• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

The Economist: The best policy

Lafayette

Lafayette

Banned
DP Veteran
Joined
Dec 13, 2015
Messages
9,594
Reaction score
2,072
Location
France
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Centrist
From the Economist, here - Free Exchange, The best policy

No matter how hard a Haitian worker labours, he cannot create around him the institutions, infrastructure and skilled population within which American workers do their jobs. By moving, he gains access to all that at a stroke, which massively boosts the value of his work, whether he is a software engineer or a plumber. Defenders of open borders reckon that restrictions on migration represent a “trillion dollar bills left on the pavement”: a missed opportunity to raise the output of hundreds of millions of people, and, in so doing, to boost their quality of life.

We shall come over; they shall be moved
On what grounds do immigration opponents justify obstructing this happy outcome? Some suppose it would be better for poor countries to become rich themselves. Perhaps so. But achieving rich-world incomes is the exception rather than the rule. The unusual rapid expansion of emerging economies over the past two decades is unlikely to be repeated. Growth in China and in global supply chains—the engines of the emerging-world miracle—is decelerating; so, too, is catch-up to American income levels (see chart). The falling cost of automating manufacturing work is also undermining the role of industry in development. The result is “premature deindustrialisation”, a phenomenon identified by Dani Rodrik, an economist, in which the role of industry in emerging markets peaks at progressively lower levels of income over time. However desirable economic development is, insisting upon it as the way forward traps billions in poverty.
Click to expand...

20170318_FNC165_0.png


In a word, making sure that countries like Haiti do the necessary footwork (and helping them to do so with the fundamental investments necessary) to provide the institutions (as mentioned above) to better their ability to do other than menial jobs, there is not much that will ever be done. Meaning that they are consigning their population to everlasting poverty ...
 
Lafayette said:
From the Economist, here - Free Exchange, The best policy



20170318_FNC165_0.png


In a word, making sure that countries like Haiti do the necessary footwork (and helping them to do so with the fundamental investments necessary) to provide the institutions (as mentioned above) to better their ability to do other than menial jobs, there is not much that will ever be done. Meaning that they are consigning their population to everlasting poverty ...
Click to expand...

Actually, what we have found is that the best way to develop an undeveloped population is to allow your population to buy anything they want to in that country. If the country acts like India in the 1980s, it will not be able to use this method, while acting like China did. But, when India switched out of its hang-up with the development theories of the 1950s and 60s, they began to take off. Those are the two main components of successful development policy.
 
joG said:
Actually, what we have found is that the best way to develop an undeveloped population is to allow your population to buy anything they want to in that country. If the country acts like India in the 1980s, it will not be able to use this method, while acting like China did. But, when India switched out of its hang-up with the development theories of the 1950s and 60s, they began to take off. Those are the two main components of successful development policy.
Click to expand...

That is another way of saying capitalism right? China was very very poor then switched to Republican capitalism and got rich-right?
 
James972 said:
That is another way of saying capitalism right? China was very very poor then switched to Republican capitalism and got rich-right?
Click to expand...

If you like the term. It is a set of societal rules that enable economies to function.in this case the rules are less Republican than autocratic of the one party type much along the lines of the Soviet or NSDAP, I should think.
 
joG said:
If you like the term. It is a set of societal rules that enable economies to function.in this case the rules are less Republican than autocratic of the one party type much along the lines of the Soviet or NSDAP, I should think.
Click to expand...

China has today the same Income Disparity as the US, which is one of the worst of any "developed country" on earth:
1080px-Gini_since_WWII.svg.png


So, the "China Miracle" is nothing to brag about ...
 
Lafayette said:
China has today the same Income Disparity as the US, which is one of the worst of any "developed country" on earth:
1080px-Gini_since_WWII.svg.png


So, the "China Miracle" is nothing to brag about ...
Click to expand...

And what exactly are you trying to say with that? It sounds rather fuzzy.

BTW, what makes you think disparity of income is bad?
 
joG said:
And what exactly are you trying to say with that? It sounds rather fuzzy.

BTW, what makes you think disparity of income is bad?
Click to expand...

Look around you (in the US). Forty-three percent of your fellow Americans are living their lives in relative penury below the poverty threshold. That's close to 45 million people.

Not enough for you?

Worthwhile reading: The Minimum Wage Used To Be Enough To Keep Workers Out Of Poverty—It’s Not Anymore. Excerpt:
Up until the early 1980s, an annual minimum-wage income—after adjusting for inflation—was enough to keep a family of two above the poverty line. At its high point in 1968, the minimum wage was high enough for a family of three to be above the poverty line with the earnings of a full-time minimum-wage worker, although it still fell short for a family of four. The falling minimum wage has led to poverty and inequality. Today, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, working 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year yields an annual income of only $15,080.
Click to expand...

Wakey, wakey ...
 
Lafayette said:
Look around you (in the US). Forty-three percent of your fellow Americans are living their lives in relative penury below the poverty threshold. That's close to 45 million people.

Not enough for you?

Worthwhile reading: The Minimum Wage Used To Be Enough To Keep Workers Out Of Poverty—It’s Not Anymore. Excerpt:


Wakey, wakey ...
Click to expand...

Your first point defies basic math since 45 is not even close to 43% of 321. As to your second point, I agree that the federal MW should be indexed to inflation such that it meets (or slightly exceeds) the FPL for a two person household.
 
Lafayette said:
China has today the same Income Disparity as the US, which is one of the worst of any "developed country" on earth:
Click to expand...

obviously because you cant make all 1.4 billion people rich at the same time!!!!!!! OMG!!!! Current situation is 1000 times better than under socialism wherein 60 million slowly starved to death and remainder lived at subsistence
 
Lafayette said:
Look around you (in the US). Forty-three percent of your fellow Americans are living their lives in relative penury below the poverty threshold. That's close to 45 million people.

Not enough for you?

Worthwhile reading: The Minimum Wage Used To Be Enough To Keep Workers Out Of Poverty—It’s Not Anymore. Excerpt:


Wakey, wakey ...
Click to expand...

We've talked about the poverty line. As it is designed there will be poor in even the wealthiest society.

Also, the US has been bringing one country after the other out of real poverty for decades. This has slowed wage growth in the US. Maybe we should not have done so and left the poor starving. But that is another topic.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Your first point defies basic math since 45 is not even close to 43% of 321. As to your second point, I agree that the federal MW should be indexed to inflation such that it meets (or slightly exceeds) the FPL for a two person household.
Click to expand...

It is a frequently used argument by the people that want to destabilise the country by spreading hate and envy with simplistic anecdotes and falsely used numbers.
 
Lafayette said:
Look around you (in the US). Forty-three percent of your fellow Americans are living their lives in relative penury below the poverty threshold. That's close to 45 million people.

Not enough for you?
Click to expand...

so why not end the liberal policies that cause this poverty??
 
joG said:
We've talked about the poverty line. As it is designed there will be poor in even the wealthiest society.

Also, the US has been bringing one country after the other out of real poverty for decades. This has slowed wage growth in the US. Maybe we should not have done so and left the poor starving. But that is another topic.
Click to expand...

Uncle Sam, SuperMan of foreign-aid?

No, not by the most important measure! Capacity to give.

From here: Foreign aid: which countries are the most generous? Excerpt:
So which were the most generous countries in 2014?

The US donated the most funds (net) in foreign aid last year at $32bn. But when looking at the percentage of the country’s national income given to foreign aid, the US contribution is less impressive. It spent 0.19% of its national income, which is the same percentage as Portugal and Japan.

Out of the DAC countries, Sweden was the most generous – it was the first to meet the 0.7% target in 1974 – donating 1.1% of its GNI to foreign aid, which works out at about $6.2bn. Next came Luxembourg, at 1.07%, then Norway at 0.99% and Denmark at 0.85%. The UK was fifth, higher than Germany at 0.41%, France at 0.36% and Switzerland at 0.49%.
Click to expand...
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Your first point defies basic math since 45 is not even close to 43% of 321. As to your second point, I agree that the federal MW should be indexed to inflation such that it meets (or slightly exceeds) the FPL for a two person household.
Click to expand...

You're right, my mistake.

From here:
The official poverty rate is 13.5 percent, based on the U.S. Census Bureau's 2015 estimates. That year, an estimated 43.1 million Americans lived in poverty according to the official measure. According to supplemental poverty measure, the poverty rate was 14.3 percent.
Click to expand...

Nonetheless, 43.1 million people in poverty is the combined population of California and Oregon or the entire country of Poland ...
 
Last edited:
Lafayette said:
You're right, my mistake.

From here:

Nonetheless, 43.1 million people in poverty is the combined population of California and Oregon or the entire country of Poland ...
Click to expand...

The U.S. poverty rate has remained between 12% and 15% since about 1965 - what is your point?
 
Lafayette said:
43.1 million people in poverty is the combined population of California and Oregon[/COLOR][/I] or the entire country of Poland ...
Click to expand...

its means nothing. In USA poor people are far more likely to be over weight than underweight. Poverty numbers don't count income from programs designed to lift people out of poverty when such programs cripple people and prevent them from earning real income.

In the USA the cause of poverty is liberalism.
 
Lafayette said:
Uncle Sam, SuperMan of foreign-aid?

No, not by the most important measure! Capacity to give.

From here: Foreign aid: which countries are the most generous? Excerpt:
Click to expand...

That is not a very good way of looking at development assistance. The much more effective cash flow is from the extent a country allows its population to purchase form the poor country(++), the freedom to invest there (+) and or subsidies paid one's own farmers to export to those countries (-). Aid programs have their place, but that is mostly as an alibi for doing nothing.
 
joG said:
That is not a very good way of looking at development assistance. The much more effective cash flow is from the extent a country allows its population to purchase form the poor country(++), the freedom to invest there (+) and or subsidies paid one's own farmers to export to those countries (-). Aid programs have their place, but that is mostly as an alibi for doing nothing.
Click to expand...

Aid can (and often does) have the reverse effect - giving of "free" anything prevents that anything from being economically viable to produce/provide locally. If we give free grain (rice, corn or wheat) to country X then that eliminates the ability of farmers in country X from making a profit if they attempt to produce grain locally - you simply can't compete with "free".
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Aid can (and often does) have the reverse effect - giving of "free" anything prevents that anything from being economically viable to produce/provide locally. If we give free grain (rice, corn or wheat) to country X then that eliminates the ability of farmers in country X from making a profit if they attempt to produce grain locally - you simply can't compete with "free".
Click to expand...

That is pretty much exactly what I saw, when I was majoring and doing research in development economics. Aid has its place, but it should be handled with great care and given sparingly. Otherwise, it seemed to do more damage than good.
 
joG said:
BTW, what makes you think disparity of income is bad?
Click to expand...

Income disparity usually indicates a dying middle class. A thriving, upwardly mobile middle class usually indicates a (really) healthy economy.
 
Porkuloss said:
Income disparity usually indicates a dying middle class. A thriving, upwardly mobile middle class usually indicates a (really) healthy economy.
Click to expand...

The disparity from successful labor (CEO, Football star) and less successful can be very large and is a sign that resources are being allocated along free market principals. That is not cp bad.
 
joG said:
The disparity from successful labor (CEO, Football star) and less successful can be very large and is a sign that resources are being allocated along free market principals. That is not cp bad.
Click to expand...

If it's somehow coupled with a vibrant consumer class, you are right. When the middle/consumer class feels stressed or squeezed, that "free market" isn't going to result in a healthy economy.
 
Lafayette said:
In a word, making sure that countries like Haiti do the necessary footwork (and helping them to do so with the fundamental investments necessary) to provide the institutions (as mentioned above) to better their ability to do other than menial jobs, there is not much that will ever be done. Meaning that they are consigning their population to everlasting poverty ...
Click to expand...
I concur with most of the article, and affluent nations with demographic challenges (like the US) would benefit from enhancements to legal immigration. However, I disagree with the implication that most LDCs should be permanently condemned as economic disaster zones.

Immigration does help the migrants, the nation they migrate to, and (via remittances) their home nations. But it also causes some brain drain, which make it harder for those nations to improve its economic conditions. If the hardest-working Haitians keep moving to the US, that's not going to help Haiti build the infrastructure and institutions it needs to improve its economy.

Of course, that position is an argument for free trade, and there is abundant evidence that trade benefits both parties. Despite some of the risks, and while this is not an either/or situation, I'd say everyone is generally better off emphasizing free trade over vastly expanded immigration.
 
joG said:
Actually, what we have found is that the best way to develop an undeveloped population is to allow your population to buy anything they want to in that country. If the country acts like India in the 1980s, it will not be able to use this method, while acting like China did. But, when India switched out of its hang-up with the development theories of the 1950s and 60s, they began to take off. Those are the two main components of successful development policy.
Click to expand...
Erm.... India and China both improved their economies by opening up to trade. That's not the same thing as liberalizing domestic consumption.

We should also note that trade has improved both nations tremendously, but has also drastically increased economic inequality. So it's a better policy than isolationism, but not without its own issues.
 
joG said:
The disparity from successful labor (CEO, Football star) and less successful can be very large and is a sign that resources are being allocated along free market principals. That is not cp bad.
Click to expand...
Extremes in income inequality do cause issues. The primary problem is that it causes a major unbalancing in the political system. The top earners -- as we've increasingly seen in the US -- have more and more influence on the political system, and try to alter it to their advantage. They try to reduce their tax rates; they try to get their pet policies enacted; they try to manipulate regulations on their specific industry; they are more likely to escape the consequences of any harmful actions; they give themselves and their families significantly enhanced educational and economic opportunities.

It also results in a situation where everyone else is less capable of purchasing the consumer goods that drive the economy. Most of the poor and middle-class spend everything they earn, whereas the top earners save 30, 40, 50% or more of their income, thus that wealth is largely sitting on the sidelines. Thus, it is entirely plausible that very high rates of income inequality eventually slow growth.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom