Globalization and Poverty

I was reading David Brook's Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, entitled Good News About Poverty.

... Best of all, the poorer nations are leading the way. Some rich countries, like the U.S. and Japan, are doing well, but the developing world is leading this economic surge. Developing countries are seeing their economies expand by 6.1 percent this year - an unprecedented rate - and, even if you take China, India and Russia out of the equation, developing world growth is still around 5 percent. As even the cautious folks at the World Bank note, all developing regions are growing faster this decade than they did in the 1980's and 90's.

This is having a wonderful effect on world poverty, because when regions grow, that growth is shared up and down the income ladder. In its report, the World Bank notes that economic growth is producing a "spectacular" decline in poverty in East and South Asia. In 1990, there were roughly 472 million people in the East Asia and Pacific region living on less than $1 a day. By 2001, there were 271 million living in extreme poverty, and by 2015, at current projections, there will only be 19 million people living under those conditions.

I hate reading this stuff. What a barrel of indisputable facts. And so out-of-sync with what I'm hearing from the opposite side of the political spectrum. What can I do with this?

I was talking earlier about the problem that an overwhelming onslaught of facts that can be brought to bear on either side of any tough problem in the world (war, poverty, globalization, the U.S. healthcare system), making it hard for there to be any meaningful debate between opposed partisans. Each side is swimming in a pool of truths quite large enough to convince them they must be right.

It was with great pleasure that I found a paper by Emma Aisbett, published in October 2003, entitled Globalization, Poverty and Inequality: are the criticisms vague, vested, or valid?, which pairs up a large number of opposing "facts" about poverty and globalization, and explores how they can both be true, and how differing reasonable assumptions push adherents into one camp or another.

As it turns out, whether one assesses world poverty trends based on total numbers or incidence does make a difference. Though there is significant variation in the estimates obtained using different methods, and considering different time periods³⁴, all of the estimates show a decrease in the incidence of poverty since the 1980s. The total number of extreme poor, however, has been variously found to increase³⁵, stay the same³⁶, slightly decrease³⁷, or significantly decrease³⁸. Excluding China, or using a higher poverty line, there is evidence of a significant increase in the total number of poor³⁹.

For those like me that believe the answer can generally be found in the middle, this type of discussion not only feels right, but offers me some hope that we can pull people toward a shared goal (in this example, improving lives by reducing poverty).

It's a good day to set aside cynicism and resignation. Sun's out.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 06:52 PM

Kill a Turkey, Kill a Tree

Here is uncle Neil, as patriarch, taking over carving duties, with relish. It is my traditional responsibility to make the holiday turkey. I think they let me do this because I can tell time and read a thermometer. The 18lb bird was moist and delicious.

There was also field roast and vegan pumpkin pie for the vegetarians, soy ice cream for the lactose-intolerant, and various sugarless treats for the insulin dependant. A feast was had by all, and the extended family was thankful to be together.

Today, the sunday newspaper arrives a day early, with one pound of news and five pounds of advertisements (I weighed them). There is of course no break between the time to be thankful and the time to be joyful. How will I get my shopping done?

Posted by BradRubenstein at 12:19 PM

Shameless plug: New York Festival of Song

The New York Festival of Song, of which I'm chairman, is having its Winter benefit on December 16.

You want to come to this. Frederica von Stade and Kimberly Barber will be presenting a small musicale hosted by the inimitable Steven Blier, at the studios of Rafael Viñoly Architects (creators of Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Hall, and many other public works of distinction).

Since you're reading my blog, I feel I know you well enough to slip you an exclusive invitation. Click here. Read it.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 03:11 PM

A Chicken in a Duck in a Turkey

My friend Adam is making a Turducken for Thanksgiving. It is a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey.

He had to buy a new set of boning knives for the endeavor. We agreed that, if his preparation process were filmed for the Food Channel, it would need to be R rated.

I think I'll wait for it to come out on video.

UPDATE: It could have been worse, he could have decided to prepare a Whole Stuffed Camel.

UPDATE: Welcome, instapundit readers! Important Disclosure: My blog, Odd Quanta, almost never discusses turkey. Come to think of it, even the things it does discuss, it almost never discusses. Blame the quantum vacuum.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 01:28 PM

Don't Wear These Shoes

Oh My! I have a new favorite blog, Manolo's Shoe Blog. It's all about shoes. I don't know a thing about shoes.

Just read his blog from the top. As he says,

You must be sure to visit the Manolo often, because, Manolo Loves the Shoes!

Tip to The Instapundit.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 11:10 AM

Good News in Iraq

Blogger Chrenkoff inundates us with good news in Good News From Iraq, Part 15. I sure come away from this feeling completely different from how I feel after reading the New York Times.

My theory: There are a million facts, and anyone can pick a thousand of them to support any point of view. Such a barrage of facts seems like it ought to be convincing, until you realize that knowing every one of them brings you no closer to any overall "truth", and in particular, it brings you no closer to predictability. You feel like you ought to know what's going to happen next, given that things are like you hear they are. But it's not so.

Won't we all be surprised if the elections in Iraq take place in January, with full Sunni participation, and the insurgency just fades away... There's a thousand facts that suggest that's inevitable. I'll pick 'em for you right now. Where's Derrida when you need him?

Posted by BradRubenstein at 01:06 AM

Talking Turkey

From the Turkey Talk-Line:

We at the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line™ are ready to answer your questions, make suggestions, and facilitate by the best possible means, the preparation of your Thanksgiving Day turkey.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 12:47 AM

Derrida Derided

From The Economist obituary of Jacques Derrida, who died on October 8:

He not only contradicted himself, over and over again, but vehemently resisted any attempt to clarify his ideas. "A critique of what I do", he said, "is indeed impossible."

This reminds of the line from Terrence McNally's Master Class, where, when Maria Callas is asked if she were concerned about her competition in the opera world, replied (if memory serves), "How can you have competition, when no one does what you do?"

Posted by BradRubenstein at 01:01 PM

Blogging against the storm

I had told myself I was going to post something every day. Circumstances are intervening. In the past week, I've been in Barcelona, Zurich, New York, and now San Francisco, working and playing. Maybe I should put "post to blog" in my Palm Pilot calendar. I never argue with my calendar...

Posted by BradRubenstein at 12:52 PM

Market Ecology, ca. 1904

From Scientific American, October, 1904:

Electrical energy transmitted from water power displaces steam, not so much because the former is cleaner, safer, and more conducive to good health, as because it is cheaper.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 12:43 PM

From the Albigensian Crusades

I spent the past weekend near Perpignan in the Pyrénées Orientales, and I spent a lot of time wandering about the environs. There is a palpable sense in which the region is just now recovering from its complete decimation during the Albigensian Crusades, which I learned about in The Albigensian Crusades, by Joseph Strayer:

Beginning with Innocent III (1198-1216) and continuing throughout the thirteenth century, the popes showed themselves more and more willing to use Crusades as a way of raising armies against heretics and disobedient Christians. This easy resort to force, this sanctification of violence by promises of remission of sins, proved to be one of the worst mistakes of the papacy. A series of impressive victories led to an even more impressive series of catastrophies. By using the Crusade to crush the Hohenstaufen rulers of Germany and southern Italy, the popes created the Italian anarchy that forced them to take refuge in Avignon and the German anarchy that made possible the Reformation. By using the French as the chief components of their crusading armies, the popes built up the power of the French king and created the dependence on France that led to the humiliation of Boniface VIII, the capitulation of Clement V, the Babylonian Captivity, and the Great Schism. The Crusades against the heretics of Occitania - the Albigensian Crusades - were the first large-scale use of this new and dangerous technique of using the Holy War to attain the objectives of the papacy in Europe.

It made me wonder about the unintended consequences of the Iraq war, and how many years (hundreds? thousands?) it would take to know them.

UPDATE: Perhaps I should not be talking about Iraq, but rather Côte d'Ivoire, and the adventures of modern French Kings.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 01:19 PM

Less Religious, More Republican

Virginia Postrel, writing in the New York Times, poses the question, why are mainstream political positions on religious issues (abortion, gay marriage, stem-cell research, etc) moving toward the extreme in both parties, rather than toward the middle? Some surprising math suggests it is not because we are becoming more religious, but because we are becoming less so.

There is math behind these (which is the only reason I find it interesting):

"This is exactly what you see in the data," Professor Glaeser said. "The degree of polarization around religious issues is greatest in the places that are in the middle. It's not the Philippines, which are 100 percent religious, and not Scandinavia, where no one has attended a church in 40 years except for a wedding or a funeral. It's really these places like the U.S. that are in the middle."

For me, the problem with this line of argument is that the result is hard to distinguish from the same result produced by totalitarian governments (I would not consider Saudi Arabia or Iran to be moderate on religious issues). So are we on the path from Philippines to Scandinavia, or are we veering off into Iran.

I suppose we're somewhere in the middle.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 03:23 PM

Where do those Gay Votes Go

Not too surprising that all the youth get-out-the-vote noise was more of a bust this year than in 2000, but this statistic from Washington Blade Online is a bit more surprising to me:

Perhaps the most surprising news for gay observers of the presidential election is that exit polls show President Bush received the exact same percentage of gay votes — 23 percent — as he did four years ago. This despite the president's vocal support for a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

I wonder what the HRC has to say about that?

Posted by BradRubenstein at 01:40 PM