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Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

10 Feb

I read this article, recommended as showing how "decent living" can be achieved by much lower energy use. After calculating an arbitrary goods/services basket which the authors call "decent living"
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

(an exercise that many economists have done for ages for poverty lines) the authors show that "decent living" (in its more economical version) can be achieved by energy consumption equal to Rwanda's and more generously with that equal to Uruguay's.
Let's accept that.

@jasonhickel

How are people who are currently consuming multiple times the energy of Rwanda (=most of the rich world) to be convinced to reduce their use so much?
@jasonhickel says it cannot be done by taxes and subsidies & green decoupling.
Let's accept that too.

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Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

9 Feb

During the past 50 years, India and China had played key roles in influencing, and then reducing, global inequality. One way to look at their role is to see how they affect population-weighted international inequality (where country incomes are app. by GDPpc in PPP dollars).

China's growth effect has been uneven until the late 1970s. (When the value in the graph is negative, China's growth *reduces* global inequality.)
Note the spike in 1961: China's GDPpc went down by more than 10% and that added to global inequality.

After ~1975, every year China contributed to reducing inequality, but that effect is getting weaker.
This is happening not necessarily because China's growth is less but because China has become sufficiently rich that it no longer drives global inequality down.

Read 5 tweets

Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

14 Jan

@lisdata

Long thread
Half a century of US income redistribution.
@lisdata
The best way to study the extent to which social transfer and direct taxes reduce inequality (by targeting those less well-off and taxing the rich) is to compare inequality before transfers and taxes...

(called market income inequality) with inequality after transfers and taxes. The reduction, expressed in Gini points, has become more important in the US going from around 10 Gini points (point 0.1 on the vertical axis) to about 14 points.

It has been less however than German redistribution that shaves off up to 25 Gini points.

There are two problems with this measurement. First, transfers include government pensions (the main transfer item) that can be seen as deferred wages.

Read 8 tweets

Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

11 Jan

This discussion started several months ago when Twitter labelled Chinese and Russian media "state-affiliated" without doing the same with the state-owned BBC, DW, VoA etc. It absolutely made no sense except if you take it that Twitter is an arbiter of truth.

Moreover even if Twitter labelled all state-owned media the same, it would be still wrong because it would presume that privately-owned media (say, WaPo owned by Bezos or Bloomberg owned by Bloomberg) are somehow "objective", "truthful".

So, if consistent, you would have to label them too: "billionaire-affiliated media".
And then you would continue with other media until every tweet would be labelled.

Read 4 tweets

Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

7 Jan

Just a few simple things to do:
1. Fix the health system
2. Improve public education
3. Tax private university endowments
4. Invest in infrastructure
5. Reduce carbon emissions
6. Increase taxes on the top one-third of tax payers
7. Increase inheritance tax

8. Equalize tax on K and L
9. New anti-monopoly legislation & break-ups
10. Reinforce pro trade union legislation
11. Eliminate ad hoc tariffs on Chinese goods
12. Reverse Citizens United
13. Severely limit the power of lobbyists/donors

@threadreaderapp

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Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

5 Jan

2021 is the centennial of practically all Communist parties. Here are the reviews of two books on the parties (Yugoslav & Chinese) that came to power in similar circumstances.
Both books are excellent, and thanks to Amazon (a very capitalist enterprise) can be readily bought.

Communist party in a turbulent time and difficult country
by Ivan Avakumovic
glineq.blogspot.com/2020/04/commun…
Memoir of a Chinese revolutionary
by Wang fan-hsi
glineq.blogspot.com/2018/02/i-wont…

Avakumovic is a standard history book that deals with many less well-known aspects of inter-war activities of KPJ incl. its relationship w/ the Comintern and Ustasa (Croat Fascist) movement.

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