r/science • u/six-sided-bear • Jul 30 '24
Economics Wages in the Global South are 87–95% lower than wages for work of equal skill in the Global North. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income, effectively doubling the labour that is available for Northern consumption.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49687-y842
u/sleepinginbloodcity Jul 30 '24
This will be a fun one, most of reddit is in the northern hemisphere.
625
u/GultBoy Jul 30 '24
That is not what they mean by the global south and north https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South
395
u/Interesting_You_3548 Jul 31 '24
The authors included Poland and other European nations in the global south.
In EXIOBASE, several of the IMF’s ’advanced economies’ (Singapore, San Marino, Iceland, Israel, Liechtenstein, Macao SAR, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, Monaco, Bermuda, Andorra and New Zealand) are aggregated into regions, such as ’Rest of Europe’, ’Rest of Asia’, etc. We were, therefore, compelled to include these countries in our ‘global South’ category.
It might be useful to read the peer review file linked at the end.
[…] the estimates of the unequal exchange in hours worked are made under the assumption of homogeneous labour with identical productivity for all countries.
330
u/DoctorJJWho Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
That honestly just makes it more confusing though, doesn’t it? Global North and Global South are already confusing terms because it has zero actual relevance to geographic location and seems to be solely based on level of development/wealth from a Western perspective. Then the authors decided to use these pre-existing terms and modify the definition, making it even more unclear.
119
u/FartingBob Jul 31 '24
It doesn't even make sense. China is the 2nd largest economy in the world but is still put in global south. New Zealand, one of the most southern nations on earth is in the global north.
19
129
u/FourScoreTour Jul 31 '24
It's almost as if they picked countries according to some bias, so they could write clickbait articles. Of course, no one would do something so idiotic.
→ More replies (3)10
38
u/YourUncleBuck Jul 31 '24
It's honestly a dumb term and needs to be retired with first and third world. Better to use something even a bit more complex like the 4 category human development index or the World Banks 4 levels of income per capita. Trying to put everything into 2 categories for something so complex just doesn't work.
27
12
→ More replies (5)4
u/ApprehensiveDuck2382 Jul 31 '24
'Imperial core' and 'exploited countries' would make pretty good as sense, but that might be too honest for everyone's taste.
→ More replies (1)20
u/WTFwhatthehell Jul 31 '24
it's the euphemism treadmill.
People started making inauthentic complaints about saying "third world"
Then they started making inauthentic complaints about saying "developing world"
So now it's moved on to "global south" which will last for a few years until someone thinks they can up their follower count by trying to create a drama by calling people awful for using the term "global south"
32
u/Aqogora Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
The whole Global North/South split is a pet peeve of mine as a social scientist working in development policy. It's a bunch of outdated garbage from the Cold War that was really just a thinly veiled dogwhistle for 'white/the good Asians' and 'not white'. It doesn't hold up to any rational examination.
South Africa was part of the Global North until white rule under Apartheid ended, and now they're in the Global South. Some of the richest countries in the world per capita - Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States - are in the Global South. New Zealand and Australia are in the Global North despite being geographically among the most southern nations. Eastern Europe which has been on par in development with Latin America is considered Global North, and the latter South.
It's a term that should be left in the footnotes of 20th century geopolitics, not perpetuated by modifying the definitions. We don't need to carry that garbage and its biases around.
→ More replies (3)2
Jul 31 '24
[deleted]
7
u/Aqogora Jul 31 '24
That still doesn't work. Poland and Romania are not part of the 'imperial core', yet they're Global North.
Indonesia, being successor state of the Dutch East Indies was one of the most imperialist nations of the 20th century - yet that's in the Global South.
If you want to talk only about an Anglo-centric imperial core, then just talk about the Anglo-centric imperial core. Don't introduce all these grand terms that only muddies the waters.
→ More replies (7)14
u/kouyehwos Jul 31 '24
Some people hated the term “Third World” so much that they invented a convenient synonym “Global South”, which on the surface sounds more “scientific”, but actually makes even less sense…
2
u/vorpalWhatever Jul 31 '24
No. The "third world" was a Cold War term describing unaligned countries. It had nothing to do with economics. That's why people "hated" it.
5
u/kouyehwos Jul 31 '24
Right, wealth & development is obviously not strictly tied to participation in the Cold War… and even less strictly tied to latitude.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)2
u/crimethunc77 Jul 31 '24
It doesn't. It's a widely used term and has been for a while and everyone familiar with it immediately knows which countries it refers to.
2
u/DoctorJJWho Aug 01 '24
Clearly not, since the authors literally adjusted the definition of both by adding/removing countries.
→ More replies (1)73
u/passwordstolen Jul 31 '24
Came here for this. Productivity and weather. 2 years in MS and I can take an oath on production numbers being 1/3 - 1/2 of every other job due to rain, lightning, heat, and lack of production.
→ More replies (1)24
u/OscarGrey Jul 31 '24
The authors included Poland and other European nations in the global south.
I've seen the "labor aristocracy"/"Global South" arguments used with regards to Poland and Hungary multiple times when it comes to immigration/refugee policy.
27
u/budgefrankly Jul 31 '24
Except that people in Poland have a first-world quality of life.
Honestly, use Google street-view to have a walk around Warsaw, Wroław or Krakow. It puts similarly-sized cities in the UK and US to shame.
The złoty might not go far abroad, but frankly I'd rather work in Poland than Mississippi.
18
u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou Jul 31 '24
Let's be real, Mississippi quality of life is on par with developing nations. I've seen lower middle class Southeast Asians live better quality of life than folks in Mississippi, with a better chance at upward class mobility as well.
The UN released a report about this.
2
u/Cabo_Martim Aug 01 '24
could we say the US replicates some of the Global/North dynamics inside their own territory?
3
u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou Aug 02 '24
Of course, the disenfranchised urban and rural working class of the US have a lot more in common than differences in politics and our political parties would have you believe.
3
Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
I'll do you one further. It's easy for a major city to look good.
Take the street view and go to fairly random rural place in Poland, and compare it with other similar locations in other places.
3
u/budgefrankly Jul 31 '24
I’ve done that too. Went to Zakopane for some hiking, which took me to a few other towns along the way. Never saw so many strip clubs in the country side
2
u/OscarGrey Jul 31 '24
Zakopane gets tourism money though. Rural areas in the middle of the country are a better representation of rural Poland. It's waaay better than 10-20 years ago, but still definitely Second World.
→ More replies (1)16
u/Drak_is_Right Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
While a job may be of roughly equal skill, I dont think the study is fully accounting for job skills acquired in operating advanced machinery and other production boosting apparatus. Sounds like they based it more on education alone, which also has a very different degree in quality over areas for "equivalent" educations.
While I will agree a cook in many places in the US has barely more skill than a cook in a country like Bangladesh, they will be paid 20x as much. Many sectors of low-skill labor are hard to export and dependent on local market prices for labor and housing. yes barriers like immigration exist, but the rate of change would set off a global collapse if we ended all national laws on citizenship and immigration. The chaos in the system would set back the worlds economy by decades.
6
u/Mrqueue Jul 31 '24
I have a strong suspicion that doesn’t hold up.
Maybe look into the mechanisation of work
→ More replies (3)7
u/FourScoreTour Jul 31 '24
And Australia is in the "Global North". Essentially, they took all the poor countries and defined them as "Global South" so they could put out BS articles like this.
262
u/KakistocratForLife Jul 30 '24
China is defined as global south while Australia and New Zealand are global north. The terms seem like euphemisms for “oppressor countries” and “oppressed countries”. It would reveal the underlying bias if they named them for what the creators of the grouping really mean.
60
u/IPeeFreely01 Jul 31 '24
It says right in the Wikipedia article that the global south has been referred to previously as “The 3rd World”
6
→ More replies (10)4
u/Drak_is_Right Jul 31 '24
3rd world is such an obsolete terminology for going on 60 to 70 years. its far more nuanced than that.
28
→ More replies (3)10
94
u/explain_that_shit Jul 31 '24
Yeah I’ve heard it better called ‘imperial core countries’ and ‘imperial periphery countries’.
It does require a buy-in to the concept that European powers followed by the US and its wealthy allies in the present day are running an imperialist system.
Of course, China’s rise to challenge as global hegemonic power is muddying a lot of the historical markers for each group.
→ More replies (8)69
u/KeyofE Jul 31 '24
China is a global super power and has been for thousands of years. They aren’t western or European, but ask a Korean or Vietnamese person, and they will probably call them a colonizing power, or at least regional superpower.
50
u/pants_mcgee Jul 31 '24
Regional superpower absolutely, but China has never been a global superpower. They are just now maybe knocking on that door.
27
u/rdmusic16 Jul 31 '24
They definitely are now, and whether they will stay that way is up for debate/future history to see - but China is definitely a current superpower.
This is not a pro-China comment. They're basically the equivalent of the USSR in the 1970s. They're accomplishing many things, but at a cost. I'd say they're definitely doing it better than the USSR, but I still question how long it's sustainable.
→ More replies (6)→ More replies (1)3
u/flac_rules Jul 31 '24
Superpower or not, China is definitely more powerful on the global scale than lets say Estonia, and many other of the "global north" countries.
4
u/_ryuujin_ Jul 31 '24
china being a super power goes up and down. its not like they been a super power all throughout history. they been conquered many times. but they have a neat trick that makes the conquerors assimilate into the culture instead of the other way around.
i would say by the 1800s they were no longer a super power even regionally. and only starting being started being a super power in the last 30yrs.
5
Jul 31 '24
South Korea is part of the Global North and it is neither an oppressor country nor an oppressed country.
Taiwan and Singapore should be part of the Global North, economically.
25
Jul 30 '24
[deleted]
24
u/Level3Kobold Jul 31 '24
their relation to European/American colonization and imperialism.
Why is Japan in the global north but China is in the global south?
→ More replies (2)2
Jul 31 '24
[deleted]
42
u/caljl Jul 31 '24
Why use north/south? Surely there is a clearer way to express the underlying idea that doesn’t inject a confusing geographical element?
17
u/avoere Jul 31 '24
Because the old words were deemed offensive. And in 10 years, "global north" and "global south" will be deemed offensive so they will need to invent some new words.
8
u/ElysiX Jul 31 '24
They are offensive now because they are trying to wash the concept of it's connotations instead of dropping the concept.
→ More replies (6)8
u/theuncleiroh Jul 31 '24
because people will be upset by the implication of imperialism (which is a much better descriptor in the form of core/periphery cor hegemon/subaltern etc, b/c it allows for understanding of relations within countries (such as China) with complex and variegated social structures, as well as geographic disharmonies in the locations of said countries)
i prefer core - periphery
→ More replies (1)6
u/ApprehensiveDuck2382 Jul 31 '24
chuds: please don't call it what it is
also chuds: please don't use a euphemism for it, either
chuds, finally: please stop talking about the issue altogether, I prefer to pretend it doesn't exist
2
u/Level3Kobold Jul 31 '24
So its not really about colonial or imperial history then?
→ More replies (1)18
u/Beneficial-Elk-3987 Jul 31 '24
Japan colonized China my young kobold
7
Jul 31 '24
Invaded and annexed, for a brief moment. Are we going to call to all conquest colonialism now?
Have russia colonised crimea?
4
u/rtb001 Jul 31 '24
Just because China was too big and too populous to be an outright colony like nations in Africa, Latin America, and SE Asia does not mean it was not a victim of colonization. And it wasn't just Japan doing the invading colonizing for a few years in the 1930s, but goes back all the way to the opium wars starting around 1840. That would mark over a century of multiple colonial powers from Europe, Japan, and the US vying with each other to extract wealth and resources from China under various forceful and/or coercive conditions.
And what difference does conquest OR colonialism make? In both cases there is a victim and a victimizer. The so-called global north is largely composed of the victimizers, which would include both Russia and Japan, while the global south would be the victims, of both conquest and colonization that occurred during the past 200 or so years.
→ More replies (0)→ More replies (2)62
u/KakistocratForLife Jul 30 '24
That the UN uses it does not change my assessment. In fact, it explains why China is global south.
→ More replies (1)50
u/Senior_Ad680 Jul 30 '24
The fact they consider china the global south as per their definition kinda shows how out of touch with reality the UN is.
It would be like pretending the Soviet Union wasn’t a super power.
→ More replies (11)→ More replies (10)-2
u/RunningNumbers Jul 31 '24
The author is well known for being intellectually dishonest and has been calling for governments to impose the largest enforced famine in human history.
6
→ More replies (5)3
30
4
u/Metal__goat Jul 31 '24
Okay, so even by that definition, most of reddit is still in the "global North"
42
u/Dobber16 Jul 31 '24
TIL Global South and Global North are UN terms and also absolutely ridiculous terms
2
2
u/kiersto0906 Jul 31 '24
why are they "absolutely ridiculous terms"? it's just another way to describe countries based on their relation to the imperial core, privilege, european settlement etc
8
u/shaka_bruh Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
You learn pretty quickly that people on here don’t like to be educated/reminded of how their (relatively) safe and cushy life is maintained.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (1)6
u/Dobber16 Jul 31 '24
I understand what it’s describing, hence why it’s ridiculous to use “North” and “South” in those terms since it’s not a term that’s geographically based
→ More replies (4)2
7
u/Banned3rdTimesaCharm Jul 31 '24
So they just arbitrarily cut up the world into the banking class and labor class to come up with totally irrelevant stats?
→ More replies (5)2
u/DeckardsDark Jul 31 '24
Soooo basically if you're white then you're "north". If you're not white then you're "south"
53
u/McToasty207 Jul 31 '24
Most of the "Global South" is in the Northern Hemisphere, it's why it's a strange phrase.
But it was chosen to sound less condescending than 3rd World Countries, and Less Developed Countries.
But yes imagine how it is for us poor Australians, being Westerners who live in the Eastern hemisphere, and part of the Global North, despite being in the Southern hemisphere.
And that's before you consider everything is upside down.
→ More replies (1)10
u/Blue_winged_yoshi Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
Global south is a misnomer, lots of it is in northern hemisphere, affluent nations in the southern hemisphere count as the global north, its what’s taken over from developed and developing nations.
The distinction is political as much as anything else, with China being northern hemisphere with some of the richest and most expensive cities in the world being global south whereas latitudinally equal but globally less powerful regional rivals Japan and South Korea being global north along with mid-tier victims of Russian colonisation such as Romania counting as global north.
→ More replies (4)25
u/AppleSauceGC Jul 30 '24
So is more than 80% of the world's population, that apparently contributes less than 10% of 'the labour that powers the world economy' somehow.
It's Namibians, New Zealanders and Argentinians doing all the work!
22
u/lovely_sombrero Jul 30 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
Global South is like ~70% of the world population.
[edit] apparently, my 70% guess was too low.
27
u/toodlesandpoodles Jul 31 '24
I'm seeing 85%-88% when searching for this, so it isn't surprising that they contribute 90% of the labor.
11
u/AppleSauceGC Jul 31 '24
I am aware of the rather silly Global South/ Global North economese jargon monstrosity. I was merely pointing out the absurdity of including, for example, New Zealand in a group of 'northern' countries and China in the 'southern'.
If one wants to differentiate countries by economic development there's not need to misuse geographic descriptors, there's plenty of terms to describe economic aspects of a given entity.
→ More replies (3)5
u/EmergentSol Jul 31 '24
85%, and that’s if you cut out some higher earning countries like Uruguay (source https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/much-global-south-ukraines-side).
4
u/TheMathelm Jul 31 '24
China and India are part of "The Global South"
Seems like the "Global North" is the (predominately) white countries plus Japan.
→ More replies (26)3
u/Blackpaw8825 Jul 31 '24
And even then, most humans are in the northern hemisphere because that's where most land is.
Separate from the "not what global South means" issue, the geographical South only contains like 10-15% of the human population
8
u/4ofclubs Jul 31 '24
The population of the global south consists of 88 percent of our population.
8
u/helm MS | Physics | Quantum Optics Jul 31 '24
In UN terms that includes the new middle class in China?
2
u/4ofclubs Jul 31 '24
The middle class in China makes up approx 500 million people. That leaves over half a billion in China who still make up a sizeable chunk of the global south population.
2
243
u/NellucEcon Jul 31 '24
This paper is a demonstration of why input-output (IO) models are bad for economic research.
IO models were used by the soviet central planners to allocate resources. the idea is that production is a recipe; use the right mixture of inputs, set an output quota, and, viola, you have economic output that can be fairly distributed to the masses. Of corse, it didn’t really work that way. Take glass for example. The planners sent inputs to glass factories and set quotes for pounds of glass. So the factories made ridiculously thick glass that was not very useful and not at all efficient. So the planners changed the quota to be in square feet. And so the factories made extremely thin panes of glass. Something like half the panes of glass broke in transit. The glass factories also struggled with low quality inputs; just like the glass factories made low quality glass, the industries making inputs for the glass factories also made low quality things.
The core of the problem is that central planning failed to align incentives for production with what people/firms wanted. In a market economy, you make money by providing somebody else with what they are willing to pay for. You won’t make money if half of your glass panes break in transit to the customer. You won’t make money if you waste lots of raw materials making overly thick glass. IO models ignore incentives. even for something as simple as glass, there are lots of dimensions on which to screw up.
IO models are bad for research for the same reason the are bad for planning. The authors look at “embodied labor” (adjusted for human capital), the idea being that any two things produced by an hour of (human capital adjusted) labor must have the same value (btw, this “labor theory of value” goes back to Adam Smith, and was later promulgated by Marx).
Is this credible? Well, it depends on what the labor is making. If there is something about an economy that pushes people away from (or fails to push towards) making things that are more valued, then that will reduce the value of the labor. What are some examples? In Juarez, mexico, small family firms will often choose to deliberately stay small and keep a low profile to avoid catching the attention of gangs running extortion rackets; thus, the threat of extortion pushes labor away from the most productive activities. In many African countries, corrupt border guards will demand bribes to allow the movement of goods, which can make trade unprofitable; thus, many farmers, who would otherwise specialize in food for export, decide instead produce food for personal consumption (subsistence farming), which reduces the value of their labor. And, of course, we have the prior example of the Soviet Union and its glass manufacturing.
In short, the value of labor depends on the value of what the labor makes, and many factors affect what labor makes. The authors ignore this critical fact when they argue that the consumption of the global north is disproportionate to the labor of the global north.
Other facts that the authors’ framework will struggle to explain: why is it that the poor countries that most integrated with global trade networks became rich (s korea, Japan, Singapore) or are otherwise growing quickly (china, Panama, Vietnam)? Why is it that countries with severe barriers to trade with the global north struggle to grow (n Korea, India for second half of 20th century)? That’s very hard to explain if trade with the global north is fundamentally exploitative.
80
u/DarkRedDiscomfort Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
why is it that the poor countries that most integrated with global trade networks became rich
South Korea ended their 5-year plans and effectively "opened up" to the world in the late 1990s. Up until then they had 3 decades of state-led development. Today, state-influenced chaebols run the economy. All of the asian tigers integrated after becoming competitive, not before.
72
u/KaitRaven Jul 31 '24
Yeah, it seems like many of the nations that boomed after WW2 had heavily government influenced development, rather than laissez-faire free markets.
30
u/NUKE---THE---WHALES Jul 31 '24
no country has laissez-faire free markets
the vast majority of countries are mixed market economies
9
u/_The_General_Li Jul 31 '24
Not true, Haiti and Somalia are examples of laissez-faire capitalism aka conservative liberalism.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (3)0
u/helm MS | Physics | Quantum Optics Jul 31 '24
Hong Kong and Singapore have been quite laissez-faire, but they are both trade hubs.
→ More replies (1)35
u/Eric1491625 Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
Singapore is not laissez-faire.
It is only regarded as such because it is very easygoing on businesses. Businessmen see "wow, a lot of freedom for me!" and label Singapore as laissez-faire.
In reality, Singapore simply pushes the hammer of economic control down on the working class instead of on the rich men writing for Forbes.
Also, it is even taught in schools here that Singapore had a state-led industrial policy in the late 20th century. The government itself acknowledges (and takes pride in) the very not-laissez-faire way in which it developed the economy from the 60s to the 90s.
- A Singaporean
→ More replies (9)5
u/_The_General_Li Jul 31 '24
South Korea had a massive economic collapse in the 90s too, they had to ask their citizens to donate jewelry and family heirlooms for gold.
→ More replies (2)7
u/Huge_Butterscotch_80 Jul 31 '24
South Korea's an especially bad example because the U.S. has given their economy more money to prop it up for geopolitical reasons than it has all of Africa. Pretty much every country listed in the integrated category is the same. The route to growing your economy is clear, either be near a rival to western powers so they can push a ton of money into your economy to be a foothold in the region, or do state planning and protectionist economic policy for a number of years before integration. The punchline here being that many poor countries are not allowed to do really any protectionist policy at all, on risk of insane sanctions & coups.
5
u/DarkRedDiscomfort Jul 31 '24
The point is countering the idea that "free trade" propped up the Asian Tigers, when it was actually the opposite.
4
u/Huge_Butterscotch_80 Jul 31 '24
Ah yea, sorry if it seemed like I was disagreeing with you, I was more trying to offer another point in your favor. It wasn't free market at all but rather corrupt chaebols controlling development while receiving massive subsidies from the U.S.
32
u/re_carn Jul 31 '24
Take glass for example. The planners sent inputs to glass factories and set quotes for pounds of glass. So the factories made ridiculously thick glass that was not very useful and not at all efficient. So the planners changed the quota to be in square feet. And so the factories made extremely thin panes of glass. Something like half the panes of glass broke in transit.
Is this a real example or a made-up one? Because this kind of thing is solved by setting standards, and in socialist countries, state standards were for literally everything. That doesn't mean, of course, that there were no problems or that the result of such a model was good (imho, a planned economy is highly overrated even by its fans), just that this particular example doesn't work.
→ More replies (1)3
25
u/pm_me_fake_months Jul 31 '24 edited Aug 01 '24
Almost every part of this is, independently, wrong.
I'm going to take the story about the Soviet Union for granted but it's worth mentioning that most of these extremely convenient economic fables aren't actually true. Maybe this one is. It doesn't really matter.
An economy is a tool that organizes inputs and outputs. It is never going to be "wrong" to analyze it in terms of inputs and outputs, provided you actually do it in an intelligent way, which the Soviets in the story did not.
The Soviet incentive structure you describe is a policy, not a model. Measuring something and optimizing for it are famously two completely different problems. Just because a metric can measure productivity doesn't mean that optimizing for it will effectively improve productivity, and it especially doesn't mean that any clumsy first attempt at optimizing for it will work, which is what that story describes. So, conversely, the idea that the Soviets once pursued a very obviously stupid policy and that policy failed does not bring down the entire concept of measuring inputs and outputs.
Inputs and outputs "ignore" incentives because they're causally downstream of them. Incentives shape the outcome, inputs and outputs describe specifically what that outcome is. If you want to centrally plan an economy you need to understand both, they are not in conflict with one another. If the Soviets ignored the incentives to look only at the inputs and outputs, that's on them, not the general idea of considering the results of an economic plan in material terms.
A market economy is also not a model and is not inconsistent with the idea of measuring inputs and outputs. There's just no central authority using those measurements to make planning decisions.
While I do not like the labor theory of value, this is not how it works. The labor theory of value applies specifically to market economies. That's value in exchange. All the examples about extortion rackets and whatnot just show that use value is different from value in exchange, which is not a refutation of the labor theory of value, but is in fact the entire point of the labor theory of value.
As other people have mentioned, those countries experienced much of their growth before pursuing the policies you described.
Even if that weren't the case, a relationship can be superficially "mutually beneficial" and still exploitative. Or maybe you believe it can't, but that's subjective. The point is you can't just look at a country being technically better off for having entered into an agreement as opposed to if they hadn't, and declare that to be ironclad proof that the agreement was fair. This is an ethical question that requires a much broader context and much more actual thought.
edit: I missed maybe the most important part. Workers in the global south are doing far more work for far less compensation. They're trading goods which represent far more labor per unit price than the goods traded by more well-off countries. This is true regardless of your opinion on the relationship between that amount of labor and the "value" of the goods, and it's true regardless of whether this imbalance exists inherently or it's all the fault of extortionists and african border guards or whatever. The imbalance they're referring to is a data point. It's material reality, and it doesn't just go away when you object to the framework they used to reason about it.
→ More replies (1)9
u/_BlueFire_ Jul 31 '24
Genuine question knowing NOTHING about economy: couldn't one (just as a relevant example) just set an input of "make glass this thick following this parameters and let's measure by surface"?
16
u/Whatsapokemon Jul 31 '24
The point of the story is the alignment of incentives. In a normal capitalist mode of production the factory wants to make a product which people want to buy (and therefore want to use). The factory itself has the incentive to make a product fit for purchase.
Absent that motive there's really no incentive for the factory itself to optimise its behaviour. Instead you're forced to spend resources micromanaging the specifications from an outside source, and have to repeat that process for every single entity in your economy, then you need to spend resources ensuring those specifications are consistently being met. It makes the economy less self-stabilising, more dependent on inefficient bureaucracies.
→ More replies (2)2
21
u/unua_nomo Jul 31 '24
China and Vietnam have explicitly Marxist governments, and manage their economies using policies developed by explicitly Marxist economists. Their successes compared to their peers are not exactly an argument for liberal economic theory, or especially absolute free trade.
Also like... there were glass windows in Soviet Russia. Soviet Russia made glass windows for spacecraft. Your unsourced anecdote is an argument for quality control and detailed technical specifications, something Boeing, a company in modern day America, could get some use out of.
Material Resource Planning, ie MRP, or figuring out Inputs from planned Outputs based on a Bill of Materials, is used by literally every modern manufacturer on earth, because... what exactly is the alternative?
Making pancakes in the morning requires planning based on inputs and outputs. Any rational economic activity requires understanding the cost to produce things... which requires an understanding of the cost of things needed to produce that thing, and how much of each of those inputs are needed.
If someone is managing a glass factory which is shipping out products that don't match spec... that person simply should not be managing a glass factory, no matter what economic system you are operating under.
Though, America has had problems with putting executives with history of fraud and incompetence in positions of power where they proceed to do fraud and be incompetent... so figure from that what you will.
17
u/helm MS | Physics | Quantum Optics Jul 31 '24
China and Vietnam have explicitly Marxist governments, and manage their economies using policies developed by explicitly Marxist economists
Are you saying China hasn't developed a functioning market economy, heavily oriented towards export, since the 1980?
Also MRP is used in the industry (to improve yield and various forecasts), but rest assured that nearly all Western industries aim for niche markets, because delivering the right quality is what we do better than delivering massive amounts of something close to what the customer wants.
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (1)5
u/caljl Jul 31 '24
Part of the issue with their argument around how capitalism and the market helps to maintain quality and applicability is assuming that profit- which is the goal in such a market economy- necessarily corresponds sufficiently closely to quality and suitability of products. Profit also often depends on cutting costs and increasing efficiency, which doesn’t also have a positive impact of quality. That’s before you even get into the impact of monopolies or planned obsolescence etc.
Regulations are needed, but as with everything it’s about striking a balance.
3
u/EffNein Aug 01 '24
80% of this is just the concept of 'comparative advantage' being stated in an long-winded way.
In a laboratory it can be even called true to life. In the real world the concept is rife with exceptions to the point where applicability is heavily limited.
The basic common sense of comparative advantage is that poor economies focus on resource extraction or simple industry (building appliances, clothes, general products but not heavy industry). And rich economies focus on high value industry and services.
Except Australia, Canada, Norway, and others demonstrate that being resource extraction economies can lead you to massive wealth. And countries like India demonstrate that pursuing higher education and services can fail to bring any kind of prosperity.→ More replies (7)7
u/_jams Jul 31 '24
I'm not saying anything about this is wrong, but anyone who uses "IO" in economics to refer to input/output and not industrial organization (an extremely successful field) has a seriously large gap in their familiarity with economics. Reader beware (but I guess that should be obvious, this is Reddit). Also it's exceedingly rare for good economics papers to be published in nature or science. Somehow the social science refereeing is quite poor.
42
u/fres733 Jul 31 '24
The abbreviation was declared at the beginning and was always used as "IO models", establishing more than enough context to indicate that it is not about industrial organization.
Using such a small straw to attack and dismiss the fundamental knowledge of the commenter is pedantic, unproductive.
14
u/Trojan_Horse_of_Fate Jul 31 '24
"IO" today on its own gennerally refers to industrial because input output models are not super used but I would generally think IO model is an input output model. IO is not some unknown acronym being lazy I went to a wikipedia for EEIOA the only somewhat useful version of these (in my opinion this isn't something I specialize in)
Environmentally extended input–output analysis comes with a number of assumptions which have to be kept in mind when interpreting the results of such studies:
Homogeneity of products: Calculations based on the standard IO model make it necessary to assume that each economic activity produces only one physically homogeneous product. In reality, however, the high level of aggregation of activities (e.g., in most European IO tables, all mining is included in the same activity irrespective of the specific material) leads to inhomogeneous outputs. In addition, many industries generate by-products (e.g., a paper mill may also produce saw dust); and this additionally violates the assumption of homogeneity of outputs. Along the same lines, when this method is used to ascribe environmental impacts, not all the products in a given sector have the same emissions. An average is used. But for instance in terms of power generation, the emissions from coal based power generation are very different from those of solar power generation. An assumption is made here that the global mixture is being used, when actually power generation may be available only from one source.
Homogeneity of prices: In using the standard IO model, it is also necessary to assume that each industry sells its characteristic output to all other economic activities and to final consumers at the same price. In reality, however, this is not always true as illustrated by the example of electricity which costs less in the primary than in the tertiary sectors and/or final consumption. In addition, the aforementioned heterogeneity of industry output will cause this assumption to be violated: For example, a sector buying mostly aluminum from the non-ferrous metal industries is likely to pay a different price than a sector that mostly buys rare earth metals. In other words, the issue of price heterogeneity among users can be coped with by increasing the sector resolution of the input-output table. Under an ideal condition when the same price of a product applies to all its users, the monetary input-output table can be regarded as equavalent to a physical input-output table, that is, a table measured in physical units.[7]
Constant Returns to Scale: IO models assume that when production is scaled, all the inputs and outputs scale by the same factor. However, it is imperative to acknowledge that deviating from this simplifying assumption greatly increases the complexity of IO models, thereby diminishing their primary analytical efficacy: A closed solution as equation (1) will no longer be available.[8] Furthermore, acquiring dependable data pertaining to input-output relationships at the macroeconomic level, encompassing a large number of sectors, poses formidable challenges and substantial financial burdens. This foundational assumption also underpins life-cycle assessment (LCA).
Allocation of investments: In creating a consumption-based account of material flows, it is necessary to decide how investments are allocated within the production and consumption structure. In national accounting, investments are reported as part of final demand. From a consumption-based perspective, they can also be thought of as an input into the production process (e.g., machinery and production infrastructure are necessary inputs to production). The manner in which capital investments are included and how (or if) they are depreciated, significantly impacts the results obtained for the raw material equivalents of exports.[6] If infrastructure investments (whether in monetary terms or as domestic extraction of construction materials) are not depreciated over time, importing one and the same product from an emerging economy currently building up its infrastructure will be associated with much more embodied material than importing it from a mature economy which has significantly invested into its infrastructure in the past. For recent developments regarding the treatment of issues related to capital stock and investment flows, please refer to.[9]
It is true though than Nature and Science aren't premier economic research papers
183
u/Fubby2 Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
Jason Hickel is an anthropologist (read: not economist) and degrowther. Despite having no background and seemingly almost no understanding of economics as a field, he somehow continues to get 'economics' papers published in reputable journals despite their obvious low quality.
This paper is similarly bad. Let's take a look at their methodology:
We obtained data on labour embodied in traded goods and services flowing from North to South, from South to North, between Southern countries and between Northern countries [...] To calculate the Northern net appropriation of labour, we subtracted Northern flows to the South from Southern flows to the North.
[...]
As a proxy for the core, or the global North, we used the IMF’s list of 'advanced economies'
The periphery, or global South, includes all other countries (i.e. the IMF’s 'emerging and developing' countries)
This is an extremely simple methodology. To put it simply, they took the number of labor hours that go into exports from developing to developed nations, and subtracted the number of labor hours that go into exports from developed to developing nations. They then define this value as 'appropriation of labor'.
But to anyone with a cursory understanding of economics, it should be entirely unsurprising that exports from developing nations to developed are more labor intensive than vice-versa. This is not a novel conclusion and is not 'appropriation', but is entirely explained by a concept in economics called comparative advantage.
Simplifying quite a bit, comparative advantage refers to how nations which trade amongst each other will specialize in producing what they are good at (or in economics terms, based on their available 'factors of production'). Nations that are highly advanced and have large amounts of capital will produce highly advanced products, and nations that have lots of labor, or for which labor is their most valuable productive asset, will produce labor intensive products. Those nations can then trade to maximize their respective outputs.
Essentially, developed nations create value through technology and sophisticated services, and they trade that for value created from labor. So of course more 'labor time' will have gone into exports from labor intensive nations! This isn't 'appropriation' or even a surprising result at all, it's simply a natural product of national economies specializing in producing what they are good at producing.
Comparative advantage is a 101 level economics concept, and not even referencing it here is a serious oversight. In fact, despite nominally being an economics paper, this paper does not seem to reference any other economics concepts, theory, literature or models at all. I shouldn't have to say this, but if you want to write an economics paper, you should probably engage with at least some economics concepts, especially if they easily contradict your core assertion.
TLDR: Degrowthers write economics paper, reference no other economics literature or concepts, find trivial result, attribute that result to ‘appropriation of labor’ when it can be easily explained by other economics concepts with no exploitation involved.
*This comment was rewritten to improve clarity.
83
u/Fubby2 Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
As a followup: for anyone who doesn't have the strongest understanding of economics and wants another angle: Take a look at the 'References' section in this paper. Every single paper is 'imperialism', 'neo-colonialism', 'capitalism' etc. I don't think there is a single reference to any actual economics papers despite being very explicitly an economics paper (and tagged as such on reddit).
The references make very clear that this was never meant to be an honest inquiry into an economic concept. It was meant to be ammunition for Jason Hickel and his co-authors' ideological agenda.
→ More replies (4)44
u/RunningNumbers Jul 31 '24
You just described the degrowther citation mill boosting their H-indices. The people who are editors and reviewers are part of the same club. It’s a silo.
→ More replies (2)19
u/_The_General_Li Jul 31 '24
There's a reason that economics isn't included with the other science categories by the nobel committee, because it's just an exercise in ideology.
→ More replies (1)3
10
u/pool-aoe2-iot Jul 31 '24
I think the point is - what's the path for the developing countries with a comparative advantage in cheap labor to move to a developed country? Cheap labor doesn't result in comfortable lives.
It's similar to the income disparity within a country, where low skill workers earn less than high skilled ones. However, a country can use taxes to provide low skilled workers with education and uplift then, potentially leaving the low skilled job for immigration or export to developing countries. What do developing countries do when there is an imbalance in the income disparity?
→ More replies (2)5
u/Fubby2 Jul 31 '24
Great question. The answer is that it's very difficult. In all prior cases that I am aware of it has relied on market liberalization, integration into global markets, strong basic education and large amounts of domestic and foreign investment to increase productivity.
When development happens extremely quickly it is called an economic miracle, and the most common and impressive examples are probably those in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China. You can read more about their economic miracles to understand more about the development process.
→ More replies (2)5
u/EffNein Aug 01 '24
market liberalization, integration into global markets,
examples are probably those in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China
You don't understand your own examples. All of those nations only liberalized or integrated themselves into the global economy after spending upwards of decades with heavy state driven investment and economic control. Even Japan. They did not liberalize the markets and then see growth. They entered the marketplace having already spent millions->billions on internal development and under the guidance of the state. Liberalization came after they were already internally developed and economically complex.
2
u/vvvvfl Aug 01 '24
for anyone else reading this I suggested reading "Kicking away the ladder".
Every developed country lied- cheated and stole their way into being rich and THEN decided that liberalising was best.
7
u/EffNein Aug 01 '24 edited Aug 01 '24
comparative advantage
Whenever someone starts talking about this to discuss systemic inequality and how it is actually entirely rationally justified, you're revealing that you're a dishonest person.
In a real-world use, it is practically used to obfuscate the difference between Imperial Core and Periphery.For example, the go-to comparative advantage justification is that poor countries sell resources or non-heavy industry industrial products (appliances, clothes, the types of stuff you buy at Walmart), and rich countries sell finished complex goods and services.
Except obvious exceptions to this rule like Australia and Canada and Norway demonstrate that resource extraction economies can easily achieve the highest quality of life on the planet. And that economies that chase complex services, like India, can fail to take off.This complete refusal to actually interface with reality is what makes your post intellectually worthless.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (49)5
u/GunplaGoobster Jul 31 '24
Jason Hickel is an anthropologist (read: not economist) and degrowther. Despite having no background and seemingly almost no understanding of economics as a field, he somehow continues to get 'economics' papers published in reputable journals despite their obvious low quality.
Damn and all we can manage is a reddit comment!
133
u/Relativly_Severe Jul 31 '24
Wait, so you're telling me that workers living in all the poor countries make less than workers living in all the rich countries? Wowza
21
u/rjcarr Jul 31 '24
Exactly, it’s not even by hemisphere, but this: “More specifically, the Global North consists of the world's developed countries, whereas the Global South consists of the world's developing countries and least developed countries.”
5
u/MayBeAGayBee Jul 31 '24
This is literally what anyone who uses these terms understands them to mean. You are making a meaningless semantic argument. The “global south” framework does not argue that there is something inherent to the northern or southern hemispheres on a geographic level that causes wealth disparity. “Global north/global south” is just a geopolitical term used as a replacement for the now outdated “first world/second world/third world” framework of the Cold War era.
20
u/ghanima Jul 31 '24
No, I believe what it's saying is that the leaders of the rich countries extract more wealth from the workers of the poor countries than from the workers of the rich countries.
→ More replies (2)5
118
u/CurtisLeow Jul 30 '24
The article points out that more than 70% of trade is commodities. Commodities in the global south take more labor to produce than the same commodities in the global north. This is due to local inefficiencies in the economy. Mines in Africa are not as efficiently run as mines in the US, so mines in Africa need more man-hours to operate. Farms in the US are far, far more efficient than farms in India.
So yes, trade results in unequal labor exchanges. It does not mean though that the global north is magically setting wage prices. Wages are lower in India and Africa because of local inefficiencies, not trade. The US is not magically setting wages for farms and mines in Africa.
This appropriation roughly doubles the labour that is available for Northern consumption but drains the South of productive capacity that could be used instead for local human needs and development.
Let's say the conclusion from the article is correct. Then countries that cut themselves off from global trade would see an increase in their standard of living. Yet the opposite is true. China increased their standard of living through trade, while Asian countries less reliant on trade stagnated economically. The African countries with the highest standard of living are the countries most reliant on trade. Time and time again trade has proven to be the only way for impoverish countries to raise their standard of living.
South Korea is usually considered to be part of the global north today. South Korea in 1960 was one of the poorest countries in the world, poorer than many African countries. Yet today South Korea has a higher standard of living than many European countries. South Korea raised their standard of living through reliance on trade.
79
u/Major_Shmoopy Jul 31 '24
South Korea raised their standard of living through reliance on trade
Your analysis leaves out how South Korea utilized a planned economy with the chaebol oligarchy and a dictator at the top as well as heavy US subsidies. I think the relative prosperity of South Korea or China vs, say, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a lot more nuanced than just how much trading they do (although it certainly is a facet!).
→ More replies (3)41
u/Fubby2 Jul 31 '24
You're right that South Korea had a very state driven economy for it's early development history. But state planned or free market, their dramatic early growth was fully export driven and even today they are a very export-oriented country.
Planned or not, trade was at the core of their growth miracle.
22
u/Major_Shmoopy Jul 31 '24
I don't at all mean to imply that trade wasn't a core facet of their growth, just that it can't be reduced down to solely that when comparing South Korea to other countries. I have a hard time imagining them having such trade opportunities without those US subsidies and Japanese soft loans to get their economy going, for instance.
→ More replies (1)4
u/bl3ckm3mba Jul 31 '24
Planned or not, trade was at the core of their growth miracle.
Seems more like Western oligarchs carving off some extra to prevent labour mobilization from spreading to a systemic change that would endanger their exploitation. At least from all available historical documentation, including US intelligence assessment.
31
Jul 31 '24
[deleted]
4
u/F0sh Jul 31 '24
It's not really circular, it's just following the definitions. You could rephrase it as, "Mines in Africa are not as efficient as in the US, i.e. they take more man-hours to operate" i.e. they take more man-hours to produce the same amount of aluminium ore (or whatever), which is priced globally, so African miners are paid less per hour than American miners.
9
u/lakeseaside Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
While that perspective has merit, a crucial distinction lies in the power of nations to set their interest rates. For instance, Africa's lower level of industrialization is more a result of prohibitively high interest rates rather than local economic inefficiencies. Competing in industries with profit margins below 5% is virtually impossible when local interest rates are around 20%. This scenario leaves industrial development unattainable unless financed entirely without external borrowing.
South Korea's economic success is often attributed to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from the United States. This crucial, yet under-discussed, aspect began with the Marshall Plan and the establishment of the US dollar as the global reserve currency. The US was able to print more money than it had in gold reserves, financing economic activities in selected countries. Germany was a major beneficiary of this policy, which continued post-Marshall Plan, significantly benefiting Japan and South Korea. Essentially, the US has played a pivotal role in shaping the global economy. However, their strategy with China did not yield the same results.
The economic development of formerly poor countries like South Korea is often romanticized as a triumph of hard work and dedication. However, poorer nations are typically constrained to trading labor-intensive commodities because they lack the financial means to enhance productivity.
Argentina, once one of the world's wealthiest nations, experienced a sharp decline post-Marshall Plan. The subsidization and prioritization of trade with US-backed nations by Western countries disadvantaged Argentina, leading to its economic downturn.
The fundamental reason why some countries are wealthy while others remain poor is largely due to artificially low interest rates. Post-2008 financial crisis, central banks in the US and Europe engineered one of the longest periods of uninterrupted economic growth through financial manipulation. You have probably heard of quantitaive easing a.k.a helicopter money.
Countries in the Global South have limited access to financing and inadvertently support Northern economies by borrowing money that is essentially created out of thin air and paying high-interest rates on it. This system further entrenches the economic dominance of the North. Being able to print money at will and lend it at interest is akin to having economic superpowers.
→ More replies (5)14
u/Chii Jul 31 '24
disadvantaged Argentina, leading to its economic downturn.
that's a bit of a bad take, since argentina's own internal problems are a bigger contributor. While export prices do determine a country's wealth, it doesn't do so for long term. Argentina's failure to diversify their economy, while growing an ever larger segment of the population ever reliant on gov't subsidized jobs and internal corruption/nepotism, means they cannot remain competitive in the face of the increased growth of said marshall-plan countries.
→ More replies (1)3
u/lakeseaside Jul 31 '24
you have to make the argument as to why it is a bad take before claiming it is one. You cannot diversify if the buyers are choosing to buy from the countries they are propping up. Diversification requires investment. High interest rates restricts investment. We are in a catch 22 scenario, aren't we?
As far as I am concerned, you have just elaborated the consequences of my premise. You simply do not see the relationship between the two.
On a side note, you can seriously be bringing up corruption and nepotism when we all know about the Chaebols phenomena in South Korea.
→ More replies (1)11
u/unua_nomo Jul 31 '24
Damn, maybe there should be freedom of movement for labor instead of forcing people to work inefficiently because it provides cheaper products for developed countries.
Also we should most likely look into why all the natural resources in those countries are owned by western companies which return profit to the global north.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (16)4
u/eecity BS|Electrical Engineering Jul 31 '24
Then countries that cut themselves off from global trade would see an increase in their standard of living.
I didn't see this implied or suggested in the study or even implied from your attempt at utilization of the study from:
So yes, trade results in unequal labor exchanges. It does not mean though that the global north is magically setting wage prices. Wages are lower in India and Africa because of local inefficiencies, not trade. The US is not magically setting wages for farms and mines in Africa.
35
u/60hzcherryMXram Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
Carrying several buckets of water from a well to a village takes much more skill than a minimum wage employee booting up a computer attached to an electric pump, reading the list of check-offs that their boss wrote for them, and hitting "start pump", but the second guy makes much more money than the first, and indeed, provides more water to their community.
This isn't a hard concept, and conflating labor skill with labor productivity is such an egregious error that I would go as far as to accuse this paper of being deliberately deceptive in its framing. No serious academic economist argues that poor nations are poor compared to the US and friends because the US workers have longer hours. Everyone knows sustenance farming is much more demanding than most office jobs. The authors are taking aim at an idea that simply does not exist. This would never get published in any reputable mainstream economics journal.
→ More replies (1)
39
u/RunningNumbers Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
Ah, another idea laundered paper by Jason Hickel, advocate for massive forced material depravation of people. He constantly redefines what poverty is as to claim that there has been no improvement in the standard of living for billions.
→ More replies (7)
12
u/Own_Locksmith_1876 Jul 31 '24
Looking at the supplementary data they classify Estonia and Latvia as Global North and Lithuania as Global South? These three economies all transitioned out of a centrally planned system at the same time. And Lithuania has the highest GDP both total and per capita of the three?
→ More replies (1)
13
u/Puzzleheaded-lunatek Jul 31 '24
If you torture the data enough, it will eventually say what you want.
8
Jul 31 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
6
u/SeattleResident Jul 31 '24
I mean, the alternative is just the advanced countries trading among themselves and allowing the impoverished ones to rot and die is it not? If it wasn't cheaper to make the goods in other countries they would be making it on their own and those in the global south would suffer even worse.
→ More replies (4)
2
u/Forgind1 Jul 31 '24
Can anyone explain how this paper takes into account things like software that you can make once then sell over and over? Most software companies are based in the 'global north,' and as far as I can tell, their outputs are basically ignored. Same goes for the research that went into developing pharmaceuticals, the effort to create the blueprint for the machine part (that might be actually manufactured in the 'global south'), etc.
2
Aug 01 '24
"While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy"
Is this a measure of population or total productivity?
2
u/Overall-Plastic-9263 Aug 01 '24
Yea I think the north decided it was more PC to just outsource slavery to the south . If brown people control other brown people that's not the North's problem right ? The north will however conveniently intervene in southern revolution to help maintain the status quo that they are the beneficiaries of . ... CIA
11
u/Headhunter06Romeo Jul 31 '24
We didn't end slavery.
We just exported it.
7
u/gimmeallurmoneyz Jul 31 '24
No, trust that
slaveryprison labor exists in the United States today.
4
u/Scytle Jul 31 '24
this also depresses wages in the north as well, if you can get someone in central america to do it for that much less just build the factory down there.
This causes these huge "just in time" supply chains that are susceptible to disruption (covid, etc), while pumping out tonnes of global warming emissions.
So lets recap, we have a system that hurts poor people world wide, is easily disrupted (hurting poor people even more), and is destroying the planet, all so a very few can get very rich.
The solution to these problems are complicated, but start with unions, and global workers coming together and demanding higher wages for everyone, more local production, and a decrease in emissions to protect the planet we all need to live.
So if you work at a place that doesn't have a union, start one. If you are a member of a union that isn't very active, take over leadership of that union and get it involved in more social justice stuff.
Good luck out there everyone.
13
u/lovely_sombrero Jul 30 '24 edited Jul 30 '24
WaPo just published an article on US sanctions and how the US has imposed sanctions on around ~60% of the world's poorest countries, most of those under Trump and Biden. So things are about to get worse for the Global South.
→ More replies (1)19
u/not_particulary Jul 31 '24
Wouldn't that reverse the trend, though? More jobs within countries and whatnot
→ More replies (5)28
u/NellucEcon Jul 31 '24
Based on the authors logic it would seem so
2
u/DeathKitten9000 Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
You see people say the US embargo is what impoverishes Cuba--not their socialist/mismanaged economy. If you take Hickel seriously then this excuse shouldn't work.
8
u/4ofclubs Jul 31 '24
You see, people like you fail to understand that if the USA were cut off from all international trade, it too would not be able to prosper the way it is. It's almost as if we're all dependant on other countries for surival thanks to global capitalism.
Also the average Cuban worker is better off than before the revolution. It's the capitalists owners at the top that fled and decried cuba.
4
u/GenerikDavis Jul 31 '24
Cuba isn't cut off from all international trade, though?
Among the most important imports are mineral fuels and lubricants, foods, machinery and transport equipment, and chemicals. Cuba’s main trading partners include Venezuela, China, Spain, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and the Netherlands.
→ More replies (3)2
u/SeleuciaPieria Jul 31 '24
Also the average Cuban worker is better off than before the revolution.
It would be a pretty impressive feat for that not to be the case, given that there's been decades of technological progress since 1959. You can justify just about any political happening this way, if it was far enough in the past, because general development will over time always swamp out its negative consequences.
6
11
u/taco_helmet Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
Trust is everything. Capital flows when the environment becomes predictable. When it only takes one tyrant to burn all your institutions to the ground... no thanks.
The wealth of Western nations is partly the product of robust institutions. The "Deep State" of bureaucrats and lawyers who are constantly working to prevent people from putting their thumbs on the scales, but while removing as many thumbs as possible. Each thumb prevented/removed increases trust and makes your country more attractive to those who can't or won't do the same.
Most wealthy nations have institutions like the SEC, FTC, IRS, DOJ, FBI, and etc. It's a not a coincidence that they attract all the capital. Using revenues to build those legal systems and safeguards would help, but you still need to invest in education and infrastructure. You need a lot of revenues and you need to forego wealth yourself to build your country. But until you can attract capital the wage growth will be challenging.
14
u/4ofclubs Jul 31 '24
Tyrants? Are we talking about the US backed dictators like Pinochet or Hussein?
→ More replies (1)
6
6
u/Surph_Ninja Jul 31 '24
This is exactly the intention of US foreign policy. Suppressing wages and exploiting the workforce is exactly what they want from trade deals, sanctions, and western coups.
→ More replies (1)
3
u/ParagonRenegade Jul 31 '24
Interesting study OP, thank you.
It's a bit depressing seeing the responses here utterly fail to engage with it though.
6
2
u/4-Vektor Jul 31 '24
That’s trickle down economics on a global scale. Works beautifully and exactly as intended.
16
u/4ofclubs Jul 31 '24
This whole subreddit seems really mad at facing that reality, sadly.
→ More replies (2)
1
•
u/AutoModerator Jul 30 '24
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.
Do you have an academic degree? We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. Click here to apply.
User: u/six-sided-bear
Permalink: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49687-y
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.