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Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

Mar 7, 2021 • 10 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X

On March 9, 1776 was published The Wealth of Nations.
Here are 9 not that well-known quotes from it.

Marriage is encouraged in China not by the profitableness of children but by the liberty of destroying them.

All merchants & master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price & ...lessening the sale of their goods...They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent w regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains.

The exorbitant rewards of players, opera singers, opera dancers, etc. are founded upon these two principles;
the rarity and beauty of the talents, and the discredit of employing them in this manner.

How much lower ranks of people in the country are really superior to those of the town, is well known to every man whom either business or curiosity has led to converse much with both.

All the ancient arts of Mexico and Peru have never furnished one single manufacture to Europe.

The late resolution of the Quakers in Pennsylvania to set at liberty all their negro slaves, may satisfy us that their number cannot be very great.

To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it.

The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.

The church of Rome may be considered the most formidable combination that ever was formed against the authority and security of civil governments, as well as against the liberty, reason and happiness of mankind.

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More from @BrankoMilan

Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

Apr 14

In 1974, it made sense to speak of the Three Worlds, as among themselves, and treating China that never belonged to the Third World apart, they accounted for 98% of world GDP (in PPP terms).
Capitalist core 62%
Socialist countries 13%
Third World 24%
China 2%

But now we have a different situation. The capitalist core has shrunk despite its geographical extension to E Europe. The socialist world has disappeared. The 3rd world is more important thanks to the rise of Asia.
Core 44%
China 22%
Politically heterogen. periphery 31%
RUS 3%

In political sense, we have a unified West with 44%, China with ½ of that amount, politically heterogeneous periphery with almost 1/3 of global GDP (but its political power is low because of that heterogeneity) and Russia that is obviously trying to punch above its weight.

Read 5 tweets

Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

Mar 3

When in my recent talk in Edinburgh I claimed that Adam Smith could be seen as "a man of the left" (these terms btw are not used in the Visions of Inequality) this was based on the following:

Smith's extraordinary strong critique of how the rich have acquired their wealth (plunder, corruption, collusion, trade companies, monopoly, colonialism). That critique is often stronger than Marx's critique of "primitive accumulation".

Smith's view that of all social classes, only the interests of employers are opposed to the social interest because advancement of society implies a decrease in the rate of profit, and hence lower income for them. Netherlands is often cited there.

Read 7 tweets

Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

Jan 23

My new paper "The three eras of global income inequality 1820-2020, with the focus on the past 30 years" is just out in World Development. Access is free for 50 days.
Here is the link:
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

It is an important paper. Not only because it gives calculations of global inequality over 200 years (following Bourguignon & Morrisson seminal work) but because it looks at the political implications of the three eras: the rise of the West, the Three Worlds & the rise of Asia.

It then focuses on the past 30 years. Global inequality went down by ~10 Gini points mostly thanks to China. But this is not the full story. The convergence happened in total numbers becase Asian countries are so populous, were poor ad grew fast.

Read 12 tweets

Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

Jan 9

Much has been written about China's train system. But not enough. I think that it will be seen, with the system of canals and the Great Wall, as one of the most important contributions of China. One can see it as a proof that China excels in network industries.

The speed, punctuality and cleanliness of the system are absolutely remarkable. But even more striking to a visitor is how apparently simple and well-organized is everything so much that one cannot but wonder why other countries have not done the same thing.

Building no-nonsense train stations that look like airports, laying down the tracks, producing the trains, planning the exact number of cars by journey in function of ticket sales, building in redundancies, controlling the speed are not tasks requiring some new superb knowledge.

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Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

Dec 10, 2023

Somebody asked me for book recommendations re. the classics, capitalism etc. (I am not exactly sure what b/c it is hard to judge what people are interested in from just a couple of sentences). Nevertheless, I sent a list of books. First, those published in the past 3-4 years...

Darrin McMahon, Equality
David Lay Williams, "The greatest of all plagues"
Glori Liu, Adam Smith's America
Marcelo Musta, The last years of Karl Marx
Krishnan Nayar, Liberal capitalist democracy
Fritz Bartels, The triumph of broken promises

Ian Kumekawa, Pigou: The first serious optimist
Kevin Andrson, Marx at the margins
Jamie Martins, The meddlers
Dannis Rasmussen, The infidel and the professor (Hume & Smith)
Michael Heinrich, Marx and the origin of the modern world

Read 6 tweets