Profile picture
, 3 tweets, 1 min read
My Authors
Read all threads
Wow. South African real per capita GDP has apparently been shrinking since 2014. Are South Africans really getting poorer??
Alternative measures of GDP seem to agree - South Africans are getting poorer.
In fact just eyeballing it, it looks like South Africans actually have lower average standards of living than before the Great Recession. That's beyond "recession", that's a lost decade. What the heck is going on in South Africa??
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh.

Enjoying this thread?

Keep Current with Noah Smith 🐇

Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Noahpinion see all

Profile picture
Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
A friend told me about how her band almost broke up because of a disagreement over whether to allow some Israelis to dance at their performance with an Israeli flag. She said she would definitely not allow the flag, and that it was similar to a Nazi or Confederate flag.
I asked her: What if it were a Chinese flag?

"That's more complicated," she said.

What about an American flag?, I asked.

"Also complicated."

What about a French flag?, I asked.

"That would be fine", she said.
Anyway I thought it was kind of an interesting interaction...
Read 3 tweets
Profile picture
Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
How a country can hit its growth targets every year:
1. Forecast next year's growth, make that the "target"
2. If growth misses the target, fudge the numbers for that year to make it look like you hit the target, and spread the difference across the next few years
3. Repeat
This method only fails if growth surprises in one direction for several years in a row. And even then you can just wait a decade for people to figure out what the real numbers were, and by then no one cares.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
From a politician's perspective, there's really no downside to this as long as everyone who makes policy knows the true numbers. The upside is that you make the government look omnipotent, and you prevent fickle investors from stampeding out of the country if growth dips.
Read 5 tweets
Profile picture
Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
A really well-written and disturbing article about China and the future of its relationship with America.

newyorker.com/magazine/2020/…
Interesting that Kissinger thinks of a variant of the "forest-cutting" theory (i.e. that rising powers will start conflicts when the growth in their power slows below some critical level)...
Here was the thread where I explained that theory...

Read 3 tweets

Related threads

Profile picture
David Andolfatto
@dandolfa
Much talk of monetary policy failure since 08. Critics have a point, but (imo) overestimate what MP (e.g., open-ended LSAPs) could have achieved. Moreover, focus on MP averts attention from this brutal chart.
Wanting a smaller government is one thing. Timing the adjustment during crisis not wise. How much way recovery hampered? Consider the following back-of-the-envelope counterfactual: suppose real per capita G continued to grow at following rate:
Assume that other components of GDP follow their actual path (in reality, we'd expect this not to be true exactly, but this is the thought experiment). Here is what the counterfactual G/Y does:
Read 7 tweets
Profile picture
Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough
@graykimbrough
Inspired by @andrewvandam's figure, I calculated the average cumulative real GDP growth 2-10 years after reaching age 18 (approximately graduating from high school) by generation. As he put it: Millennials really are special, or at least unique in the economy they inherited.
Using *per capita* real GDP, the picture is essentially unchanged, albeit even worse for older millennials (as seen in the 8 and 10-year growth rates).

[those responsible for tweeting the earlier figure based on an incorrect calculation have been sacked]
Here is the full article from @andrewvandam that includes the figure I referenced above, plus some references to my previous millennial myth debunking. washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019…
Read 5 tweets
Profile picture
David Eil
@economistified
Now reading: Ages of Discord by @Peter_Turchin .

So far it sets out an Asimovesque Foundational program of predicting and modulating society's vicissitudes

amazon.com/dp/B06XDLT2C5/…
An interesting passage early on. "This time is different" surely generates some mistakes. But "this time is the same" generates many as well, both bc for data-fitting reasons and boy-who-cried-wolf complacency reasons.
For instance, in the opening pages, Turchin talks about how American elites were surprised by secession and the Civil War, since they thought the South's threats would be empty and compromise achieved as had always happened before. But that time was different.
Read 71 tweets
Profile picture
Shrikanth K
@shrikanth_krish
The Economic history of India is one that evokes strong reactions

It is a topic on which the reactions of both the Right and Left are at odds with the mainstream view of economists

Let's study the principal reactions, and in the process survey the Economic history of India!
So here are 3 views -

1. Mainstream : India was a subsistence economy for much of its history until it started growing in the past 3-4 decades

(Contd...)
2. Nationalist view (Right): Ancient ndia was a Sone ki Chidiya which was impoverished by Muslim and later British rule

3. Nationalist view (Left): Mughal India was a Sone ki Chidiya which was badly impoverished by colonial era free trade, and has recovered since independence
Read 57 tweets

Trending hashtags

#PVdodgyDossier #3Dprinting #Brexit #GoodNewsGraphs #Confidence #GDP #Trade #EU27 #weather #Business #yogurt #PublicServices #ExtraBorrowing #ProjectFear #commodities #Economic #Productivity #Brexodus #auspol #Leavers #NHS #rstats #TraverseesMarais #Emergency #TradeGap
Follow Us on Twitter!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just three indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!