. And inflation doesn’t have a clear pattern but it’s never returned to its 1991 peak of 13.5%.

I’m not just cherry-picking stats here! India has actually gotten way way better in the last few decades, and the rate of improvement rose dramatically after the 1991 reforms!

[kevinak]

Lots of examples in Alex Gladsteins article on the subject: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/imf-world-bank-repress-p...

It also makes sense that this would happen. Despot takes loan from IMF, spends it on random crap that doesn't benefit the citizens. Despot gets thrown out. IMF still wants its money back. Cue austerity, making the citizens pay for what the despot did.

[smcl]

Argentina, maybe? Also I don't know if this is primarily the IMF but didn't Russia post-USSR-collapse implement the sudden market reforms everyone told it to, causing an economic collapse (since sort-of recovered), dramatic fall in life expectancy (now just above its 1986 levels) while setting in motion the events that led us to the war in Ukraine?

Note: I'm not the GP commenter and I'm not trying to start an argument or denounce the IMF, if there's good reasons why these aren't good examples that's totally OK :)

[ajot]

As an argentinian, I believe the IMF is not pushy enough with us.

"Here, have this big pile of money to pay for your more urgent and higher-interest-rate debts, and here are some policies for you to implement so you stop having inflation once and for all. But it's ok if you cook the books, or don't comply with the policies, you're a big economy anyways so we have to keep you going and not catastrophically fail anyways".

[Quindecillion]

> Can you give me any concrete examples of IMF reforms making a country worse off economically?

Alex Gladstein (Chief Strategist at Human Rights Foundation) has written and spoken about this and provides examples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnHOxZgvdWM https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/imf-world-bank-repress-p...

[spaceman_2020]

India had a gigantic domestic market, vast pools of human resources, and core infrastructure that wasn't completely crumbling. For all its ills, India already had nearly 50 years of relatively peaceful democratic transfer of power, compared to other post-colonial countries.

The fact that this core infrastructure - law, higher education, political systems - hasn't changed that much since 1991 (the best colleges in 1991 are still the best colleges today, for instance) is proof that India's foundations were solid.

That can't be said for most countries.

[csomar]

You nitpicked an outlier. Most countries that undergone the IMF process have not been successful to put it lightly. Also, the passage does not prove that the growth was a consequence of implementing IMF policies. It might have happened in spite of that.