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The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and…
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The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality (edition 2010)

by Branko Milanovic

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1853146,044 (4.11)3
This is one of the most delightful short economics books I have read--and certainly the most delightful on the topic of inequality. The book covers three types of inequality: inequality of people within a country (e.g., Brazil is more unequal than Japan); inequality between countries (e.g., Asia is more unequal than Latin America, because countries in Asia range from very rich to very poor); and inequality of people across countries (e.g., Asia and Latin America are about as unequal, because of the combination of the two previous points). This last concept is the one that Branko Milanovi€ÃƒÂ  pioneered and it provides a fascinating window into inequality, including the observation that inequality of people across the USA and EU are roughly the same (because the EU has more equality within countries but lots of income differences between those countries).

The book is organized in three chapters that each explain one of the inequality concepts followed by about 10 vignettes per chapter. The vignettes are delightful and range from questions like why Elizabeth Bennett got married in Pride and Prejudice and who was the world's richest man to more serious topics like the role that inequality across regions played in the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

Very highly recommended. ( )
1 vote nosajeel | Jun 21, 2014 |
Showing 3 of 3
I liked this book. Short, many facts. The stuff about the EU vs US gini coefficient was interesting (coefficient about the same, but in EU much more inquality between states). Recommended. Below is a kind of summary.

How income and affluence present in daily life
"The objective is to unveil the importance that differences in income and wealth, affluence and poverty play in our ordinary lives as well as the importance that they have had historically"
1. Inequality between individuals in a community
2. Inequality in income between countries
3. Inequality globally. Increasingly important
-essay-Vignettes
Focus on disposable rather than marketable income.

1. Study of distribution important historically. Among social classes-workers capitalists landowners. Pareto started with individuals. Iron law-80/20. Kuznets theory of change, inverted u. Later augmented K curve.
Good and bad inequality. Keynes quote, view of capitalists as savings machines. Social monopoly vs incentives.
Atkinson welfare measure-equally distributed, equivalent income. But dependent on adding utilities. And higher u functions-Sen. Pareto criterion, but almost impossible to satisfy in the real world. Rawls: "Injustice is simply inequalities that are not in the benefit of all", and in particular the poor.
Measurement of inequality. First about finding technical measure satisfying certain axioms. Gini. Lack of data, fiscal records often about taxes and without income and consumption, use hh surveys, but these also often not available.
Top income share, gini, etc. Between and within inequality decomposition.
Vignette 1.1. Pride and prejudice contains economics, love-wealth trade-off. Same today, but stakes do change. Anna Karenina, ratio between possible incomes w different husbands, like England stakes changes in Russia. 1.3. Richest ever, consider amount labor that could buy locally with yearly income-modern richer-Carnegie-Gates-Rockefeller. But locally khodorkovsky richer, and Slim even more. 1.5 Was socialism egalitarian? Yes, but lack of incentives, nothing exported, political inequalities, privileges, priority for goods, behavior of elites stood out. 1.7 Who gains from fiscal redistribution? The poorest, but not upper middle. 1.8 several countries in one? In Soviet Union as different as South Korea and Ivory Coast. Rich territories wanted out. In Yugoslavia regional income ratio as big as 8:1, Slovenia vs Kosovo. Raises questions about china, eu, Nigeria. 1.9. China unity survive? Soviet dissolved. Am inequality distributed more broadly, soviet regionally, like in china. Some regions (5+6?)-gang of maritime cities and provinces . 10:1. But language similar and history shared. But ethnic cleavages. 1.10 Pareto and Kuznets. Functional vs interpersonal. Recent tensions between "inequality" and "poverty". Pareto controversial, anti-socialist. Pareto constant. Human history is history of aristocracies, some elites always in top.

2. Unequal nations
Used to be small, big started with industrial rev until 1950's. Two methods: unweighted and weighted by population. Same previously, now more diverging last 30 years. More nations and comparability in space and time are problems-construct the new nations and use PPP. Intercountry inequality increased. But when use weighted measure, dampened, though absolute differences still huge, so poor countries need to grow at extremes just to keep up, since so low base.
Neoclassical economics: globalization->convergence, because of fdi, copy easier, specialization, can use good ideas. But we have seen divergence-have not seen much foreign investment, technology does not come free (ref e.g. IP rights).
2.1 Marx. Real wages actually started to rise around publication of Das Capital. Global inequality used to be driven by class, now by location. Third world solidarity has plummeted. 2.2. GDP is about averages. Within nation inequality needed. First divide a nation into 20 income groups, ventiles, convert income by PPP, find position of each venture in the global income distribution. Brazil extreme, covers almost from top to bottom, many countries, ex India where richest ventile is poorer than poorest of US. With percentiles a little overlap. Citizenship is fate.
2.2. How much income inequality determined at birth? Place of birth explains more than 60% of variability in global inequality. With income class of parents as well, more than 80% explained. Portion left for effort small.
2.4 Migration. A rational response to inequality. Income inequalities rising, so also migration pressure. Both push and pull factors. Integration issues. Mexican wall going to be longer than Berlin Wall.
2.5. Hraga. People who burn their papers. Frontex costs as much as what the travelers pay. Lampedusa-"the camp of identification and expulsion". What to do with the dead bodies? Algeria did not want them. Rethorical question: "can these separate, and unequal worlds coexist...?"
2.6. Three generations of Obamas.
2.7. Globalization has not decreased inequality. And deglobalization in the beginning of 1913-38 did not increase inequality. WWII: divergence- some countries grew much positive or negative. Great Depression: rich countries lost, many others not much affected.

3. Unequal world
Inequality among citizens in the world. Do not have the data globally for before. But recent years, 1988 onwards, have good household surveys for most countries. The world extremely unequal, high gini around 0.70. Decile ratio about 80:1. In dev countries seldom above 10:1. Probably not more unequal since late 80's. Forces for greater inequality: rising within countries and divergence of incomes between countries. Force for smaller inequality: fast growth of china and India, faster than works average. Trilemma: globalization, increasing between-country inequality, restricted migration. 3.2. Talk of global middle class exaggerated. 3.3. Eu gini about the same as in US, but structure different: more inequality between nations in eu. Social policies should target countries in eu, poor people individually in US. Positive to free circulation of people within EU-cause to believe that poor countries will catch up. 3.5. Capitalist European football system.
Rawls migration: not concerned with global inequality, takes peoples as given, and differences in their preferences; Burdened and ordered countries.
Wants EU to help Africa.
Key challenges: "how to bring Africa up, how to peacefully bring China in, and how to wean Latin America of its self-obsession and bring it into the real world, and doing all if these while maintaining peace and avoiding ideological crusades." ( )
  ohernaes | Jan 1, 2015 |
This is one of the most delightful short economics books I have read--and certainly the most delightful on the topic of inequality. The book covers three types of inequality: inequality of people within a country (e.g., Brazil is more unequal than Japan); inequality between countries (e.g., Asia is more unequal than Latin America, because countries in Asia range from very rich to very poor); and inequality of people across countries (e.g., Asia and Latin America are about as unequal, because of the combination of the two previous points). This last concept is the one that Branko Milanovi€ÃƒÂ  pioneered and it provides a fascinating window into inequality, including the observation that inequality of people across the USA and EU are roughly the same (because the EU has more equality within countries but lots of income differences between those countries).

The book is organized in three chapters that each explain one of the inequality concepts followed by about 10 vignettes per chapter. The vignettes are delightful and range from questions like why Elizabeth Bennett got married in Pride and Prejudice and who was the world's richest man to more serious topics like the role that inequality across regions played in the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

Very highly recommended. ( )
1 vote nosajeel | Jun 21, 2014 |
Great background information on the history of global inequality. Spells out things like how your income is determined 60% just by where you are born, 20% by the income of your parents, and how the remaining 20% may or may not be determined by you. ( )
  heike6 | May 2, 2013 |
Showing 3 of 3

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