Today's @bopinion post is about Nigeria. I expect its conclusions will not come as a surprise to most Nigerians, but it's good for Americans to be thinking about Nigeria and its problems. bloomberg.com/view/articles/…
Nigeria is very dependent on oil, for its government revenues and for its foreign exchange earnings.
When oil prices fall, Nigeria's people suffer.
And like many oil-rich countries, the government tries to cushion the blow by subsidizing fuel (this is more expensive than you might think, since Nigeria can't refine all of its own oil).
When oil prices rise again, this puts a strain on govt. budgets.
Meanwhile, fewer and fewer Nigerians have jobs, which could portend a rise in social instability.
To escape the doom spiral of the Resource Curse, Nigeria should look to a country that seems to have beaten the curse: Botswana.
Botswana's approach is basically: 1. Pour resource revenues into a Sovereign Wealth Fund 2. Depreciate the currency 3. Use SWF to stabilize the budget 4. Invest a bunch in education, health and infrastructure
Nigeria is already taking some of these steps, which is great.
But Nigeria is missing one big piece: Investment in education.
Instead of subsidizing fuel, Nigeria needs to subsidize education (which doubles as child care) and health. This will provide jobs, relieve poverty, and - most importantly - build human capital.
(end)
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
FWIW, I think "culture war concessions" works only at the level of the candidate, not at the level of policy -- when it works at all. Nothing could ever have convinced America that Obama was socially conservative, even though he was and is.
Biden is making all kinds of compromises and concessions on immigration, and no one is recognizing it or caring (except for progressives who notice and get mad).
You saw the same exact pattern with Jimmy Carter. By the end of his presidency he had tacked so far to the Right that progressives primaried him with Ted Kennedy and almost won. But Republicans kept on thinking he was leftism incarnate.
3/Biden got off to a good start, passing a Covid relief bill that included a pioneering Child Tax Credit similar to Canada's successful program, passing an infrastructure bill that repaired roads and did some other good stuff, and passing a semiconductor industry support bill.
1. NYC building styles range from "fairly ugly" to "very ugly", but Americans love them because NYC is our only dense city, so Americans associate those building styles with urban density
2. Star Trek DS9 was neocon. It glorified a morally inspired leader engaging in preemptive war with an enemy who would never see reason and only respected force.
All the usual suspects are jumping all over Lisa Cook's paper from 2014 and pointing out small errors. But Ken Rogoff served on the Fed Board of Governors and I bet you nobody combed over his papers for errors before he was confirmed! And I bet you he made a few.
Econ academia has very little quality control for data errors. When people do comb over papers for mistakes, they generally find them.
We need a Xillennial-Zillennial alliance, of people who are just a little too old for Millennial bullshit and people who just are a little too young for Millennial bullshit.
Anyone who was born 1980-1986 or 1997-2003 is in the Xillennial-Zillennial alliance. We must unite against the people whose brains were broken by coming of age between the Great Recession and Trump.
The people in that middle decade shall be known as the Harry Potter Generation