Economic babysitting

I was reading the paper about the opposition´s budget presentation the other day. Now the 3 parties vary a bit on the severity of the taxation scale, but summarised they all want less taxreliefs for people that earn over a certain amount and more money for those who are ill, unemployed, retired or in education.
I find it pretty hard to argue against that.. But our minister of finance, dear conservative Anders Borg sounds like an old scratched vinyl when he for the umpteenth time comments that that sort of support to the less fortunate in society will only weaken the incentive to work!
Has he ever peaked in to a check from the dole office??? They could double it and any wage would still make it worth working. Does he really think that we like teenagers would skip school just because we can get away with it, that just because it would become bearable to admit we sometimes fall ill would start calling in sick every other day? I´m convinced most people like to be useful, and urely the general idea of a welfare nation is that as many as possible should be able to get an education that allows them to get a job that they actually enjoy doing? Does he himself have some little leprechaun from the Moderate party who chases him out of bed and off to the office every morning?
It makes me think a little of China´s one child policy. Studies show that the threat of severe penalties if the singular kid gets a sibling, is far less effective than to simply educate the women (A.Sen, 2001, Development as freedom).
Certainly some people get stuck in a rut, and others might not need sick benefits if they got help to train in to something different. But to take away all means to lead a decent life BEFORE anyone has seen any of these fancy actions is just like pulling the plug before you pour in the water.
We´ve grown up. Babysitter can go home.

Life-support at all costs

The stream of new people from this or that department that might be of help in my situation never seem to dry up. Yet not a single one has actually managed to do me any favours. I´m waiting for the same answers now as I did in april, buy surely I must understand that from may to august Sweden is on holiday and sick people just have to wait. In the meantime I have become more ill, more dissolusioned and more desolate.

The Invest in ME conference in London this year sold me their DVD, and although it said "treatment" with big red letters on the cover (among other things), I don´t know why I let it get to me. There might be something they do in the US to a group of ME sufferers that tested positive for a certain virus in a stomach biopsy, and 28% of them have shown some improvement. But that is in the US, and will never happen in Sweden. Besides, I am one of those who didn´t have a virus infection at the onset of my illness, so I´m even a minority within this "pretend-it-not-there-and-it-will -go-away-government-policy" illness. And all I can do is to look out the window and try to stay positive. They don´t know what they´re asking!
Indeed I wasn´t depressed at the onset of this, and I managed to maintain a bit of hope for the first year because I sometimes had periods when I could take a bus and visit people or even drive to do some shopping.

But those periods are long gone. I smell and don´t even remember when I showered last, but I don´t dare to do it because then I might not even be able to go to the toilet by myself afterwards.

There is an ME forum where cherpy housewives say they can talk themselves in to thinking that they get the luxury of staying in bed all day. Well maybe I could too if I in between also could have days when I slowly could walk in a park or have a coffee with a friend.

No, who am I kidding. I am a pessimist by nature and I never liked staying in bed, it will never seem like a luxury to me, period. I am alone and don´t remember what human touch is like, the friends I used to have thankful for the distance that makes it easier to pretend I´m not there.
I see no hope anymore and I don´t want to hear that I´m too young to be written off at the same time as no officials will lift a finger to help me. The cost of keeping me alive and suffering will escalate when I develop more illnesses thanks to the sedentary nature of ME, but yet this CPR must continue indefinately because its a code of conduct that western healthcare is built upon. Regardless of my wishes.

More Economic waffling

When I went to university it took me quite some time to get a hang of the archaeological terminology (and lots of it still baffles me), so I guess I shouldn´t expect to be a vocabulary expert when I plow through my new growing collection of literature on economic theory. I am leaving contextual seriation, morphology, isotopic analysis and paleopathology, in favour of fiscal austerity, aggregate demand and devaluation. Neither of the groups sound all that exciting now do they?

But even though I need to consult my dictionary now and then, and even though I would turn and leave as soon as someone tried to talk economics to me a few years ago, I´m finding this new topic surprisingly interesting. To the degree that I sometimes have to shout straight out or underline whole paragraphs.


I have just finished Globalization and its discontents by the former head of the World Bank and winner of the Nobel prize in economics Joseph Stiglitz (who of course gave a talk at the Hay-on Wye festival this year. Why is it that everyone went there this year when I was too ill to join in?). I´m not gonna dwell long on what the book is about, but it centres mostly on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which was created after WWII to ensure global economic stability. Although it is a public institution, meant to serve the public, it is completely non-transparent and US holds the only veto. Those who hold high posts within the IMF are a pick from the US business community, and the minute they step down they re-emerge in to, for example Citigroup or other multinational corporations. As Stiglitz says, there is no doubt that the economic decisions affecting development countries all over the world, made by economists in Washington, are designed to firstly benefit Wall Street. In many cases of IMF involvement in development countries, it employs a narrow minded "cookie-cutter" approach, focused on privatization and capital liberalization meant to attract foreign investment, while ignoring social stability, market control and regulation, with disastrous results. The IMF has confused ends with means and are blindly forcing their ideology regardless of individual circumstances, and to this day they are very reluctant to admit to any wrong doing or will to change.

I was shocked to read that an institution with almost absolute power, can get away with so much incompetence, and cause, rather than resolve many development countries spiraling crises. It is so bad that the author argues that "today´s IMF has, in my judgement, not articulated a coherent theory of market failure that would justify its own existence and provide a rationale for its particular interventions in the market" (p.197).

Read it, I had problems putting it down.

What is left for Zimbabwe?

My heart goes out to the people of Zimbabwe. Is there really hope for the future by pursuing these elections? Tsvangirai said yesterday that he is withdrawing, and anouncements today are saying that the elections still are on, without the leader of the opposition. So many of those who voted for the opposition the last time around have been threatened and even killed, almost every rally the opposition has tried to hold is sabotaged, and Mugabe has already made it clear that he won´t step down for Morgan Tsvangirai or anyone else anyway. Now he is certain of the smell of victory and has no interest in postponing anything.
It feels like repeating history to see Mugabe rise to such power, insane and at the same time very intelligent. By giving all his ministers land and riches he has them bribed in to remaining on his side. But one wonders how he expects it to last in to the future. The country is already on its knees, and eventually there won´t even be enough for him to steal from the people to keep his dogs happy. Then what?
I can´t help but thinking of the book (and later film) "The last king of Scotland". Doesn´t Mugabe echo Idi Amin? Doesn´t he also hide behind the argument that western Europe is trying to interfear with Zanu PF´s "perfectly humane and peaceful" business, and want to force back the old colonial relationships of oppression. And since Zanu PF controls the media it is hard for the people to believe anything but what they hear.
I hope that neighbouring countries stop trying to avoid their hands getting dirty, its not like they aren´t in it up to their eyeballs already.
I have nightmares that this is going to go as far as the final pursuits of Amin, or even Saddam, that Mugabe isn´t going to give in nomatter the sanctions.
And all we can do is watch it happen...

On ´fair´economic development

So on to some serious business here, because I do occasionally dwindle away from sarcasm and comics. Had I not been so unfortunate to contract this neurological restraining order, I would in fact have been located in York, UK, studying a masters in "Conflict, Governance and Development" in said political faculty, and far too busy to be spending my over-worked braincells on blogging.

When I got accepted to the course I went straight on to amazon to start buying some of the recommended course litterature, and then when I realized that I really was too ill to be able to attend the course, or even stay in the country, I was stuck with a respectable stack of publications on econominc development. But as we say in Sweden "Skam den som ger sig" (shame on whoever gives up), so in the periods when my brain doesn´t have the attention-span of a 5 year old, I do my best to absorb the information the course litterature wants to get across. Last weeks reed was interesting as always, and written in a language that is easily accessible, so I thought I´d make an attempt to a brief summary of what the author wants said.


Contemporary economists ignore the truth of economic development of the western world in favour of the view that the high levels of development in the NDCs (Now Developed Countries) were reached much thanks to the adoption of a free trade policy. Pointing to this historical account of their success, they now firmly advice all development countries to follow suit if they are ever going to be able to reach standards comparable to for example UK, the Netherlands, Germany, USA or Sweden.
But Chang looks at the actual historical development of these NDCs, and proves that they all in fact relied heavily on infant industry protection, export subsidies and tariff protection until they had caught up with their domestic industry and the protective legislation was no longer neccesary. So the truth is then that NDCs warn developing countries from the ´bad´ (protective) policies, and advice them to adhere to the ´good´ (free trade) policies, although themselves used the ´bad´ policies during their catch up phases. And they don´t only advice, but force developing countries to sign unequal treaties, giving them no options but to keep their tarrif rates on very low levels.

There is also the pressure on developing countries for institutional development that should reach a certain global standard within a very short time span. These institutions involve, to mention a few, democracy, central banking, public finance, regulations against child labour and competition laws. Chang acknowledges the need for this development, but claims that it is not feasible for development countries to raise the institutional standards within the 5-10 year period that the NDCs demand, and threat with sanctions if not adhered to. He reminds the reader that it took several generations for the NDCs to develop these institutions themselves, and longer still before they actually were implemented. It is also important to note that "contemporary developing countries have much higher levels of institutional development than the NDCs did at comparable stages of development" (p.111). Naturally we cannot compare the global situation in the 19th century with that of today, and the developing countries have advantages of being follower nations who will not have to introduce completely new ideas, like democracy, to their societies, but will already have a generally informed public opinion from the start. But it is still important to see that, although these institutions will develop, it is not feasible to expect them to be financially viable straight away. Chang illustrates this with the institution of maintaining property rights to a global standard, it would "reqire the developing countries to train (or even worse, to hire from abroad) a large army of world-class layers and accountants. This means that they will inevitably have less money (their own or donors´) to spend on, say, the training of schoolteachers or of industrial engineers, which may be more necessary given their stages of development" (p.135).

Chang concludes that "in recommending the allegedly ´good´ policies, the NDCs are in effect ´kicking away the ladder´by which they have climbed to the top" (p.129).

I can only say shame on us. Its remarcable that we think only of ourselves, even when we are so much ahead, that we hinder developing countries to get a fair chance to catch up. But as Chang says, many of those who hold posts on desicion making levels, are not actually informed of our economic history, and can only rely on what they are told by today´s leading economists. There are naturally arguments against this focus on industrial development as the starting point for development, like that if institutions such as social security and various increases in individual freedom were put foremost, economic growth would follow. Whatever should come first, I do feel that all this involvement by the NDCs has led to questions like who is it that actually benefits in the end? So I recommend this book to be read, and hope, like its author, that more along the same lines with be published.