Burgess COMMENTARY
As long as economists use measures for progress and performance that are based on money wealth more than on things like quality of life, happiness and the impact on the environment, there will be outcomes that are essentially wrong. I read engineering at Cambridge before economics and later qualifying as a Chartered Accountant. Amazing technology is now being used to make profits for companies and in turn this delivers wealth to owners, but technology also enables job destruction at levels never seen before the 1970s. If we used technology to improve quality of life and repair a degraded environment, there could be results that are a win-win-win, and all this discussion about rethinking Robin Hood would be redundant!
Peter Burgess

Rethinking Robin Hood

MADRID – International development aid is based on the Robin Hood principle: take from the rich and give to the poor. National development agencies, multilateral organizations, and NGOs currently transfer more than $135 billion a year from rich countries to poor countries with this idea in mind.

A more formal term for the Robin Hood principle is “cosmopolitan prioritarianism,” an ethical rule that says we should think of everyone in the world in the same way, no matter where they live, and then focus help where it helps the most. Those who have less have priority over those who have more. This philosophy implicitly or explicitly guides the aid for economic development, aid for health, and aid for humanitarian emergencies.

On its face, cosmopolitan prioritarianism makes sense. People in poor countries have needs that are more pressing, and price levels are much lower in poor countries, so that a dollar or euro goes twice or three times further than it does at home. Spending at home is not only more expensive, but it also goes to those who are already well off (at least relatively, judged by global standards), and so does less good.

I have thought about and tried to measure global poverty for many years, and this guide has always seemed broadly right. But I currently find myself feeling increasingly unsure about it. Both facts and ethics pose problems.

Huge strides have undoubtedly been made in reducing global poverty, more through growth and globalization than through aid from abroad. The number of poor people has fallen in the past 40 years from more than two billion to just under one billion – a remarkable feat, given the increase in world population and the long-term slowing of global economic growth, especially since 2008.

While impressive and wholly welcome, poverty reduction has not come without a cost. The globalization that has rescued so many in poor countries has harmed some people in rich countries, as factories and jobs migrated to where labor is cheaper. This seemed to be an ethically acceptable price to pay, because those who were losing were already so much wealthier (and healthier) than those who were gaining.

A long-standing cause of discomfort is that those of us who make these judgments are not exactly well placed to assess the costs. Like many in academia and in the development industry, I am among globalization’s greatest beneficiaries – those who are able to sell our services in markets that are larger and richer than our parents could have dreamed of.

Globalization is less splendid for those who not only don’t reap its benefits, but suffer from its impact. We have long known that less-educated and lower-income Americans, for example, have seen little economic gain for four decades, and that the bottom end of the US labor market can be a brutal environment. But just how badly are these Americans suffering from globalization? Are they much better off than the Asians now working in the factories that used to be in their hometowns?

Most undoubtedly are. But several million Americans – black, white, and Hispanic – now live in households with per capita income of less than $2 a day, essentially the same standard that the World Bank uses to define destitution-level poverty in India or Africa. Finding shelter in the United States on that income is so difficult that $2-a-day poverty is almost certainly much worse in the US than $2-a-day poverty in India or Africa.

Beyond that, America’s much-vaunted equality of opportunity is under threat. Towns and cities that have lost their factories to globalization have also lost their tax base and find it hard to maintain quality schools – the escape route for the next generation. Elite schools recruit the wealthy to pay their bills, and court minorities to redress centuries of discrimination; but this no doubt fosters resentment among the white working class, whose kids find no place in this brave new world.

My own work with Anne Case reveals more signs of distress. We have documented a rising tide of “deaths of despair” among white non-Hispanics – from suicide, alcohol abuse, and accidental overdoses of prescription and illegal drugs. Overall death rates in the US were higher in 2015 than 2014, and life expectancy has fallen.

We can argue about the measurement of material living standards, whether inflation is overstated and the rise in living standards understated, or whether schools are really that bad everywhere. But deaths are hard to explain away. Perhaps it is not so clear that the greatest needs are on the other side of the world.

Citizenship comes with a set of rights and responsibilities that we do not share with those in other countries. Yet the “cosmopolitan” part of the ethical guideline ignores any special obligations we have toward our fellow citizens.

We can think about these rights and obligations as a kind of mutual insurance contract: We refuse to tolerate certain kinds of inequality for our fellow citizens, and each of us has a responsibility to help – and a right to expect help – in the face of collective threats. These responsibilities do not invalidate or override our responsibilities to those who are suffering elsewhere in the world, but they do mean that if we judge only by material need, we risk leaving out important considerations.

When citizens believe that the elite care more about those across the ocean than those across the train tracks, insurance has broken down, we divide into factions, and those who are left behind become angry and disillusioned with a politics that no longer serves them. We may not agree with the remedies that they seek, but we ignore their real grievances at their peril and ours.

ANGUS DEATON Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel laureate in economics, is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is the author of The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality.

Support Project Syndicate’s mission Project Syndicate needs your help to provide readers everywhere equal access to the ideas and debates shaping their lives. LEARN MORE

Vladimir Putin The Putin Question Anders Åslund breaks down the views of Joseph Nye, Adam Michnik, Yuliya Tymoshenko, and other Project Syndicate commentators on the nature and future of Russia’s autocratic regime.

EXPERTS USERS Click to the left of a paragraph to pin your comment to it Reply Comment Peter Burgess AUG 14, 2016 As long as economists use measures for progress and performance that are based on money wealth more than on things like quality of life, happiness and the impact on the environment, there will be outcomes that are essentially wrong. I read engineering at Cambridge before economics and later qualifying as a Chartered Accountant. Amazing technology is now being used to make profits for companies and in turn this delivers wealth to owners, but technology also enables job destruction at levels never seen before the 1970s. If we used technology to improve quality of life and repair a degraded environment, there could be results that are a win-win-win, and all this discussion about rethinking Robin Hood would be redundant! READ MORE Reply Comment Ian Maitland JUL 11, 2016 I am broadly in sympathy with Angus Deaton's concept of mutual insurance or what used to be called a social contract. But I am puzzled by a few things. Angus says that 'But deaths are had to explain away.' But, unless I am mistaken, his study with Anne Case did not find that 'deaths of despair' had risen among male workers (even though the absolute level is much higher). And the sharp increase among middle-aged women may largely be explicable in terms of an opioid epidemic. So, pending correction, I respectfully disagree that such deaths are hard to explain away. My second puzzle is this. I had taken away from The Great Escape the impression that Angus believed that foreign aid had done more harm than good. If Robin Hood does not work globally, why does he think it will work in one country? I would like him to have addressed the moral hazards of Robin Hood policies and how we avoid them. READ LESS Reply Commented Alejandra Campero JUL 1, 2016 This is a great piece that reflects the recent raise of nationalism in various countries and inspires further thought. Governments definitely need to pay closer look to the individuals that have been adversely affected by globalisation and the provision of quality basic services such as health and education should be a priority. However, I do not understand what are the responsibilities that we are supposed to have with fellow citizens that we do not have with other people around the world. Being a citizen in a specific country is random. How do you define being a citizen (not by law but for the responsibility concept)? Someone that has lived in a country for generations? Someone that was born in a country? Someone that grew up in a country? Someone that works and pays taxes in a country? And leaving the blurry definition of citizen aside, apart from sharing a piece of land, paying taxes and choosing representatives, citizens do not share that much in common. Citizens of one country have different religion, traditions, and even language. Why is the world turning towards citizens then and away from humanity? READ LESS Reply Comment Cheeky B. Bird JUN 25, 2016 What a lovely, thoughtful piece. When the Nobel committee chose Deaton, they chose wisely. Deaton (and many others) suggest that there is a trade off between the 'remarkable feat of the fall in the number of poor people in the past 40 years from more than two billion to just under one billion' vs. 'the harm to 'some people in rich countries, as factories and jobs migrated to where labor is cheaper.' I myself don't accept that such a trade off does in fact exist. Instead, there has been a deliberate choice made by elites in wealthy countries to adopt a set of policies that has left many worse off, and a lack of recognition of the need to move aggressively to implement policies that will address emerging issues that will contribute to further inequality, for example, in what is known as the platform or 'gig' economy. In the last analysis, if globalization is to continue to be a viable project, there is going to be a need for a push on elites in both advanced, and in developing and emerging economies to share the benefits of globalization with their populations. A hopeful sign is that since the 2008 crisis, those in the economics profession appear more open to the possibility that some of their thinking and emphasis needs rethinking, and aware that their analysis has been misused to distract and justify policies that deeply harmed some of those in wealthy countries. This piece written by Deaton and the existence of Anne Case's work also give hope that those in the US who appear to be arguing that voters are rebelling due to concerns related to the changing racial and ethnic composition of US society (instead of due to economic distress) do not derail the adoption of policies needed to ensure shared prosperity and to rein in vested interests. If there is anything that might be said to be positive about the very sad Brexit referendum is that at least in the US it will underscore the link between disaffected voters, economic distress and globalization, and hopefully clarify thinking about the need to adopt both mitigating policies and policies that anticipate future pressures on the population at large from technology and globalization. READ LESS Reply Comment Vasudevan M K JUN 21, 2016 This type robbing the peter to pay Paul ism is also happening in India by way of excessive reservations. It all started with reservations in education and jobs for small percent for the people for a limited amount of time. Slowly politics crept in and now we have states like Tamil Nadu up to 70% reservations in college admissions and jobs. It has reached such an absurd extent that resevations are for less bright and more richer kids and brighter students from poorer families to do have any reservations (The opposite of vision of founding fathers). Not only the bright students loose out on opportunities, the sys tem is deprived of bright and dedicated folks. It also leads to a situation the less bright students developing an arrogant attitude towards all and institutions. Those who are willing to fight these evils stay on, while otters take flight to richer countries where there is higher premiums on their talents. This situation may be addressed by making reservations based on economic status and not on social status as it is now. READ LESS Reply Comment Richard S. Stone JUN 21, 2016 The first order of the day is to recognize the problem, not try to explain it away. Or even place blame, except to the limited extent needed to advance to a solution. Yes, we can blame the “elites” but “We,” the people, have allowed them to take control: In some measured and careful way that has to end. The second concern, for me, is conflating or confusing the idea of “aid” (whether in the shape of weapons or cash) with “trade agreements.” As I see this, international aid is probably, in 80% of the cases, or maybe 100%, simply stolen by the elites in the recipient country. Or, perhaps even worse, it is used to oppress the poor in those countries. It is a pointless and wasted effort to continue to provide such aid. Trade agreements are something entirely different in format, but in the end the benefit is probably about the same as foreign aid in terms of the end point for the majority of the benefits: 80% or more of the benefit probably goes the foreign elites. The problem is that the people LEAST benefitted are the citizens of the wealthy country making the trade deal. Yes, some products and services are, or may be thought to be, available to them at lower cost, but what good does that do if the party supposedly to be benefitted has no income? The answer as I see it is to make no more trade deals without at the same time and as part of the action providing some off-setting and roughly equivalent amount in terms of domestic aid. If “we” are going to make a deal with Turkey, for example, to send them arms, then such an act needs to be tied to our domestic aims and actual, visible, domestic spending. Or if we want to aid some African or Asian nation, feeding or helping their poor, then provide an equal amount for our own domestic agenda. In terms of what has been already done, and the havoc already underway, someone needs to evaluate the actual cost of such agreements. In a way this is even easier: we should be able to figure out how many “domestic” workers were displaced, and the impact of that displacement. That money needs to get back into the domestic economy by fixing roads, by enhancing government sponsored research, or even by subsiding health care. READ LESS Comment Vasudevan M K JUN 21, 2016 Richard This aid/loans to poorer countries may also come with a rider that requires the poorer country to buy hardware/technology from companies based in the donor country. This basically ensures that the loaned money is recycled to the rich in the donor country. At Least part ofthis recycled money should reach the poor in poorer countries. Early in my career I used to live in the USA and had to return to India fro some family reasons. Now daughter lives there and we tried to live again in the Usa to be close to her but could not afford to do so. We are quite comfortanble in India but will be considered poor in USA and will be burden to our daughter. So I fully understand your point. Being poor in a rich country is being really poor. READ LESS Reply Comment george sos JUN 21, 2016 Nice to see that not all those in influential places are lost in their ego.I just want to point this out: Those poor living in developed countries are what i call neo-poor.They have to deal with prices and cost of living that has nothing to do with those in the really poor countries,.Plus those neopoor ,as i like to call them ,do not have any experience in surviving as poor.Also there s the question of social destruction globalization brought about western societies that for centuries were trying to go the consumerism way.And this is the problem.After capitalism destroyed any sense of social justice ,and every spec of ethos in western societies,now it is asking the poor to survive in conditions that they obviously cant,and dont deserve anyway,as it was not the poorest of the west those who created this mess...Political power in the west was bought by the few through handouts to the people in order to influence them ,and after the powers that be installed their mercenaries in the top places in every country,they started taking back whatever 'rights' they ve allowed to exist for a while. We are on a path to total destruction ,just because the rich can not accept that there is the possibillity they wont get the chance to libe a full life for much longer.Looking at our world today ,i give it at best 5 years before it descends into war,chaos,and death for many.And those rich who instead of getting their act together ,accepting their responsibilities , keep hiding behind this stupid idea of what they call (funnily) free markets,they are in for a bad surprise soon.Soon there will be no place on the planet for them to liv their lives,(not that there will be left for us,but i m just talking about them and the illussion they can exploit people and then go away to some paradise and continue living without problems ,in the places they ve set up as refuge for themselves.Soon ,every rich person will have to fend for his/her life...wait till the poor get also hungry ...wait till the army and the police they have to keep them safe ,sides with the poor,the many ,the hungry...There s a wave coming and it is going to be a tsunami...But dont listen to me i m just a stupid poor from a developed country...:(...oh and just for balance i must say there are those 'poor' who overstate their situation and cry wolf without reason,or because they ve lost some provillege their slae owners had allowed for them..Those who greedy like their bosses,want to serve them with the hope they will eat some of the left overs from the rich mans table...Same luck for them i see.We had a world we could make a nice place ,but instead ,we allowed greed to destroy it.Now all we can do is shut up and watch crumble.I hope the next humanity will not make the same mistakes...but i doubt it.. READ LESS Reply Comment Leo Arouet JUN 20, 2016 Inestimable article. Esto lo pensé hace poco debido la consecuencia que dejó el terremoto en Ecuador: innumerables personas damnificadas y que perdieron la vida. El gobierno peruano ha movilizado 21 toneladas de ayuda humanitaria a Ecuador, además de helicópteros y un buque. ESTA ayuda es, sin duda, loable; sin embargo, el gobierno se ha olvidado de sus propios ciudadanos como son los peruanos de la región Puno, niños y adultos, que pierden la vida, sus posesiones y animales cada año por las oleadas de frío. La ayuda a Ecuador no es nada criticable, pero sí lo es cuando el gobierno se olvida de sus propios ciudadanos pobres que no tienen medicinas y por cuales no mueve ni helicópteros ni naves, ni nada parecido para sostener a sus propios ciudadanos. Hay un deber primeramente con los propios ciudadanos. READ LESS Reply Comment Peter Niggli JUN 20, 2016 Angus Deaton is right. When poor people in Western countries feel politically and socially abandoned the base for the Robin Hood principle is shrinking. But he's wrong insofar as he doesn't mention the political choices made by Western governments - dismantling of welfare systems, destructing trade unions, pampering the commanding classes of their economies and designing global trade and financial rules which favour the rich countries. The gap between Western wealth and developing countries' poverty or modest prosperity is still huge. And: Of the $ 135 billions development aid, Deaton is citing, only $94 billions arrive in developing countries and $62 billions are, according to the OECD, country programmable aid. The rest are the own transaction costs and large chunks of non-aid. Compared to the $887 billion GDP of the group of the Least Developed Countries, this seems to be quite a considerable amount. But given that only 20 percent of the development aid go to the LDC's, it's not really a Robin Hood-like redistribution. READ LESS Comment Ian Maitland JUL 11, 2016 I see claims like yours a lot. But I have yet been unable to document them -- at least with respect to welfare. It is a bit old (and my memory is a bit hazy), but I believe Dani Rodrik has found that social welfare outlays increased, rather than shrank, in response to globalization. The rest of your story also smacks of conspiracy theory. No one destroyed unions -- they did that to themselves. Pampering governing classes is also a figment of your imagination. If the elites prospered it was not because of political manipulation but because (as Angus Deaton implies) they have been far more successful at navigating the currents of globalization. READ LESS Reply Comment Douglas Leyendecker JUN 19, 2016 'Charity begins at home' but given the fall of traditional nuclear families, fewer and fewer 'homes' exist to provide support. One way to improve our domestic challenge is to increase the number and sustainability of traditional nuclear families. What other social unit is more important to the poor, the rich and the country overall? Reply Comment Phillip Tussing JUN 19, 2016 Professor Deaton's concerns about the poor in the US are of course valid. I have a couple of comments. First: although the reason for the poverty of some of these people may be globalization, it seems to me that the apparent negative relationship (either more US poor, OR more poor elsewhere) Dr. Deaton is proposing is questionable. The only case in which it is strictly applicable is working class Americans who previously had factory jobs, who lost those jobs when factories were relocated overseas. That group can take advantage of the US Trade Adjustment Assistance, which helps workers in this condition to find jobs or to re-train. Second: if Dr. Deaton is particularly worried about white working class men, about whom there is good reason to worry, then the link with foreign aid is tenuous. These are people for whom in many cases an entire cultural adjustment is required to have a better chance in a globalized knowledge economy. Many of their children are making this step -- I teach them. Those who don't have education beyond high school need cultural help as well as simply finding jobs -- this is a hard job in today's America, and really has nothing to do with foreign aid. Number three: foreign aid is often problematic, goes into the hands of rich elites, does not help the poorest, etc. Yes --of course a thorough-going reform is necessary. But don't try to tie it to the problem of America's poor. READ LESS Reply Comment Solly Robert Benatar JUN 19, 2016 The following are worth reading -and the quotes from them 1. CIDA reconsidered http://www.cgai.ca//PDF/Reinventing%20CIDA.pdf 'Most foreign aid is spent in the donor country. About 80 per cent of CIDA staff are based in Ottawa, and staff people in the field have little authority to design and implement projects and allocate funds, the report says.' 'This top-heavy system has perpetuated a system where our development assistance is slow, inflexible and unresponsive to conditions on the ground in recipient countries.' 2. Aid in Reverse: How Poor Countries Develop Rich Countries. by Jason Hickel http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/aid_in_reverse_how_poor_countries_develop_rich_countries 'Flows of wealth are overwhelmingly from poor countries to rich ones, and the chief function of foreign aid is as a tool of control. Developing countries receive about $136 billion in aid from donor countries each year. At the same time, however, they lose about $1 trillion each year through offshore capital flight, mostly in the form of tax avoidance by multinational corporations. That’s nearly 10 times the size of the aid budget. Because rich countries include debt cancellation as aid, it is only fair that we include debt service payments as part of the equation as well. Today, poor countries pay about $600 billion to rich countries in debt service each year, much of it on the compound interest of loans accumulated by rulers long since deposed. This alone amounts to nearly 5 times the aid budget. Using this metric, economist Charles Abugre calculates that the net flow of aid from the West to the Global South over the period 2002 to 2007 was minus $2.8 trillion. And that does not include the capital flight that I mentioned above. There are many other flows of wealth and income that are being siphoned from the Global South that we need to take into account. For example, Action Aid recently reported that multinational corporations extract about $138 billion from developing countries each year in tax holidays (which is different from tax avoidance). This figure alone outstrips the global aid budget.' READ LESS Reply Comment Jeremiah Hartnett JUN 19, 2016 Great points. It does indeed start in our own backyard. Reply Comment Alberto Baldessari JUN 16, 2016 How does professr Deaton know the problem is globalization? Why not poor schools? Or soaring healthcare costs? Or the recession? Or something else? You need to diagnose the disease correctly before you start treatment. Professor Deaton has often insisted that knowing what happens is not enough. You also need to know why. Here he apparently fails to live by his own standards. I agree with the main point, though. The US should care more about its own poor. READ LESS Comment William Cash JUN 19, 2016 If you haven't noticed a huge flow of jobs out of here because of globalization, you haven't been watching. Our work force has been made to compete with 3rd world countries and the republican party would love to do away with the minimum wage and environmental regulations to make it even more Darwinian. Our aid to other countries is so little next to our GDP that it has almost no affect on this issue. Trade agreements do a lot more. READ LESS Comment Manas RS JUN 19, 2016 Agreed. I don't know why Deaton is targeting globalisation for poverty and neglected infrastructure. Sounds Trumpish. Plus, the aid buys a lot of goodwill for America. Reply Comment josiane Huysentruyt JUN 16, 2016 delocalisation is not about helping the poor abroad, but to pay less for labour to become richer Reply Comment Jay Em JUN 16, 2016 The problem is the people who benefit from globalization are different from those who are harmed by it. For example, Mexican immigration benefits farmers and meat packers but costs those who provide social services like schooling and health care. Those who gain should be taxed to pay those who lose. Similarly those who support The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) should be taxed on the profits they make from it and this money should go to those who are harmed by it. I'll leave it to the politicians and economists on how to accomplish that. READ LESS Reply Comment Lee Wingo JUN 15, 2016 Interesting read, but I found one main issue with your premise. Robin Hood only works when those that are taken from are taken care of. This isn't an issue of foreign aid or labor. This is an issue of a country so devoted to raging war that we can't take care of our own even though we do have the means. Foreign competition is not an excuse for the way we treat the poor and working class in our society. This is nothing new and it has little to do with Robin Hood policy and everything to do with greed. Reply Comment jagjeet sinha JUN 14, 2016 In an interesting proliferation, the insidious 'Caste System' seems to have permeated the most successful Economy the world has seen. The Lords needs the Commons - and it is the Cardinals who invariably build the bridges that retails hope. Geography allows Walls that separates the Lords from the Commons - but when it doesn't, then Religion is the opium. Islands are either made by the Divine, or created by the Caste System. Cross-border brotherhood perhaps allows the Islands to forge unusual unpredictable networks. The Global Games that lubricated cross border brotherhood is not well researched. When Europe cries foul, it is always because the Union creates Creditor and Debtor languages - the Castes. When America cries foul, it is always because the Union creates Creditor and Debtor races - the Castes. When the Lords give way to the Cardinals, it is because hope is better retailed by men of faith. The Lords however always build bridges cross border, because the Cardinals often target the Lords. The Commons find it impossible to build such bridges - as the Cardinals playing brokers, have their own agenda. But the Author has pointed only the road that takes the Commons to the Bastille. Without pointing out the road that takes the World to the House of Lords. And when the Lords double up as Cardinals, the road goes Soviet. In the end, the Truth is that Globalism takes Mankind higher. Isolationist proclivities never the Trumps. READ LESS Comment jagjeet sinha JUN 19, 2016 Errata : Para 2 Line 1 - 'Creditor and Debtor linguistic provinces - the Castes.' Reply Comment Henry Rech JUN 14, 2016 '....we divide into factions, and those who are left behind become angry and disillusioned with a politics that no longer serves them.' And the crazy thing is that the groups that are most disadvantaged by globalization in the US are the groups that vote for the party that represents the elites that mostly benefit from globalization. Reply Comment Norm Winn JUN 14, 2016 One small point that seems to be continually overlooked in the rush to blame globalization, and by extension trade, for job losses is the impact of technological innovation. A few weeks ago I read an article that claimed the US has permanently lost between 7.5 to 8.5 million jobs since 2000. Of this total, approximately 1 million were attributed to NAFTA and another 2 million to our trade imbalance with China. The remaining 4.5-5.5 million jobs were lost due to advances in process automation, robotics and related smart technologies. The article went on to estimate as many as 40 million more jobs will be lost over the next twenty years as technology evolves within the office automation, hospitality and services industries. I'd like to ask exactly how will that challenge be dealt with? READ LESS Comment Martin Screeton JUN 17, 2016 We quit looking and participating... like me... i went back to school for human services since that field will be overrun with clients with the coming greater loss of jobs... I have not participated in this economy for well over 5 years now (other then food & fuel) and there are millions doing exactly what I am doing... We are not working and refuse to work in this exploitative environment. Comment Curtis Carpenter JUN 15, 2016 (1) Global labor will go into surplus, if it hasn't already. (2) Human nature will not change regardless. (3) Potential workers will become increasingly aware that they are involved in what is, for them, a zero sum game. Ultimately, the labor surplus will have to be liquidated. How that happens will I think reflect (2) above. Rousseau or Hobbes, take your pick and follow your choice to your own conclusions. One 'good news' scenario would be that after the surplus is eliminated, considering the high probability of a significant overshoot in the process, the species will find itself on the edge of another renaissance by way of a new labor shortage. Post-plague Europe in the 15th century kind of scenario. Mother nature is, of course, a wild card in all of it, and may yet take a hand in fixing the problem. READ LESS Reply Commented Alonzo Lyons JUN 14, 2016 Indefinite aid has devastated Nepal...aid's chief beneficiaries are aid agents themselves and ruling gangsters they abet while the people endure a lethal suffering. Nepal's Lost Horizon: http://realitysandwich.com/320179/nepals-lost-horizon/ Reply Comment Thomas Pogge JUN 14, 2016 I very much share your concerns. But do we really need to choose between the domestic poor and the poor abroad? According to updated Table A3 of Saez and Piketty's 'Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998' (QJE 118:1), the income share of the top 1% in the US has risen from 9 to 21 percent in the 1978-2014 period. Is not this change in the US income distribution a much larger headwind against the domestic poor than the US foreign aid trickle? And could not more egalitarian tax policies have avoided or reduced this huge skewing of incomes? And, speaking of taxes, must we fund education from local taxes, thereby entrenching existing socioeconomic inequalities? Can we not use the federal budget to help poorer districts offer equal educational opportunities to their children and youths? READ LESS Reply Comment Arun Motianey JUN 14, 2016 What's in a name? Everything. Cosmopolitan prioritarianism should have been known by its true name: Cosmopolitan utilitarianism. And everything objectionable about the sort of interpersonal calculus that Prof. Deaton and his peers in the development economics profession engaged in would have been so much more transparent from the start. Alas, Deaton has awakened too late, so late that I cannot say it is better than never. He and the other bien-passant scribblers have now set in the motion the forces of nationalism and xenophobia. These forces will prove profoundly destabilizing, I suspect. All of us may now be forced to suffer the consequences of the facile advocacy of the economics profession. READ LESS Reply Comment Paul Daley JUN 14, 2016 Good article. There definitely are degrees with which we accord rights and accept responsibilities within our families, communities and nations. Too often, rights and responsibilities have been elevated to 'human' rights and 'human' responsibilities long before we've established the institutional underpinnings for a fair distribution of both. Reply Comment Michael Public JUN 14, 2016 The general establishment has been staring at Trump and Sanders like they are some kind of monster that crawled out of the bog. This article cuts straight through to the cause. The cause is that Americans left their countrymen behind. History is full of this story - French Revolution, Germany between the Wars, Russia/China pre communism. Like cannot blame the man with the guillotine that France fell apart - likewise you cannot blame Trump (and Sanders) for capitalizing on a wave of anger stemming from a gutted middle class. READ LESS Reply Comment Erikwim During JUN 14, 2016 The article is interesting and thought provoking, but at the same time weak on two points: 1. Trading with other countries is presented as a conscious choice of Western elites, which is to a high degree not the case. The main causes for economic development in South-Asia and Eastern Europe are locally political. It is not Western elites that decided China & Eastern Europe were opening up to market economics, it was the obvious economic failure of communism. These were and are massive pools of labour opening up to trade and speedily developing, over which Western elites had absolutely nothing to say. 2. we see very similar political movements in Denmark, Netherlands, France, already for many years. But all three have very lavish social security compared with US. That breaks down the main 'white working class poverty' argument for what we see politically. READ LESS Reply Comment Procyon Mukherjee JUN 14, 2016 Mid-life morbidity and mortality data for U.S. looks bad in Deaton's paper, but the solution seekers to this malaise must not shun it away with rancor; globalization's biggest spoils lie in this crusade for declaring these as aberrations. No innovation is directed to this malady, no one ever wins any admiration for pointing this out. Such is the tragedy. Reply Comment Gary Stegen JUN 14, 2016 One way to reduce the problems discussed related to globalization is to add a balanced trade paradigm to the 'free trade' rules. What this means is that the persistent trade surplus countries would be required to spend their excess export earnings to bring their current account roughly into balance as a long term average (or face trade sanctions). Spending the money internally could improve the economies and benefit the people in the surplus countries as it also benefits the deficit countries. The US and UK should take the lead in this, telling the persistent surplus countries that if they want continued relatively free access to sell into our markets they need to be willing to spend the income generated by their exports. The US trade deficit represents a large amount of US based demand that is not being supplied by US production. Eliminating this imbalance should go a long way towards reducing the impacts discussed in this article. READ LESS Comment Michael Public JUN 14, 2016 On the right track. The only issue is one of cooking the books - if this is how things work you cannot have governments collecting their own data. Reply Commented Curtis Carpenter JUN 13, 2016 'When citizens believe that the elite care more about those across the ocean than those across the train tracks...' Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that many citizens have decided that 'the elite' (whoever they are) care for no one other than themselves? And whether that's true or not, isn't the really important question not why people have lost their trust in the idea that democratically elected governments can advance 'the common good'-- but what will be required to restore it? The 2008 crisis in the conventional economy was nothing compared to the crisis in the 'economy of trust' that has been developing for the last half century. We seem able to rescue banks and bankers -- but it's not so clear that we can rescue our representative democracies. READ LESS Reply Comment Betsy Whitfill JUN 13, 2016 If all the nations sheared their excess resources (prompted by a true assessment of the needs of its citizens), all nations would be able to develop according to their own culture and not be penalized by always being behind the developed world. It is a question of resources, sharing resources instead of transferring money. Reply Comment Alida Uwera JUN 13, 2016 If the objective of this article is meant to shock and awe then it has achieved its purpose. But in doing so, it has succeeded mostly in addressing the symptoms of a problem (anger/indignation to increasing inequality in the U.S.) with the wrong diagnosis ((1) contribution of the US to development aid and (2) globalization). The article states that the Robin Hood principles is meant as a redistributive measure to inequality by taking from the rich and giving to the poor – very well and good. But also goes on to say the poor in the US are now poorer because what was due to them is going towards the very poor in the rest of the world. Really? 1) The U.S. contributes less than 1% of its GDP to foreign aid 2) The top 1 % in the U.S. own 40 % of the national wealth in the U.S. while the bottom 80 % own just about 7% 3) Globalization, in as far as it transfers jobs overseas, is not a development agenda. It is a profit-making issue with the benefits accruing to owners of capital (Chances arguably being that those profiting from this endeavor are bound to be part of the top 1% in the US than they are bound to be the very bottom of the poor in the rest of the world) While it is true that poverty rates have declined globally; it is quite misguided to think that the poor in the U.S. are worse off because the poorest of the poor in the world are ‘better off’. Look closer at home. Much, much closer. READ LESS Comment Curtis Carpenter JUN 13, 2016 Or maybe the problem, when you get right down to it, is the Merry Men -- us -- and the culture we've built for ourselves that puts a price-tag on everything and sees human existence (perhaps rightly) as a zero-sum game. Comment Steve Hurst JUN 13, 2016 @Alida Yes, rather than rethinking Robin Hood Angus needs to rethink the Sheriff of Nottingham Reply Comment Max Isert JUN 13, 2016 ''Bernie Sanders: 'Open borders? That's a Koch brothers proposal' '' Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0 ''Published on Jul 29, 2015 Bernie Sanders speaks with Vox Editor-in-chief Ezra Klein about global poverty.'' READ MORE Reply Comment stephan Edwards JUN 13, 2016 There is nobody left in power who gives a damn for people who work for an hourly wage. Our so called 'Elites' knowingly destroyed the working classes ability earn a decent living. All the while calling for the necessity of sacrifice and it was never them doing the sacrificing. Equality of opportunity is deader then the Dodo bird. The only people doing well out globalization is wallstreet and those already on top the rest of us, Well sacrifices must be made. Has for ethical if you can mention... READ MORE Reply Comment M M JUN 13, 2016 How the hell do people get these Nobel Prizes, from Obama and so on? There is no such thing as free money, if there was, the poor would not be poor and the rich would not be rich. And a message to PS, whoever cannot tolerate “Freedom of Speech” should close shop. Reply Commented Walter Gingery JUN 13, 2016 Finally! One of the academic elite recognizes the hypocrisy of bidding the working classes suffer the whirlwind of globalization, all the while safe themselves in their ivory towers. On his other point -- the transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor -- a very significant factor is the ability of the recipients to use the wealth productively and not simply squander it. Some societies do better than others, and success seems to depend on the amount of 'social capital' -- rule of law, trust, etc. (See Michael Pettis' latest.) READ LESS Reply Comment Luke Lea JUN 13, 2016 What is wanted is a fair and efficient way to transfer income from capital to labor in the rich countries. Here is an idea: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qJCdkd50kFib3VqagZdSZiPYSKNpZ83JQ6LteKbLWuE/edit?usp=sharing Reply Comment Steve Hurst JUN 13, 2016 'The globalization that has rescued so many in poor countries has harmed some people in rich countries... This seemed to be an ethically acceptable price to pay, because those who were losing were already so much wealthier (and healthier) than those who were gaining.' Wonky thinking to say the least. So it is ethical for somebody to actively or passively decide corporations can impoverish citizens because there is a profit conduit and a worker elsewhere benefits. Leaving the impoverished worker somewhere between a freeman and a slave. This sounds very much like the defence of slavery. Thomas Aquinas argued that slavery was not part of natural law, but nonetheless he defended it as a consequence of human sinfulness and necessary for the good of society. There are buckets of this sort of tripe throughout the ages This is not ethics by any description, what it is is tripe, propaganda enabling corporate misconduct and misappropriation. The transfer of wealth present and future from citizens to corporations and overseas states who are totally uninterested in the impoverished left behind providing enough are left to sell stuff to READ LESS Reply Comment markets aurelius JUN 13, 2016 Excellent, thoughtful post. Within the ordinal ranking of priorities we all have, our first is looking out for the welfare of our fellow citizens. This is especially evident in America, whose very foundation is based on the shared rights and responsibilities we have toward each other: 'We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.' All of these things we do for each other. It would be nice if we could do it for the rest of the world, but we can't. The sacred ties that once bound our union, to borrow a beautiful phrase from George Washington, are at risk, as a result.