One assumption that I think most of the international development agencies buy into is that development in one place looks the same as development in another place and it is all on a globalization path that aims for what the USA "is/has/does".

This is bad, bad, bad in my humble opinion because what the USA "is/has/does" is not what it is painted to be. The people in under-developed and developing countries are painted a grand and glorious picture of beautiful people, wearing beautiful clothes, in beautiful homes, with totally awesome jobs taking glorious vacations to exotic places. People in America live in a perfect democracy with no corruption. It is the advertising thing.

I am sure that most of us around here snickered when Dr. Ayittey talked of African crony capitalism. (Wikipedia defines it thus: Crony capitalism is a pejorative term describing an allegedly capitalist economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between businessmen and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, and so forth.) Let me see - think Bush/Cheney/Halburton. Corrupt elections? Never happen in the US. Ha! I was thinking the other day: If you were going to go to a country to live, would you think twice about living in a country that looked like this?

The Wage Gap, by Gender and Race

• Prescription drugs cost, on average, 30 percent to 50 percent more in the United States than in Europe.
• Doctors in the United States earn two to three times as much as they do in other industrialized countries.
• In the United States during 1997, there were 15,289 murders. Of these, 10,369 were committed with firearms.
• In the United States during 1997, there were approximately 7,927,000 violent crimes. Of these, 691,000 were committed with firearms.
• As of 1992, for every 14 violent crimes (murder, rape, etc…) committed in the United States, one person is sentenced to prison.
• Incarceration rates in the US are four times the world average.
• US rates are in large part driven by disproportionate minority incarceration.

Gini Indexes (A measure of inequality. The higher the number, the less equal incomes are)

Notice that the Gini Index for the United States is closer Mexico's than it is to Canada's.

The US made it to #17!

I didn't even try to look up the cancer rates, psychological health, obesity rates, death rates due to bad life styles.

How do we turn this whole mess around? How do we convince people in developing countries to look for other goals? How do we get people in the west to look for other goals? From these statistics, development is not just a problem in poor countries.