> In 2012, the last year of recorded data, developing countries received a total of $1.3tn, including all aid, investment, and income from abroad. But that same year some $3.3tn flowed out of them. In other words, developing countries sent $2tn more to the rest of the world than they received. If we look at all years since 1980, these net outflows add up to an eye-popping total of $16.3tn – that’s how much money has been drained out of the global south over the past few decades. To get a sense for the scale of this, $16.3tn is roughly the GDP of the United States

I'm very unclear on what this actually means.

Does it imply, for instance, that if developing countries were to cut themselves off from the rest of the world economically so that both the inflows and outflows all stopped, they would have $2tn/year more to spend domestically to improve the health and wellbeing of their citizens?