I have just finished reading "Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know" from James K. Galbraith published by Oxford University Press. I got an ARC from Netgalley.
This appears to be part of a series to orientate readers about the academic discourse on various topics and so to allow intelligent readers without a background in these areas to form opinions about these topics. As a result, I am probably not a perfect reader to assess this objective as I have studied in this area and while it has been some time, I do have a decent understanding of some of the academic material on this topic.
Having said that, it has been a while since I left pure academia and while I have dipped in and out of some of the newer literature, I appreciated the opportunity to get a fresh survey of the debates. I appreciated how the author managed to put together what is quite a short book and yet it provides an orientation of a range of facets of inequality covering the history of the concept, measurement issues, current trends and debates about about whether inequality should be ameliorated, and if so, how. The book struck me as both accessible and comprehensive.
One of the key issues that I thought Galbraith highlighted particularly effectively was the crucial place of measurement. In political debates, the specificity of measurement often disappears and yet as Galbraith points out, this issue is critical. He discusses the key differences between gross income, net income and pay measures of inequality as well as highlighting why wealth inequality is so hard to measure. His point about how market-based valuations (such as for billionaires like Bill Gates) can evaporate as soon as you have to sell even a small portion is insightful. Once he'd pointed out, it seemed so obvious and yet it is a point I haven't seen made before and an important one in the debate around wealth taxes which Piketty has reignited.
His defense of Simon Kuznetz is also very interesting. Whenever I have seen Kuznetz presented before, his Kuznetz curve with inequality rising as a country starts to grow and then falls once it reaches a certain point has been the focus. What Galbraith highlights is that the curve itself is far less important than Kuznetz's arguments about the structural transformations of economies and how this impacts on inequality. This seems to be a key focus of Galbraith's own research and also the reason why he seems to have a preference for measures of inequality in pay (rather than income).
The book is quite US-centric, and I think is intended for a US audience. The US gets a full chapter on recent trends while the rest of the world shares one chapter. I can understand the choice, but as a South African, I would have found a bit more discussion of developing countries interesting. As a South African, I found his discussion on the risk of predatory states as well as preferred methods for combating rising inequality very interesting. In South Africa, labour market rigidity (in the form primarily of unions, labour laws and minimum wages) are often blamed for inequality and I think Galbraith argues effectively that this is probably the wrong way to look at things.
I thought how Galbraith handled ideology was excellent. He makes some very interesting points about the difference for inequality amongst different types of non-democratic states - specifically between communist regimes and military dictatorships for instance. His chapter on war, which did feel like a bit of a diversion relative to the rest of the text, was interesting nonetheless and raised some interesting arguments in terms of the importance of equality relative to democracy and the relationship between these two.
The one area which he didn't discuss in much detail was the link between inequality and mobility. In my view, under examination, many people's preference for equality lies in a concern for mobility and for people to be able to rise and fall under their own efforts. Then, the question becomes whether or not an unequal state can provide this, and how mobility is affected by both inequality and other structural issues. I know it is a question which has arisen in academic debates and I do think it would have been a useful topic to cover (even if briefly) in a text such as this for a "lay" audience.
Otherwise, I think this is a very helpful contribution to current debates and I think many people would benefit from reading it.
Saturday, January 2, 2016
Friday, November 9, 2012
Homegrown Solutions
The United Nations has acknowledged efforts Africans are making to ensure their own food security, eschewing genetically modified approaches for something more traditional which they believe will be "more pragmatic, faster and more effective".
Link to the story: http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/475/85103.html
Link to the centre that won the award: http://www.acci.org.za/main.asp?nav=13
Link to the story: http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/475/85103.html
Link to the centre that won the award: http://www.acci.org.za/main.asp?nav=13
Thursday, October 25, 2012
When Paychecks Pale
This article that I found on the GIBS page looks at how the millenial generation is turning down high paychecks in favour of being able to make a difference:
Entrepreneurship: Is social entrepreneurship transforming millennial talent acquisition?
This represents a powerful change - if a generation of high-performers favour social payoffs above financial payoffs, this could fundamentally re-structure the economy.
Entrepreneurship: Is social entrepreneurship transforming millennial talent acquisition?
This represents a powerful change - if a generation of high-performers favour social payoffs above financial payoffs, this could fundamentally re-structure the economy.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Thoughts on Attuned Leadership by Reuel Khoza
At the moment, I am working my way through Reuel Khoza's magnus opus Attuned Leadership which lays out his view that leadership should be a normative concept and that this requires leaders to be attuned with their followers. This does not always mean they should give their followers what they want, but that they should understand their followers and be able to direct their energies to the greater good.
Let me start with what I like about the book:
- Khoza balances criticism of "misleadership" in Africa with an appreciation of African philosophy. I like this because it is logically flawed to say that because leaders in Africa have to a large extent done great damage to their people, Africans have nothing meaningful to say about leaders. And also, it is flawed to feel the need to defend African leaders in order to defend concepts like ubuntu.
- His chapter where he argues against the Cartesian premise for humanity "I think therefore I am" and for a relational definition of humanity based on "I am because you are, you are because we are". This chapter is the most cogently argued of all that I've come across in the book. I do still think his conception of ubuntu can be aligned with concepts of enlightened self-interest, though he would disagree.
What I don't like:
- While Khoza has read a lot of philosophy, he doesn't seem to really understand the principles of logic and argument construction. He has premises that are not necessary for his conclusions and sometimes jumps from conclusion to conclusion without filling in the gaps.
- For instance, the bulk of his argument seems to lie on his relational definition of humanity. However, he keeps re-iterating the premise that a God exists and we continue into the after-life as ancestors. Nowhere does his argument seem to rely on this premise, making it redundant. Also, it works against his agenda of proposing his concepts as a basis for common life. In a pluralistic society, assertions of either deities or ancestor worship is not something that will be accepted by everyone. For myself, I believe in God and not ancestors and there are plenty of people who believe in both or neither. While these beliefs may be important to Khoza's personal ethics, I don't believe they serves the purposes of his argument, in terms of either its construction or its acceptance.
- Also, he constantly talks about morality and need for the leader to serve the common good, but never really pins down what that means. He alludes to his admiration to Aristotle's virtue ethics, but not much beyond this. He assumes that leaders like Hitler mis-use their power (who would disagree?) but he doesn't really spell out what seeking the common good is. He talks about empowering people, but for what?
- He focuses too much on Corporate Social Responsibility as the way in which firms serve the greater community. However, my view is that the most important area where companies should demonstrate this kind of commitment should be in their core activities. For instance, take a bank - what would it matter how much CSR Lehman Brothers had done while continuing their activities in the sub-prime market that de-stabilised the world? Also, it has been my observation that CSR practitioners are often "do-gooders" with only the vaguest understanding of the dynamics at play where poverty, inequality and development are concerned. Without properly understanding these dynamics, a company can easily do more harm than good. The heart can be in the right place, but if the head doesn't know what it's doing... (a perfect example of this is in the early days of development economics where African men were taught how to grow cash crops, thereby reducing the relative status of African women who had traditionally controlled agriculture).
Let me start with what I like about the book:
- Khoza balances criticism of "misleadership" in Africa with an appreciation of African philosophy. I like this because it is logically flawed to say that because leaders in Africa have to a large extent done great damage to their people, Africans have nothing meaningful to say about leaders. And also, it is flawed to feel the need to defend African leaders in order to defend concepts like ubuntu.
- His chapter where he argues against the Cartesian premise for humanity "I think therefore I am" and for a relational definition of humanity based on "I am because you are, you are because we are". This chapter is the most cogently argued of all that I've come across in the book. I do still think his conception of ubuntu can be aligned with concepts of enlightened self-interest, though he would disagree.
What I don't like:
- While Khoza has read a lot of philosophy, he doesn't seem to really understand the principles of logic and argument construction. He has premises that are not necessary for his conclusions and sometimes jumps from conclusion to conclusion without filling in the gaps.
- For instance, the bulk of his argument seems to lie on his relational definition of humanity. However, he keeps re-iterating the premise that a God exists and we continue into the after-life as ancestors. Nowhere does his argument seem to rely on this premise, making it redundant. Also, it works against his agenda of proposing his concepts as a basis for common life. In a pluralistic society, assertions of either deities or ancestor worship is not something that will be accepted by everyone. For myself, I believe in God and not ancestors and there are plenty of people who believe in both or neither. While these beliefs may be important to Khoza's personal ethics, I don't believe they serves the purposes of his argument, in terms of either its construction or its acceptance.
- Also, he constantly talks about morality and need for the leader to serve the common good, but never really pins down what that means. He alludes to his admiration to Aristotle's virtue ethics, but not much beyond this. He assumes that leaders like Hitler mis-use their power (who would disagree?) but he doesn't really spell out what seeking the common good is. He talks about empowering people, but for what?
- He focuses too much on Corporate Social Responsibility as the way in which firms serve the greater community. However, my view is that the most important area where companies should demonstrate this kind of commitment should be in their core activities. For instance, take a bank - what would it matter how much CSR Lehman Brothers had done while continuing their activities in the sub-prime market that de-stabilised the world? Also, it has been my observation that CSR practitioners are often "do-gooders" with only the vaguest understanding of the dynamics at play where poverty, inequality and development are concerned. Without properly understanding these dynamics, a company can easily do more harm than good. The heart can be in the right place, but if the head doesn't know what it's doing... (a perfect example of this is in the early days of development economics where African men were taught how to grow cash crops, thereby reducing the relative status of African women who had traditionally controlled agriculture).
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Poor Economics
I have been reading Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. Benerjee and Esther Duflo. I haven't finished it yet but already it ranks as one of the best books I have ever read about development.
While fully aware of the theoretical debates about development, Banerjee and Duflo encourage developmental practitioners to focus on the facts on the ground and promote an experimental approach to analysing why the poor make the decisions they do. They argue that only once we understand how the poor make decisions can we design appropriate policy.
And what they uncover is that the poor are just like the risk - for instance, the same "time inconsistency" that sees the rich resolving year after year to go to gym and never getting there also sees the poor failing to vaccinate their children. And they point out that the rich may sneer at the poor for turning to traditional medicine but the rich turn to all sorts of alternative medicines when struggling to understand illness.
For me, the most revealing insight was that one of the problems in education is the focus on getting through a set curriculum. They point out how this often results in both teachers and parents focusing all their efforts on the most talented children, rather than encouraging basic literacy and numeracy for all children as a first priority. Their argument makes so much sense, yet I've never seen anyone else point this out. They show how the same teachers who get nothing out of the weak children during school term are able to teach them to read in holidays - why? Because in the holidays, they don't focus on getting the strongest students through the syllabus.
While fully aware of the theoretical debates about development, Banerjee and Duflo encourage developmental practitioners to focus on the facts on the ground and promote an experimental approach to analysing why the poor make the decisions they do. They argue that only once we understand how the poor make decisions can we design appropriate policy.
And what they uncover is that the poor are just like the risk - for instance, the same "time inconsistency" that sees the rich resolving year after year to go to gym and never getting there also sees the poor failing to vaccinate their children. And they point out that the rich may sneer at the poor for turning to traditional medicine but the rich turn to all sorts of alternative medicines when struggling to understand illness.
For me, the most revealing insight was that one of the problems in education is the focus on getting through a set curriculum. They point out how this often results in both teachers and parents focusing all their efforts on the most talented children, rather than encouraging basic literacy and numeracy for all children as a first priority. Their argument makes so much sense, yet I've never seen anyone else point this out. They show how the same teachers who get nothing out of the weak children during school term are able to teach them to read in holidays - why? Because in the holidays, they don't focus on getting the strongest students through the syllabus.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Social Entrepreneurship
How gorgeous is this?
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/taunina-a-luxury-brand-launches-to-change-lives-170685876.html
http://taunina.com/
I love the idea of social entrepreneurship and that it is getting so much more popular. The idea of seeking both economic and social payoffs is a great way of redirecting business energies in a way which benefits society and is self-sustaining.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/taunina-a-luxury-brand-launches-to-change-lives-170685876.html
http://taunina.com/
I love the idea of social entrepreneurship and that it is getting so much more popular. The idea of seeking both economic and social payoffs is a great way of redirecting business energies in a way which benefits society and is self-sustaining.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
A New Lease on Life?
This evening I felt intrigued enough to watch the first episode of the attempt to resuscitate Dallas. I vaguely remember the music from my childhood.
While I struggled to sit through an entire hour of a patently uneven plot, the piece that struck me was that the 'good' cousin is linked to a form of alternative energy even more destructive than oil. He wants his father to sell the ranch on which the young John Ross has just discovered oil to pour into a form of alternative energy that burns frozen methane harvested from beneath the sea.
Through the episode, the 'good' cousin proves his 'goodness' by admitting to his father that evidence has come to light that there may be a link between underwater earthquakes and extracting frozen methane. He is concerned that thousands may lose his lives.
I do not understand how we can live in a world where the 'good' character is typified by the link to burning a greenhouse gas so much more dangerous than carbon dioxide. He's worried about the thousands to die in earthquakes rather than the massive ecosystem damage that could be caused by clogging the atmosphere even further. If you want to resuscitate an ancient show like Dallas, at least focus on the pertinent facts.
While I struggled to sit through an entire hour of a patently uneven plot, the piece that struck me was that the 'good' cousin is linked to a form of alternative energy even more destructive than oil. He wants his father to sell the ranch on which the young John Ross has just discovered oil to pour into a form of alternative energy that burns frozen methane harvested from beneath the sea.
Through the episode, the 'good' cousin proves his 'goodness' by admitting to his father that evidence has come to light that there may be a link between underwater earthquakes and extracting frozen methane. He is concerned that thousands may lose his lives.
I do not understand how we can live in a world where the 'good' character is typified by the link to burning a greenhouse gas so much more dangerous than carbon dioxide. He's worried about the thousands to die in earthquakes rather than the massive ecosystem damage that could be caused by clogging the atmosphere even further. If you want to resuscitate an ancient show like Dallas, at least focus on the pertinent facts.
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