Re: Postrel on liberalization

[Diego Miranda <miranda@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Four interesting things in this press article (I have not read the actual
paper yet):

First: Sala-I-Martin complains that the UN has made a serious mistake by
comparing income across countries without correcting for internal price
levels (ppp I guess). Yet he claims poverty has decreased worldwide by
using the 1-2 dollars per day benchmark generally used by the World Bank.
He can't have it both ways.

Second: the two countries his data identify as the driven forces for this
apparently more egalitarian and less poorer world we live in are two quite
odd champions for a neoliberal defender of globalization.  Even though
they have liberalized parts of their economies during the last decade or
so, they still are mostly command economies, and hardly a leading case for
a true globalizer.

Third: given the outrageous living conditions of India (I was there three
years ago, in New Dehli, and the misery and alienation I saw in the
streets there is only comparable to the one I have observed in some public
mental institutions here in Argentina and Central America), I wonder about
(a) the quality of the Indian dataset, and (b) the real difference that
exists between living with, say, 1.25 and 1.5 dollars a day, especially if
you do not control for PPP and deflate the data correspondingly (not to
mention that a true poverty line requires the calculation of a goods and
services basket, and not just to assume that the dollar you throw to a
beggar will make his day).

Fourth: given the above noted Indian particularities, and the unique
characteristics of the Chinese political regime, I wonder both about the
wisdom of including them in the same equations, instead of treating them
as outliers. And about what is the fate of inequality when you take these
two cases out.

Diego


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Alan G Isaac" <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "Post Keynesian Theory" <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 7:16 PM
> Subject: Re: Postrel on liberalization
>
>
> > On Thu, 22 Aug 2002 16:09:13 -0700 "Harry L. Cook" <hlc710@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> > > And next we will find statistical proof that actually there has been no
> > > rising inequality in this country in the Reagan and Bush years.
> >
> > Did you actually understand the argument,
> > or is the only important act to reject it?
> > The papers are at
> >   http://www.columbia.edu/~xs23/home.html
> > Reactions to the papers are linked there as well.
> > Barro's is to be expected, perhaps,
> >   http://www.columbia.edu/~xs23/papers/worldistribution/barrocomment.htm
> > Nevertheless, there is a fact of the matter.
> >
> > Alan Isaac
> >
> >
>