How do We Reduce Misery Caused by Poverty Around the World?
A few weeks ago I had a post looking at the success of a number of countries. I noted that countries that do well include,
(in no particular order): the US, Canada, Northwest Europe, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and, until China began applying a heavier thumb, Hong Kong. Those also happen to be the countries that would attract the most foreigners interested in being citizens, so this quick and dirty list should pass a basic smell test. (If some of these nations don’t have much of an immigrant population and don’t rank on high on the destination of potential immigrants, it is because they are very selective about the who they let in as opposed to being shunned by would be immigrants.)
So what do these places have in common? It isn’t natural resources. Just ask the Japanese. (Plus, in countries outside of the list above, being blessed by nature somehow correlates with suffering from the “Resource Curse.”) It isn’t Democracy as we know it. That’s a relatively new thing for South Korea, Hong Kong was ruled by foreigners for most of the last century, and then, of course, there’s Singapore. It isn’t coming into the post-WW2 period wealthy; quite a few countries on the list were in miserable shape in 1945. It isn’t a matter of exploiting other countries (which Americans of a certain bent are always fond of claiming is the US’ secret) – South Koreans will proudly tell you that the country has never invaded anyone in well over 2,000 years. Switzerland, too, is proudly neutral. The Scandinavians have also been pretty pacifist for well over a century as well. Small government? As much as libertarians like to claim Singapore for their own, ignoring the massive government participation in the economy (think Temasek, Singapore Airlines, Mediacorp, Singtel, Singapore Power, etc.). Nor did Japan, Inc. qualify. Something about about geography and environmental factors that these countries have in common? Nope and nope.
To be blunt, there doesn’t seem to be a factor or group of factors that can be applied to these countries but not to countries that are “developing.”
Let’s go the other way on this post. Most of us care about poverty. We’d like to see a world with less poverty, and more opportunity for everyone. Put a different way – it would be a wonderful thing if Bolivians, Burundians and Bangladeshis were able to live the lifestyle enjoyed by people of Switzerland, South Korea and Singapore. But wishing is easy. And useless. So… how do we get from here to there in a reasonable amount of time?
My answer is that it will take changing the culture. For example, most countries that do well tend to have a reputation for punctuality which is rarely shared in less developed countries. Of course, there is more than just punctuality. Find out what other aspects of the culture of South Korea, to use a specific example, work and export that culture. After all, South Korea was in very bad shape at the close of WW2, and by the 1980s was a force to be reckoned with. If Burundi makes the same transformation over the same period of time, many, many people’s lives will be much improved.
But at this blog, a lot of people don’t like “culture” as an answer. For reasons I frankly don’t get, saying culture is a big driver of economic outcomes is viewed is racist by many people. OK. Fine. But if then how do we do it? How do we reduce the misery that comes from the poverty that is so pervasive around the world?
Culture?!
I’m falling asleep — no time to read whole post. But — I read recently how slavery destroyed sub-Saharan African culture. It was not just as if aliens descended from space and disappeared half the population (half!) and everybody tried to go back to business as usual afterwards. No — in the centuries Europeans spent exporting half the African population their cultures naturally purified. Where the most developed places had previously existed people fled to hide in the hills. One horrible stat — at one point 20% of slaves had been tricked into it by friends or family. Talk about destroying any kind of trusting culture.
Once slave shipping stopped it was time for Europeans to start working the remaining half the population to scrape out resources for colonial regimes. Mid-fifties, colonialism dries up — leaves behind a mess of artificially divided borders and …
… no wonder sub-Saharan Africa is such a mess.
South America: the place where most African slaves were shipped after the colonialists worked most of the so-called indigenous people to death in the mines. Read in the Cambridge history of South America that after colonialism whoever gets power (native v. European) take everything for themselves and ignores the others’ needs — endless political pendulum. Don’t forget the Chicago boys coming in and teaching neoliberalism so debt ridden poor counties make sure to meet their obligations to rich countries.
That takes care of the southern hemisphere. Culture in northern hemisphere must make all the economic difference.
Does anybody doubt that in another 100 years the whole world will be uniformly productive?
Dennis,
With respect, your story is unsatisfying for two reasons:
1. It requires a 100 year wait. South Korea rose from nothing much more quickly
2. It doesn’t fit the facts
For example, the parts of Sub-Saharan Africa that are the wealthiest are the ones that were most heavily colonized or most heavily involved in the slave trade. The top 5 countries in GDP per capita in all of Africa, let alone SSA, are Seychelles, Equatorial Guinea, Mauritius, Gabon and Libya. The first four are in SSA. Seychelles was sparsely inhabited until the Arab Slave traders decided an island made for a nice base, and later the Europeans thought the same and kicked out the Arabs. Seychelles had a similar history but was (to my knowledge) completely uninhabited when the Europeans showed up. Gabon and Equatorial Guinea are on the West Coast of Africa, just South of the Slave Coast so close to the center of the West African slave trading area. By the time the Europeans had arrived, the original culture was completely gone as the Bantu tribes had mostly (Gabon) or just about completely (EG) wiped them out. I’m assuming those cultures don’t count in your story though. But European culture very thoroughly replaced the Bantu one. (EG has a lot of oil, so perhaps this isn’t a good example anyway.)
Next on the list are Botswana, South Africa, and Namibia. These are all regions originally inhabited by the San. I had a recent post on what happened to them. And later the people who genocided the San suffered subjugation by the European invaders. (As I noted in the other post, I state this not to excuse the slave trade but to merely to make clear that history is a series of horrific events, and furthermore, most peoples that are victims of horrific events were themselves the perpatrators of similar or worse atrocities. The San may be about the only not-completely-extinct exception to that rule. The rest of us all descend from butchers.)
If you go through the list of African countries by GDP per capita, those colonized by Europeans most thoroughly tend to be closer to the top of the list. (The Guinea region does seem to be an exception.)
But don’t just look at Africa. Perhaps the least colonized spot on earth is North Sentinel island. It probably also contains the world’s least technologically advanced population. Countries that remained mostly uncolonized in the last few hundred years include Thailand, Afghanistan, Nepal and Bhutan. None of these is particularly advanced. Depending on how you think about it, Turkey also fits and maybe Iran. It isn’t a list of countries that are beating the world today.
Anyway, I think your model isn’t a good predictor.
“Heart of Darkness”
I just finished a most motivational (in the sense of getting one to move) book — The Hole in Our Gospel, by Richard Sterns, CEO of World Vision.
https://www.christianbook.com/the-hole-our-gospel-special-edition/richard-stearns/9780849922091/pd/922091?dv=c&en=google&event=SHOP&kw=books-0-20%7C922091&p=1179710&gclid=CjwKEAjwkq7GBRDun9iu2JjyhmsSJADHCD_Hx7y3JYukg6lL8yGSjjbq79-FWC_hKMCJy5XZM7LsoxoCO6Xw_wcB
The title of your post does not match the content. If you want to “reduce misery cause by poverty around the world,” there are many good charities to which you can donate — World Vision, Heifer International, Jesus Wells, and hundreds more. Go on a mission trip yourself.
The content of your post, however, really asks how we can end the poverty in the first place, so that such aid is not required. Poverty in such places IS caused by culture — the culture of government corruption. No, I don’t have any easy answers to that. Ousting a corrupt government just seems to create a vacuum for another corrupt government to form.
What should we do — establish a Pax Americana and send in occupying armies as we did in Japan and the ROK, and as Britain did in Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Africa?
I don’t think that is a good solution, but I cannot think of a better one, either.
In the meantime, God gave us the resources to mitigate the misery.
Mike, all you reply shows is different slices of putrefied hell.
Here’s today’s post by Timothy Taylor — CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST
http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2017/03/africas-cities-low-development-trap.html
Sample:
“Typical African cities share three features that constrain urban development and create daily challenges for residents:
“Crowded, not economically dense — investments in infrastructure, industrial and commercial structures have not kept pace with the concentration of people, nor have investments in affordable formal housing; congestion and its costs overwhelm the benefits of urban concentration.
“Disconnected — cities have developed as collections of small and fragmented neighborhoods, lacking reliable transportation and limiting workers’ job opportunities while preventing firms from reaping scale and agglomeration benefits.
“Costly for households and for firms — high nominal wages and transaction costs deter investors and trading partners, especially in regionally and internationally tradable sectors; workers’ high food, housing, and transport costs increase labor costs to firms and thus reduce expected returns on investment. ..
“In sum, the ideal city can be viewed economically as an efficient labor market that matches employers and job seekers through connections (Bertaud 2014). The typical African city fails in this matchmaker role.”
Not a word about punctuality.
See also:
Understanding the long-run effects of Africa’s slave trades
Nathan Nunn, 27 February 2017
http://voxeu.org/article/understanding-long-run-effects-africa-s-slave-trades
“The most illustrative example of this is the experience of the Kongo Kingdom, which was contacted in 1493 by Diogo Cao. Initially, a diverse array of products was traded between the Kongo Kingdom and the Portuguese, including copper, textiles, ivory, and slaves. At first, the only slaves to be traded were prisoners of war and criminals. However, the Portuguese demand for slaves, the pervasiveness of slave traders and merchants, and competition for the throne within the Kingdom all resulted in a dramatic and uncontrollable increase in slave capture and raiding throughout the Kingdom. By 1514, King Afonso (the Kongo King) had already written to the King of Portugal, complaining that the Portuguese merchants were colluding with noblemen to illegally enslave Kongolese citizens. In 1526, in an effort to end the trade, King Afonso requested the removal of all Portuguese merchants. In the end, his efforts were unsuccessful. Large scale slave-raiding continued unchecked into the 16th century, when it culminated in the Jaga invasion of 1568-1570. Large-scale civil war ensued from 1665-1709, resulting in the collapse of the once-powerful Kingdom (Heywood 2009).”
WHAT SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA REPARATIONS?
“In sum, the ideal city can be viewed economically as an efficient labor market that matches employers and job seekers through connections (Bertaud 2014). The typical African city fails in this matchmaker role. A central reason for this failure — one that has not yet been sufficiently recognized — is that the city’s land use is fragmented. Its transport infrastructure is insufficient, and too much of its development occurs through expansion rather than infill. While the underlying causes of these problems are regulatory and institutional, the effects of spatial fragmentation are material: It limits urban economies. … And without the economic density that gives rise to efficiency, Africa’s cities do not seem to increase worker productivity. …”
******
“What public policy emphases are implied by these insights? Lall, Henderson, and Venables write:
“Africa’s urban areas are quickly gaining in population: Home to 472 million people now, they will be twice as large in 25 years. The most populous cities are growing as fast as 4 percent annually. Productive jobs, affordable housing, and effective infrastructure will be urgently needed for residents and newcomers alike. In urgency lies opportunity. Leaders can still set their cities onto more efficient development paths if they act swiftly — and if they can resist flashy projects, steadfastly pursuing two main goals in order of priority:
“First, formalize land markets, clarify property rights, and institute effective urban planning.
“Second, make early and coordinated infrastructure investments that allow for interdependence among sites, structures, and basic services.
“A third goal is to improve urban transport and additional services. But this must not come ahead of the two goals listed above — nor can it be achieved unless those are met first.”
http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2017/03/africas-cities-low-development-trap.html
ANSWER SEEMS TO BE GOOD OLD-FASHIONED, 1960s TYPE FOREIGN AID: INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/opinion/when-the-irish-invaded-canada.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region
Dennis,
With respect, I don’t understand what your answer means in terms of policy.
Beverly,
I note the article you cite mentions
I keep seeing variations of the “immigrants commit fewer crimes than Americans” statement. And I wonder why nobody else’s BS detector isn’t trying to kill their eardrums. Let’s go to a couple sources of actual data.
According to the most recent Census tables, about 7% of the US population is made up of non-citizens. (This is different from the foreign born percentage – about 13% of the US population is foreign born, but close to half of them have become citizens..
The US Sentencing Commission produces an overview of Federal Criminal Cases. (I figured you as an attorney would know about it.) The 2015 report states:
That leaves 41.5% of federal offenders being non-citizens, and non-citizens being 7% of the US population. You do the math here.
Now, granted, two thirds of immigrants in federal penitentiaries are in for immigration offenses, but that’s often what they are most easily convicted or plea on. Nevertheless, even with that
Put another way – assume that every single immigration charge is BS. Every single one. You still have the 7% of the population that is made up of non-citizens committing 14% of the federal crimes.
It is mathematically impossible, purely based on the non-immigration crimes committed by those who aren’t citizens, for the non-native born population’s non-immigration related crime rate to be below the native born crime rate. Well, OK. Not mathematically impossible. If the crime rate by foreign born non-citizens is negative (and I’m not quite sure what that would mean or how it would be measured), then yes, it is feasible for the foreign born population to have a lower crime than the native born.
Why the NY Times has gone into the business of peddling easily verifiable bull#$#* I don’t know. “Reporting” outright lies used to be the private domain of the right wing noise machine. And the fact that most Americans don’t have a working BS detector and can’t spot such crappy three card monte says too many of us have allowed ourselves to become innumerate. You, for example, are ostensibly an educated person. Your first reaction when seeing a statement that ridiculous shouldn’t be to repeat it or link to it, but to say to yourself – “this doesn’t make sense.” And then, because we live in the age of Google, you should spend a few seconds looking for a reasonable source of information to confirm or deny such an odd seeming statement. The Census, the US Sentencing Commission, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department, etc. Those work – at least their data collection branches still work. Some of their higher level reports are excessively political, and the last two administrations have killed reportage of series that are, ahem, inconvenient. Lord knows what the current occupant of the White House will do, or what Hillary would have done. But we still in an age where we have actual honest to goodness data. You just need the sense of curiosity to find it.
Mike:
Total number of Federal cases 2012 were ~ 85,000. 46% involved noncitizens or ~39,000. ~2/3rds of those non-citizen Federal cases were immigration issues or ~26,000 cases. ~20% were drug involved or 7800. Noncitizens (49%) are more involved in pot issues than crack of which 97% are US citizens. Most drug issues involve US citizens. If you want to hang out noncitizens to dry for Federal law breaking, this is not what you are looking for as they are mostly nonviolent (immigration) and also represent a much smaller portion of the true drug trade (crack). http://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2013/FY12_Overview_Federal_Criminal_Cases.pdf Federal Court Cases like most other State Court cases have decreased.
Run,
Look again at my numbers. I pointed out that when leaving out immigration cases entirely, the 7% of the population made up of non-citizens is responsible for 14% of the offenses. To repeat – this is for the portion of crimes that are not immigration-related.
If there is one place I’d like to see more numbers, it is on state and local incarceration. However, it seems that different states count that very differently, and my home state of California has been somehow unable to report so much as a guess in recent years. Example: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p14.pdf
If I had to guess, the reality is that states severely undercount even when they do provide a number simply due to incentives. After all, report someone as an undocumented immigrant and you might be getting him (and most prisoners are male) getting not just incarcerated but also deported.
Now… if the government were doing its job it would collect and report this data. After all, if the story is as Beverly and the NY Times report, it would show the racist xenophobes. Instead, they make statements that are contradicted by the few facts that are actually available, not to mention devoid of simple logic, and then wonder why the population is getting more skeptical of what they insist is true.
Mike
2 tenths of 1% have issues with Federal criminal court cases. 4.5 million undocumented aliens as counted by the PPACA. 13,000 is the balance who have gone to Federal Court for reasons other than Immigration.
Run,
OK. I think I found it. Follow the money, right? It turns out the Feds have a a program called STATE CRIMINAL ALIEN ASSISTANCE PROGRAM (SCAAP). (Forgive the All caps – I just cut and pasted from the document to which I linked.) Here’s how they describe the program:
So if I read this correctly, these are what our illustrious Prez would term “bad hombres” in the state system and not merely folks who got caught up in some sort of immigration violation. And it understates the number of illegal immigrants in the prison system due to the requirements mentioned, plus the need for the states to provide paperwork.)
The GAO provides a bit more information in a handy but dated report:
Figure 11.5 million illegal immigrants at the time, and you have an incarceration rate of about 2.25% of the illegal immigrant population, unless I’m making a mistake somewhere. By contrast, around 1% of the total US population was in state or local jail (https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus15.pdf) at the time.
So… the illegal alien population gets incarcerated in state and local prisons at about twice their proportion of the population. That’s roughly the same rate as in Federal Prisons as noted in my previous comment. And completely a very different story than the one you’ll read in what used to be the respectable press.