aw. RE: The Nobel Prize for War 2009 goes to ...

[alice wellintown]

Lula has done some good work.
In the Economist:
The gloves go on
Nov 26th 2009
>From The Economist print edition

Lessons from Brazil, China and India


As Mr Ravallion points out, these figures do not mirror growth rates.
Brazil cut poverty by more than India despite much lower growth, just
over 1% a year in 1993-2005, compared with India’s 5%. If you
calculate the rate of poverty reduction for each unit of GDP growth
per person, Brazil did even better than China: the ratio is 4.3 for
Brazil, 0.8 for China and 0.4 for India (0.8 if you use the adjusted
consumption figures). Per unit of growth, Brazil reduced its
proportional poverty rate five times more than China or India did.

How did it do so well? The main explanation has to do with inequality.
This (as measured by the Gini index, also marked on the chart) has
fallen sharply in Brazil since 1993, while it has soared in China and
risen in India. Greater inequality dampens the poverty-reducing effect
of growth.

Government policy played a big role in reducing inequality. Brazil’s
main cash-transfer programme, called Bolsa Familia, provides help to
11m families, or 60% of all those in the poorest tenth. In contrast,
social security in China is still provided largely through the
enterprise system (ie, companies), so it tends to bypass those not in
work. And government interventions in India are extraordinarily
perverse. People in the poorest fifth are the least likely to have any
kind of ration card (the key to public handouts), whereas the richest
fifth are the most likely to.



On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Thomas Eckhardt
<thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
> "There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that
> almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man
> without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair."
>
> I don't know whether I would have voted for Obama. Probably yes. It would
> have felt like Queequeg holding that imbecile candle. Queequeg's point of
> view is vindicated in the course of the novel. Which, of course, is fiction.
>
> Thomas
>
> P.S. I don't know much about Lula. In every other respect, I agree.
>
> alice wellintown schrieb:
>
>> I am a litttle surprized that readers of Pynchon would have invested
>> any faith in the Democrat Establishment. It's kinda silly to expect
>> that the Democrats will end the killing. These are not wars. They are
>> murder for money and power. We should not call them wars on anything
>> or anybody. The US is not at War or making War on a nation or an idea,
>> but merely killing lots of people ands wasting the world's resources
>> and compounding problems and conflicts. Talk. Negotiate. This was the
>> hope this president seemed to hold up; the Nobel people gave him a
>> push and he fell down. The real Nobel Hero here is Lula.
>>
>
>
>