Labels: fun, globalization

The report takes particular aim at the (enormously regressive) payroll tax. Either payroll taxes should be integrated into the ordinary income tax system or the wage-cap on payroll taxes should be lifted. It brims with ideas for government tinkering: trade-adjustment assistance and unemployment assistance should be morphed into a single programme that offers wage insurance, portable health insurance and retraining. Communities should be able to federally insure their tax base against sudden economic dislocation (when, say, a factory moved to Mexico). [More]

Labels: economics, globalization

Such frustration has now boiled over into the threats of violence by the Crav, made in a video message sent to France's new President, Nicolas Sarkozy.

In the video - shot in a secret location late at night - seven wine-makers, their faces hidden by black balaclavas, read out the spine-chilling warning that "blood will flow" if Nicolas Sarkozy does not act fast to raise the price of wine. [More]

Labels: globalization, international

Most of the houses have obviously been newly rebuilt, with brick walls and higher roofs. (Feng Shui and the cost of land may explain why houses stay on the same plots.) This is entirely typical for the area. It's dangerous to generalise about a huge country from anecdotal evidence; still, it is evidence that at least one substantial group of Chinese peasants are doing absolutely better than before, whether or not they are falling relatively behind the city-dwellers. [More and great photos of stuff other than tourist sites]

Labels: culture, economy, globalization, population

According to de Soto, the poor of Third-World countries are not victims of rapacious capitalism, but rather are wronged by the lack of property rights and with outright bureaucratic barriers that prevent the poor from gaining access to capital. Thus, they languish in the vast "informal sectors," or underground markets, that so characterize much of the Third World.
The elite of Third-World nations, he writes, have been able to use the Western systems of laws and property rights to participate in ownership of capital, which is why they are prosperous. Using Braudel’s (1992) analogy of the "bell jar," de Soto writes that the elite are inside this "jar" and take advantage of the blessings of capitalism, while the poor, who are "outside the jar," are left out. [More]

This latest law, likewise, will not bring the full property-rights revolution China's development demands. Indeed, it will not meet the most crying need: to give peasants marketable ownership rights to the land they farm. If they could sell their land, tens of millions of underemployed farmers might find productive work. Those who stay on the farm could acquire bigger land holdings and use them more efficiently. Nor will the new law let peasants use their land as security on which they could borrow and invest to boost productivity. Nor, even now, will they be free from the threat of expropriation, another disincentive to investment. Much good land has already been grabbed, and the new law will merely protect the grabbers' gains.

This law cannot in itself resolve the murkiest question: who owns what? This is especially true in the countryside, where the mass collectivisation during Mao's Great Leap Forward of half a century ago left farmland “collectively” owned. Peasants have since been granted short (30-year) leases. But even outside agriculture it is often unclear whether a “private” enterprise is really owned by individuals or by a local government or party unit. Conversely, some “collective” or “state” enterprises operate in ways indistinguishable from the private interests of their bosses. Moreover, should an underdog try to use the new law to enforce his rights, the corrupt and pliant judiciary would usually ensure he was wasting his time. Since the Cultural Revolution, when the NPC passed just one law between 1967 and 1976, the legislature has been legislating quite prolifically. But the passage of laws is not the rule of law.

Which leads to a final obstacle: without an accountable executive branch, the necessary reform of the legal system is not going to happen. As the passage of the property law itself demonstrates, the party is showing itself somewhat more responsive to public opinion than it was in the past. But it still runs a government that does its best to silence most dissenting voices, strictly controls the press, and lavishes resources on the best cyber-censorship money can buy. Property rights are a start; but only contested politics and relatively open media can ensure that they are enforceable. [More of a must -read article]

Labels: economics, globalization

Labels: fun, globalization

For their enormously successful Material World, photojournalist Menzel and writer D'Aluisio traveled the world photographing average people's worldly possessions. In 2000, they began research for this book on the world's eating habits, visiting some 30 families in 24 countries. Each family was asked to purchase--at the authors' expense--a typical week's groceries, which were artfully arrayed--whether sacks of grain and potatoes and overripe bananas, or rows of packaged cereals, sodas and take-out pizzas--for a full-page family portrait. This is followed by a detailed listing of the goods, broken down by food groups and expenditures, then a more general discussion of how the food is raised and used, illustrated with a variety of photos and a family recipe. A sidebar of facts relevant to each country's eating habits (e.g., the cost of Big Macs, average cigarette use, obesity rates) invites armchair theorizing. While the photos are extraordinary--fine enough for a stand-alone volume--it's the questions these photos ask that make this volume so gripping. After considering the Darfur mother with five children living on $1.44 a week in a refugee camp in Chad, then the German family of four spending $494.19, and a host of families in between, we may think about food in a whole new light. This is a beautiful, quietly provocative volume.

Labels: food, globalization

South Africa has seized its first farm - in the clearest indication yet that it is bowing to growing pressure to redistribute land to majority blacks.

Black pressure groups and trade unions have been threatening to begin invading farms unless the government moved quickly to redistribute land.

Among many of South Africa's 50,000-plus white commercial farmers, this first land expropriation by President Thabo Mbeki's government echoes Robert Mugabe's violent land seizures in neighbouring Zimbabwe where at least 4,000 farmers have been evicted from their land, leading to the collapse of that country's economy. [More]

While the Mugabe action in Zimbabwe was stunning in its economic stupidity, it set a pattern of revenge that will be hard to prevent being echoed in other countries.

Currently (as of July 2006), Zimbabwe suffers from widespread food shortages, the world's highest inflation rate at over 1,100% (Year on Year Figures for June according to the CSO) and a bitter political struggle often turns violent between the ruling ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change which has faced imprisonment and torture. Domestic and international critics lay much of the blame for the current chaos at the feet of the land reform program. Many Zimbabwean refugees have fled to South Africa or Mozambique. [More]

[Note: One great source for background on South Africa is reading "The Covenant" by John Mitchner. It's readable prose, but mostly it downloads an immense amount of concentrated history, geography, etc. to the reader in a palatable form.]

If you think about other countries where redistribution might occur, it is hard not to speculate on the leftward tilt of much of South America, and ponder the future of farms in Brazil.

Labels: farmland, globalization, politics

A few players now dominate our world’s turf, forage grass, and legume seed production, with the majority of trade being turf grasses (perennial ryegrass, annual ryegrass, tall fescue turf varieties, Kentucky bluegrass, and the fine leaved fescue’s). With the European Union expanding to 25 nations, lands in the newer community members may switch to grass/legume seed production. Direct subsidies to grass species in the EU have been taken off, but now the market place will play a major role in European growers decisions to grow grass/legumes seeds. This change to “Farm Based” subsidies will no longer be applied directly to a particular crop. Instead, EU growers will be growing the most profitable crop for their situation, be it grains, oilseeds, or grass/legume seed.

The marketplace has also changed. No longer do end-users obtain supply in advance. Buyers have moved to a “hand-to-mouth” approach. Obtaining supply month’s in advance is becoming the exception. This has forced growers to hold onto their production longer, thus becoming the storage component of the marketing wheel. Improvements in transportation have also allowed end users to wait before placing orders. These marketplace changes will force growers into more timely decisions. In the grass/legume seed business, growers must decide quickly when and which crop to grow, which may also mean quicker movement of growers into, and out of, grass seed production. [More]

Labels: globalization, policy

A Fortune 50 chief executive — I won’t tell you his name because he didn’t realize I was listening to his conversation — was sitting at a fast-food restaurant with a woman who was coaching him on how to talk to the media. “You’ve got to stay on message,’” she snapped when he would forget his lines. He sheepishly apologized and then managed to mangle his line again.

“Don’t answer the question being asked,” the woman said. “Get to your message,” she said, explaining that he should use “bridge phrases” such as “meanwhile” or “what we know is” to avoid the question being asked and change the context of the answer.

“Like the politicians do,” the chief executive exclaimed.

She also emphasized what she called “flagging,” telling the C.E.O. to insert phrases such as, “the most important thing is…” and “the main idea is…”

“Journalists are looking for complete sentences,” she instructed. “Especially on TV. You want to give them full messages.”

Before they got up, she told the executive, “Tell them what you do.”

He looked at her, slightly befuddled, and replied, “What do we do?”

Labels: economics, globalization

Labels: future, globalization

While corn growers have always been aware that South Africa grows corn, and competes in the export market, there is a lot of corn (maize) grown on subsistence farms all across the continent. We also forget how honkin' huge Africa is (this is a Gall-Peters Projection Map which is area accurate, unlike the Mercator projections we are used to, where Greenland/Canada/Alaska are swollen disproportionately):

My guess is that the struggle to develop stable governments in sub-Saharan Africa could yet yield the largest payoff in terms of lifting the poorest of the poor, simply by letting their farmers get on with their work.

Labels: economics, globalization, production

Summers, a Democrat, is no protectionist. Nevertheless he has rightly drawn attention to the way the US middle class (both employees and employers) have been hit by globalisation and its concomitant threat of cut throat competition from cheap labour. As has often been noted, globalisation has tended to benefit the very rich, and the very poor (the latter, for instance, in the shape of Chinese workers).

Now, as Summers says "economists rightly emphasise that trade, like other forms of progress, makes everyone richer by enabling them to buy goods at lower prices." But he goes on: "This offers small solace to those who fear their jobs will vanish."

With the changes in Washington, I have no doubt regrettable protectionist sentiments will find new life. But the revival of opposition could make free trade proponents consider how to spread the goodies among more people to win new converts.

Labels: globalization, trade