Prosperity, and who gets it

Word	What it means
Sustainable prosperity	Prosperity that can continue without exhausting resources or harming future generations.
Sustainable development	Development that meets present needs without compromising future generations' ability to meet theirs. The Brundtland definition, 1987.
GDP	The total value of goods and services produced. Says nothing about distribution, environmental cost or wellbeing.
Human Development Index	Combines income, life expectancy and education. Designed because GDP per person can be high where most people are poor or short-lived.
Ecological footprint	The land and water area needed to support a population's consumption, in hectares per person.
Transnational corporation	A company operating in more than one country. Some have revenues larger than the economies they operate in.
Outsourcing	Moving work to another company or country, usually for lower cost.
Structural adjustment	Conditions attached to loans, typically requiring spending cuts and economic opening.
Microcredit	Very small loans to people without access to ordinary banking.

Measure	Captures	Misses
GDP	Total output	Distribution, unpaid work, environmental cost
GDP per person	Average income	Inequality — an average hides the spread
Human Development Index	Income, health, education	Inequality, environment
Ecological footprint	Environmental load	Income and wellbeing

Canadian evidence. Canada scores very highly on HDI and has one of the world's largest ecological footprints per person. Both facts are about the same country and they point in opposite directions, which makes it a useful example rather than an awkward one.

The terminology is contested too. Developing, third world and Global South are not neutral synonyms — the first two carry an assumption that every country is on one path towards the same destination. Noticing what a label assumes is exactly the kind of source analysis this course rewards.

The case for trade. Comparative advantage: a country produces what it makes relatively most efficiently and trades for the rest, and both sides gain. Extreme poverty has fallen sharply in rapidly trading economies. The honest qualification is that this came alongside state direction and industrial policy, so causation is contested.

The case against. The gains are unevenly distributed; firms can move to where labour and environmental standards are weakest; and agreements can constrain what a government may do domestically.

Transnational corporations. The argument that they reduce sovereignty is about competition between states — governments weakening their own rules to attract investment — not about direct control. Saying that precisely is what separates an analysis from an accusation.

The institutions, kept straight: the WTO sets trade rules and settles disputes; the World Bank funds development projects; the IMF lends to countries in financial crisis. Voting power at the last two is weighted by financial contribution, which is the standard criticism and has a standard reply.

The core tension. Rising consumption raises living standards and raises environmental load. Whether the two can be separated — growth without proportional resource use — is a genuine open question, not a settled one.

Structural adjustment is the sharpest case of global institutions shaping domestic policy: loans conditional on cutting spending and opening the economy. The intent was stability; a common criticism is that the cuts fell on health and education.

Microcredit is the case usually offered on the other side. Supporters point to businesses started; critics point to high interest rates and mixed evidence on poverty reduction at scale. Both are worth knowing, because a one-sided treatment of a contested case reads as one.

What a strong answer does. Names a measure, gives a specific case, and says explicitly what its own evidence does not show.

• Using GDP as a measure of wellbeing without saying what it leaves out.
• Confusing the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF.
• Claiming trade caused a fall in poverty without qualification.
• Treating sustainability as only environmental. The term joins it to prosperity on purpose.