Documentary Review: Life and Debt

The documentary Life and Debt represents a genuine instance of the impact economic globalization can have on a establishing country. Whenever I believed about Jamaica, I only considered it as a tropical, beach-like atmosphere and a tourist destination. I never ever took the time and deemed what life could be like for these living there yearlong, and especially those who had been not involved in the tourism market. The documentary shows Jamaica in a diverse light, by displaying a pressuring difficulty of debt. The daily survival of many Jamaicans is primarily based on the financial decisions of the United States and other effective foreign countries.

In the 1970s, the country’s former prime minister signed a loan agreement which in the end led Jamaica to over 4 billion dollars in debt to the World Bank and IMF. Crucial to its success was a lengthy-term improvement strategy that could have prioritized native infrastructure and resources. But the IMF was not interested in the long-term. Demanding quick-term repayment of the debt, they insisted that costs be cut in exactly these sectors that could help lengthy-term improvement:education, health, and native–largely agrarian-based–production for the export market place. Not only would Jamaica have to tighten its belt, it would have to open up its doors to foreign imports by eliminating all protectionist rules that favored local business and farming.

This ultimately triggered a sinking economy of low valued imports and sweatshops that destroy neighborhood businesses and agriculture. In the documentary, workers who are working gruesome six-day-a-week work schedules to obtain the legal minimum wage of only $30 in US money for the whole week. A lot of girls have protested against the poor compensation, and have been fired from their jobs being placed on a blacklist stopping them from ever receiving function once more. The country’s ports are lined with the factories of high profile firms, such as Mcdonalds and Burger King.With these financial and political foundations in place, the documentary then proceeds to examine numerous sectors of the economy that have fallen victim to “globalization”. It starts with a trip to the countryside exactly where local create farmers explain how potato, onion and carrot imports from the United States have put them out of enterprise. In farming villages that formerly supplied livelihoods to practically each and every household, there is absolutely nothing but unplowed fields and abandoned houses nowadays.We also find out that the native dairy market has been destroyed by the import of powdered milk from the United States. Jamaican dairymen, who have been prosperous for most of their lives and who have provided jobs for their countrymen, show us the abandoned stalls that cows as soon as occupied. Most of these animals had been sold to slaughterhouses at a loss years ago. They also clarify that it would be virtually impossible to restart the dairy industry if the value of powdered milk ever shot up. What is getting fostered by the neo-liberal regime is not development but dependency.

The IMF assumes that the mixture of increased interest rates and cutbacks in government spending will shift sources from domestic consumption to private investment. It is further assumed that maintaining the price tag of labor down will be an incentive for increasing employment and production. Enhanced unemployment, sweeping corruption, higher illiteracy, elevated violence, prohibitive meals costs, dilapidated hospitals, enhanced disparity amongst wealthy and poor characterize only portion of the present day economic crisis.