Why the Poor Don't Soak the Rich in the U.S.

If you're like me and have been struggling simply to understand the events that are transpiring in Egypt, have no fear - this adorable little girl will explain it all:

One of the root causes behind Egypt protests is income inequality and lack of economic opportunity in the youth-bulging country under Mubarak's rule. But what I find most fascinating is that Egypt's Gini coefficient is far from abnormal relative to other countries. In fact, the U.S.'s Gini coefficient is higher than Egypt's. This raises an interesting question: why don't we see similar uprisings of the poor against the rich right here in the United States? Or in other words, why don't the poor soak the rich in the U.S.?
 

This morning, Harvard Kennedy School Professor Tarek Masoud, who is basking in his 15 seconds of fame as one of the foremost academics on politics in Egypt, attempted to answer that very question this morning.

According to traditional logic, one might think that poor people would vote in support of redistributive economic policies if they believe that the policies will one day benefit them. What is puzzling to Masoud is that it is the very people that would benefit from redistributive policies such as the inheritance tax that are voting against them! Why is this so? He posed a few different explanations:
 

One explanation he dubbed "empathy gulf". Everyone wants to be, or at least wants the one-in-a-billion lottery ticket odds of one day being, the next Bill Gates. Core to the American ideals is the concept of opportunity and rags-to-riches stories. America is where dreams come true, and anything is possible. Redistributive policies, higher tax rates, and spending on social programs are at odds with the entrepreneurial spirit of making it big.

Second, Masoud posed that people in the U.S. may harbor irrational beliefs about their own upward mobility. It's not me who will need to cash in food stamps soon, it's the Jones's next door. Or I am not going to be one of those uninsured Americans Obama keeps talking about, so Obamacare is not something I support. 55% of Americans identify themselves as "middle class" according to a Pew Research Center. 41% of Americans making less than $20,000 identify as "middle class", as well.

Finally, another reason the poor may not be inclined to collectively organize and riot against the rich in the U.S. despite massive inequalities is that there is a general belief that the free market is a fair distributive instrument. Both household-level and country-level economic growth requires individuals to shift some of their output from consumption to investment. This is very distinct from a subsistence economy, where the majority of the population consume all available output. The U.S. has done a fairly effective job of providing a tax and regulatory framework that incentivizes investment over consumption, and thus fuels growth.

Being Big Becoming a Bigger Problem

This week Lancet published a model reviewing changes in average BMI from 1980 to 2008. Unsurprisingly, the model found that people have gotten bigger. Given that the data was from 199 countries, the trend was seen in rich and poor countries alike. Potential causes for this trend are diverse (though western diets deserve a good deal of the blame), as are the consequences. But it merits reiterating the point Seema made in a previous blog post: chronic, non-communicable diseases—particularly those related to cardiovascular disease and diabetes—will play a larger and larger role in developing countries. This is not to say that famine is a thing of the past- for countries like Niger it is an annual reality. But we must be vigilant about the hazards of excess as well as scarcity.

Note: For those unfamiliar with statistical jargon, the "posterior probability" referred to in the article is not a reference to study subjects' backsides.

Articles about obesity trends always seem to feature a picture of an overweight person from behind. That doesn't seem very nice, does it?

Global Fund Rebutall

An interesting editorial in the Washington Post by Michael Gerson responds to the criticism the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has been receiving recently. As mentioned on this blog, corruption and misuse of funds has led Germany and Sweden to withhold contributions. Gerson counters by pointing out how uncommon such misuse is (about 0.3% of outlays to date- though surely other cases have yet to be detected). More impressively, he states, this is actually a victory for accountability, as it was the Global Fund itself that detected the malfeasance. While eliminating corruption is an important goal, designing mechanisms for detecting such fraud may be more realistic and more essential.

Revolution in 140 Characters: Thinking About Information Technology and Politics

With Egypt and Tunisia in the midst of some fairly radical political change the role of the internet, particularly social media like Twitter and Facebook, in social movements has again become a topic of popular discussion. Sometimes it can seem the options are either naïve optimism about “twitter revolutions” or a jaded cynicism that scoffs at the effects of social media. What I hope to convince you of here is that internet technology is not inherently democratic, and to make the argument that the effects the internet has are always the product of a specific context.
 

The problem at hand in discussions of Facebook, Twitter, or the internet more broadly is technological determinism. As the name might suggest, technological determinism explains society and social change primarily through the lens of technological change. Technology, in other words, acts as the independent variable or agent of change and society is the dependent variable. Frequently this involves claiming certain technologies contain inherent effects due to the nature of the technology itself. Whether or not certain effects are realized, the technology always pushes in a particular direction. Analyses that assume the internet has an inherently democratic nature or that essentially boil down to “no twitter, no revolution” are examples of technological determinism.
 

There are obvious problems with such a perspective. Technological determinism undervalues the context in which a technology is used and the agency of those using it. Tools and technologies are always repurposed according to individual preferences and cultural norms. In the end technological determinism assumes what needs to be proven—the effects of technology.
 

One of, if not the most infamous critical assessment of the use of social media in social movements comes from Malcom Gladwell’s 2010 piece for the New Yorker. In it he argues that popular movements for social change rely on strong social ties and a high level of commitment. The reason being, social change, especially radical change, is often dangerous and requires participants be willing to risk personal wellbeing. The internet, Gladwell argues, especially social media like Twitter, doesn't work like this. Rather, he claims that, “social media are built around weak ties”. Facebook, for example, allows us to make broad, weak connections with many people but is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for fueling a social movement. Gladwell also supports those who criticize foreign media for paying too much attention to English language posts on Twitter and ignore the long-standing causes or more substantial legwork needed on the ground to make a revolution happen. In countries where English is not the first language and internet access may not be widespread, how much do we learn from Twitter? In other words, we see Twitter and Facebook as important because they are so ubiquitous in our own lives not because they actually matter.

Whatever happened to the Iranian "Twitter" revolution?

Good polemics are supposed to make you think, so I have to admit to enjoying Gladwell’s article, but it falls into its own sort of determinism. According to Gladwell social media never produces the sorts of strong ties needed for popular movements. Essentially Gladwell argues that social media are inherently shallow forms of social networking. This ignores the ways our virtual and meat-space lives overlap. Gladwell also ignores the fact that in some circumstances social media may well play an important role in either coordinating group actions or in trying to garner international support. Indeed communication technologies sometimes do play vital roles in popular uprisings.
 

Another popular critic of the role of the internet is Evgyeny Morozov. One-time enthusiast for the transformative role of the internet and Twitter, he has since tempered his stance. In contrast to Gladwell, Morozov focuses on the fact that internet technologies are not inherently liberating. Far from ushering in an “open society”, the internet can and has been used by authoritarian states and reactionary movements. China, for example, is an undemocratic state that has figured out how to handle the internet. As far as popular movements go, we can turn to recent events in Pakistan. After the assassination of the governor of Punjab motivated, it seems, for his stance of blasphemy laws, many took to the streets in support of the assassin even forming a Facebook group to support the cause. There is nothing inherently progressive about the internet and its effects and uses will always depend on context.
 

So where do these critiques leave us? To begin, it means we need to beware of a simple progressive view of history and look more critically at the actual roles and effects of new technologies. The internet may not be as newfangled as we suppose it to be—the telegraph, after all, created some of the same effects often attributed as unique to the internet. Indeed, in China the older technology of the telegraph was part of a popular, revolutionary uprising whereas the internet has so far has not been. Yongming Zhou (one of my professors at UW-Madison) attributes this to the “receiving context” of a technology. In contrast to the relative strength of the PRC today, the Qing dynasty was weak, lost legitimacy after the Sino-Japanese war, and faced a growing nationalist sentiment. In the midst of this apparent weakness a shift in regime, constitutionalism, was seen as the best way to save China and restore its greatness. Telegraphic circulars did not cause the uprising rather, “it was the need to publicize and broaden the reach of the idea of constitutionalism that made sending circular telegrams an imperative political practice” (233). A similar situation may well be true of what we’re now seeing in Egypt and Tunisia.

Serious politics or playing FarmVille?

 

Likewise we need to be more sensitive to the interaction between local and global contexts. NPR ran an amusing bit on how the names we know revolutions by may be the invention of those outside the country. Tunisia’s “Jasmine” revolution is, supposedly, a French media invention—not a term coming from the people of Tunisia. Despite being removed from the on-the-ground perspectives these names may eventually gain popularity in country as a way to curry international attention and bring people together. The point is that although connected to the global discourse, the local understandings of the revolution may be quite different from our own. Our images of a revolution may reflect both our own biases and the active cultivation of an image for international consumption by those involved.

What do Tunisians or Egyptians or members of any other social movement make of their uprising? How has internet technology been involved in their experience or understanding of political events? Have there been long-term effects from the use of social media in other places like Iran? I’ve been following the recent events pretty closely, but these are questions that still remain inadequately answered for me. What we need is to step back from our fetishization of media technology a more nuanced, context sensitive discussion that addresses these questions.

Don't Forget the Ivory Coast

With all the media attention surrounding the political uprisings and regime changes in Tunisia and Egypt, the media seems to have forgotten about the political power struggle in the Ivory Coast, where former president Laurent Gbagbo is attempting to cling to power in the wake of Alassane Ouattara's election victory.

Given the media's relatively short attention span when it comes to news in sub-Saharan Africa, it's important to remember that stories don't end just because coverage does.

King Wolfowitz's Ghost

Paul Wolfowitz's turbulent tenure as World Bank president was marked by an aggressive anti-corruption agenda. Apparently, Germany is also disturbed by apparent corruption.  The BBC is reporting that Germany is suspending its contributions to the Global Fund citing misuse and mismanagement. Looking forward to a robust discussion about the impact of corruption on development in the comments section.

Germany halts Aids fund payment over corruption claims

Germany has suspended its annual payment of more than 200m euros (£172m) to the Global Fund against Aids, TB and malaria, following corruption claims. Germany is the third-biggest donor to the UN-backed fund, which has an annual budget of more than $20bn (£12bn). It has been alleged that the fund's controls are poor in some countries and possibly billions of dollars have been siphoned off.

 Read the full article here: