Whose Winning?

It appears to me that highly developed countries (HDC) cannot continue to generate larger amounts of wealth through import replacing and exporting and expect less developed developing countries (LDDC) to reduce the income or wealth gap. There are always some examples of LDDCs that have closed the gap recently in a relatively short period, but this appears to be at the expense of HDCs rather than new wealth generation. Are HDCs generating wealth by replacing imports and generating exports, or does this mean that HDCs will need to allow the LDDCs to start the import-export process because the HDCs culture is to out-compete the LDDCs and their primary economic forces are better developed. There are quite a number of countries with large debts that are also large producers and exporters of commodities, most of which are suffering from a universal trend of declining prices. In general, these countries export more and more, to receive less and less. Under this scenario, the HDCs will have trouble generating enough new wealth to maintain their current standard of living. There has to be some sort of new wealth, either technology, natural resource or capital, generated within the HDCs to replace the wealth exported to the LDDCs. The economies of the HDCs need to produce products which are continuously more sophisticated and continuously more expensive, thus meaning that they could export less to maintain the same wealth. The force of technology in the form of innovation and improvisation will become the HDCs method for retaining wealth while the LDDCs accumulate wealth through import replacing and exporting. I believe that’s why cities with major research universities have been the rising stars in economic growth for HDCs.