My new book for middle schoolers, Your World Better: Global Progress and What You Can Do About It, available to download free from my blog, or you can buy kindle or hard copies (with author payments going to UNICEF).
I just got vaccinated by a woman born in Vietnam, with a vaccine created by two Turkish refugees living in Germany and manufactured by a US company run by a Greek migrant. Thank you, world.
This paper is so grim. Germany decides to phase out nuclear post-Fukushima, Power production was replaced by coal. That increases pollution, and 1,100 people die per year as a result. This compares to 0-100s of deaths from Fukushima.
In the most unsurprising news of the day, the end of European FoM will create huge
#NHS
staffing shortages:
@CGDev
has an idea 💡
Promote health worker migration from developing countries *and* fulfill development objectives:
German electricity consumption per capita is ~ x100 Ethiopia's.
Marginal electricity use in Germany is (eg) powering the wine refrigerator, in Ethiopia it is (eg) lighting a hospital.
But Germany thinks it should be allowed to use (dirty) coal power and Ethiopia shouldn't be.
Germany: on a visit to the lignite Land of Brandenburg, the Ecologist Minister of the Economy announces that he will relaunch reserve dirty coal power stations next winter because “gas stocks, wind and solar electricity will not be enough not "
Denmark stopped using AZ and J&J vaccines following concerns about blood clots. Those already delivered are set to expire over the next two months.
SHIP THEM NOW to countries that understand tradeoffs better.
A reminder: the latest Trump budget cuts $3 billion from global health programs and halves contributions to the WHO.
But they did find $3.8 billion for the border wall. Perhaps that will prevent the US spread of coronavirus.
It has been a good few years for studies of human nature: Stanford prison experiments and Milgram electrocution results widely questioned. Now turns out real life lord of the flies ends in peaceful cooperation.
IMF Directors by nationality since 1946:
France: 5
Sweden: 2
Germany: 1
Netherlands: 1
Spain: 1
Belgium: 1
Collectively, these countries share 15.25% of the votes at the IMF, & 3% of world population.
Maybe time to give the other 97% a chance?
Today I informed the
#IMF
Board that I will resign as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, effective September 12. It has been a privilege to serve our 189 member countries with the devoted staff of this institution.
When did interracial marriage become legal in each US State? It’s hard to believe how late those changes came into effect and how much work remains today. Source:
This is a story that can't be told often enough.
Vaccines work. They have saved hundreds of millions of lives, and prevented hundreds of millions of parents the pain of burying a child.
Up there with fire and the wheel among greatest inventions ever.
1967: Smallpox probably still killed 2 million people.
1977: The world's last smallpox infection is recorded.
1980: WHO declares smallpox eradicated!
Our blog summarizing key take-aways 👉
Our new entry on smallpox 👉
We've got proven aid interventions that increase incomes, reduce violence and foster sustainable development in furtherance of US (and global) national security. They get $35 billion/yr.
We spend ~50 times that on the failed monstrosity that is the F-35.
World Bank is cancelling conferences *in DC* because of Coronavirus (the Fragility Forum, no less), but it still isn’t paying out on pandemic bonds yet.
Sometimes what is needed isn’t financial engineering solutions, sometimes we just need finance.
June 2020, % Americans who want to see immigration:
Increased: 34% (highest since qn first polled in 1965)
Stay the same: 36%
Decreased: 28% (lowest since 1965)
Saying "immigration good for America": 77% (highest since qn 1st polled)
Source: Gallup
It is 25 years since Robert Kaplan wrote "The Coming Anarchy: How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet" in the Atlantic.
History hasn't treated it very well.
It isn't robots.
It isn't migrants.
It isn't trade.
Growing inequality in the US is overwhelmingly the result of regulatory/policy decisions.
(See also: the tax bill currently being debated in Congress)
Almost all of the growth in top American earners has come from ... groups that tend to benefit from regulatory barriers that shelter them from competition
@jtrothwell
The reason poor people are poor is that they don’t have enough money. Cash can really help with that problem.
(I see transfers as a benchmark: any aid program less effective than giving cash to the world’s poorest people should be replaced by giving cash to the poorest people).
It is impossible to overstate how much giving cash transforms the lives of the very poorest in the world. I haven’t seen anything so effective + life-changing. Far more international development assistance should focus on cash.
@GiveDirectly
Most inequality-tolerant (90th percentile) Swedes want a CEO-unskilled worker pay ratio of 5 to one. Most inequality-tolerant in US want 50:1. Average American wants 7:1 (reality: 354:1)
Thru Heathrow immigration 2 days before Xmas in 10 mins *during a Border Force Strike*.
Today in a 2hr+ line for immigration @ Dulles.
This on US passports both ways.
Why isn’t the US tourism industry *screaming* about the utterly dire state of the visa and immigration system?
It’s does annoy me that (approx) 43 billion studies & experiments that demonstrate giving poor people cash does not lead them to become useless wastrels but instead is spent making their lives better often via investments has had ~0 impact on global attitudes towards safety nets.
You know what are *really* bad for your health to cook with? Indoor dung & wood fires.
If some of the energy over this non-policy-event could be redirected at finding financial support for cleaner cooking technologies (including LNG) in developing countries, that would be good.
The
#gasstoves
news blitz is media whiplash at its worst. Strategic drama created by anti-fossil orgs. The resulting splash suits both progessive and reactionary news outlets and politicians and anyone else who thrives on polarization. Everybody "wins" and loses.
Wow. This
@WorldBank
education loan to Tanzania actually provides finance to support the government create a segregated schooling system in which pregnant girls are placed in "parallel education centers"
Separate but equal, no doubt.
hard to say global poverty getting worse when average income of people under any poverty line from $1.90 to $100/day going up, & the reason there are more people living under the $5 poverty line is that poorer kids aren’t dying as much as they used to.
Here's what I think of fleets on twitter:
350 ships doesn't do nearly as much for national security as international cooperation and finance on pandemics, climate, crime and technology, and that cooperation would also be way cheaper.
Omicron was first detected in the U.S. on December 1, and it's only Dec 20 and we are already looking at around 100,000 new omicron cases each day.
Hold on to your hats, folks.
(Fine print: Latest daily case count is 133k x CDC estimate that Omicron is 73% of new cases)
And of course smallpox eradication via vaccination, including coordinated support from the Soviet Union and the US in the midst of the Cold War as part of a truly massive, truly global effort.
The world is so much stronger against pandemics when it works together.
Only about a third of aid is actually implemented by recipient country governments, firms and NGOs.
Rest by donor firms/governments and multinational orgs.
New blog by
@euanritchie
@scepticalranil
@JustinSandefur
and me.
New from me: some 100,000 green cards are set to go to waste amid backlogs at citizenship and immigration services if the government can’t figure out a legal way to save them — unless congress or the courts intervene
The idea you can use a little bit of public money to bring to life a vast array of private investment projects in infrastructure and services isn’t just fiction, it is utter fantasy. It makes Shrek look like a documentary by Vaclav Smil.
So, what next?
Estimated mortality rates of children since 400BC. For most of history ~27% of newborns were dead before their first birthday and 46% by their 15th. Today those mumbers are below 3% (infant) and 5% (<15).
Not satisfied with hypocrisy on gas and coal, on delivering 'new and additional' climate finance, on carbon tariffs affecting countries that produce an iota of EU GHG emissions per capita, now EU (157kg fertilizer/acre) says LDCs (34kg/acre) shouldn't have access to fertilizer.
Quiet part said out loud
“the EU Commission explicitly opposed the text, warning that supporting fertiliser production in developing nations would be inconsistent with the EU energy and environment policies”
The Pentagon spent $6 million on a project that imported nine Italian goats to Afghanistan.
That's $666,000 per goat.
Heifer International could have done better.
Apparently, developing countries shouldn’t only give up fossil fuel powered electricity at the same time rich countries are increasing their use, but also give up the internal combustion engine when 98% of the cars in the US still use it.
For those concerned that people peddling the idea of global progress are all just neoliberal shills... you can argue exactly how much of rising world life expectancy is due to public investment in health and sanitation but the answer is somewhere between a lot and hugely a lot.
Three maps on life expectancy:
In 1800 the global average was around 30 years
In 1950 the global average was 46 years
And until 2015 it increased to 71 years
My recent post with the 3 maps is here
The world is a lot richer than it used to be, but it is less generous in terms of aid flows. That's because the old rich are giving less and the new rich are hardly providing aid at all.
Me on the
@CGDev
blog.
See also the Ebola vaccine, a combination of donors help pay for the vaccinations, it was developed by researchers in US, Germany, Canada, vaccine trials in nine countries, support from WHO.
You could have given each person in Afghanistan $21,710, or 43 years of their income per capita, for $825 billion.
Might have been more effective in reducing rather than increasing support for the Taliban?
And yet people worry about *aid* effectiveness.
HT
@blakehounshell
Since 9/11, the US has spent $825 billion in Afghanistan, the
@PentagonPresSec
tells reporters. Officials remain tightlipped over the May 1 withdrawal.
So in the nineteen most highly aid dependent countries (of course skewed poor) 5% of WB assistance plausibly leaks offshore. Were I a fan of World Bank Financial and Project Management controls (I'm not) I'd be touting this as evidence of their considerable effectiveness.
That censored World Bank paper is now online:
"aid disbursements to highly aid dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management"
by
@jorgenja
et al
"Since the 1980s, the global death rate from these hazards has dropped by 85 percent, including by 52 percent for general floods, 55 percent for heat waves, and 87 percent for storms."
via
@vijramachandran
@PatrickTBrown31
@TedNordhaus
World Bank/IFC set out to demonstrate Africa could access cheap solar power from private sector.
Instead they demonstrated the private sector was uninterested unless nearly all the investment came from the public sector, with big subsidies, tax breaks and guarantees.
This map scale *tops out* at replacement fertility. All of Europe is emptying out.
If only there was a nearby region with a growing labor force that could help provide the workers Europe is going to need.
This story only emerged thanks to the bravery of two junior staff who were willing to stand up to a (very) senior manager and then to Bank management as a whole. The
@WorldBank
response not only failed them, but deserves further investigation.
When the US stops using coal, oil and gas to ‘manufacture’ bitcoin, maybe then it can start complaining about low income countries using gas to power lighting, refrigeration, schools, hospitals…
. A thread and blog on what I thought was a really promising World Bank Group effort to support privately provided renewable power in Africa which turns out to be not what it seemed, and lessons for the IFC, the World Bank and donors.
I know there are some doubts about how big and how fast the impact of this move, but it is absolutely the right call to make sure nothing stands in the way of rapid global rollout of Covid vaccines. This is a fantastic act of US leadership.
These extraordinary times and circumstances of call for extraordinary measures.
The US supports the waiver of IP protections on COVID-19 vaccines to help end the pandemic and we’ll actively participate in
@WTO
negotiations to make that happen.
The Plague Cycle, out 1/21/2021
"A completely fresh view on world history" -- Tim Harford.
"This year’s must read" -- Richard Florida
"Compelling" -- Kyle Harper
"Provides a critical historical and analytic perspective" --Michael Kremer
"Critics of overpopulation down through the ages have had a nasty habit of treating people less as individuals with value and agency than as sentient locusts"
Tfw you spend all day in jury selection for a foreign corrupt practices act case and they throw you out just because you’ve written a book about corruption :-(
Xmas wishlist:
● Wooly jumper
● Polio eradication
● 100% effective AIDS & malaria vaccines
● Accelerated collapse in solar & battery prices
● Brexit reversal
● WTO agreement on open borders & TRIPS rollback
● Poll drubbing for US tax bill aye votes
● BladeRunner II DVD
But what I'd *really* like is targeted sanctions on the House of Saud. First up, sell MBS' chateau in France (world's most expensive house) and use the proceeds to support Medecins Sans Frontiers' work in Yemen.
I like
@AnandWrites
idea for a boycott of Saudi Arabian investment money, but think it will take the threat of a consumer boycott on the firms taking the cash to accomplish that.
German position at the World Bank: "the Bank should now go further and also exclude all coal- and oil-related investments, and further outline a policy on gradually phasing out gas power generation to only invest in gas in exceptional circumstances”
Fascinating article. Turns out tons of highly cited econ articles all rely on the same deeply problematic source of population data. All kinds of implications for studies of long-term development, military outcomes, etc. The perils of data monocultures...
My new book:
Close the Pentagon: Rethinking National Security for a Positive Sum World.
Paperback ($7.99) & e-book ($3.99) --please buy!
Blog and first chapter here:
Thread to follow.
2020-2050, Germany working age population will fall by 8m people, Italy by 9m, Japan by 20m. High income countries as a whole 46m fewer working age than today. They'll also have a *lot* more retirees.
Who's going to staff & fund the care economy?
For those who think charity should begin at home, it does:
US has ~0.1% world's poorest.
US domestic anti-poverty programs 10x to 20x bigger than all US foreign aid.
One of the reasons I left the World Bank was because I was uncomfortable as a US citizen and resident pushing policies on developing countries as if from a position of ethical and political superiority.
And that was in 2010.
White families account for only 17% of poor people shown in news stories. They are 66% of the poor population.
Helps explain why white racial resentment associated with hating welfare.
Donors have already spent $48 bn on climate and environment funds housed at the World Bank alone, The cost-effectiveness of that spending is low, and we aren't hugely clear on how to improve it.
Before spending any more, maybe figure that problem out?
European donors tell African countries they don’t need natural gas in their energy mix, even though many African countries have huge reserves of gas.
Apparently, European donors need natural gas in their energy mix, even if they have to import it from Russia.
So here's a big thing I admire and love about
@cgdev
.
Most think tanks are 'eat what you kill' --raise money and (after a cut for overhead), you get to spend that money.
CGD isn't like that. And today has demonstrated (again) why that matters.
Wow, from
@CharlesCMann
‘s Wizard and Prophet: by the year 2000, 80% of rice grown in E. & SE. Asia from International Rice Research Institute -created varieties. This Ford and Rockefeller originated institute must be one of the most successful bits of philanthropy ever.
I really like this
@SamanthaJPower
article: 3 things US can do to regain global respect: lead global effort to get Covid vaccines to all; considerably increase the number of foreign students in the US; & start the fight against corruption at home.
This, from
@robblackie_oo
is an image of the published contract between EU and AZ for Covid-19 vaccine.
It is time for complete, global contract transparency around Covid vaccines.
1/n
For context: the 539 people who attempted to cross the English Channel in small boats in 2018 would have added 0.006 percent to the stock of migrants in the UK if they all stayed.
If they'd all decided to live in Dover, they would have added 0.5 percent to the town's population.
Why is BBC News using a circle on a map to represent “over 80” people which is about 10 times bigger than Dover on the same map? Dover has a population of over 100,000 people.
Wow, just went through 450 applications for a research assistant job at CGD. There are a *lot* of smart people out there who have done fascinating things, have incredible skills and want to make global public policy better. Yay for the world (and
@cgdev
, and, in this case, me).
My next book, *Winning the War on Death: Humanity, Infection and the Fight for the Modern World* might come out with
@ucpress
one day (it is being peer reviewed). But now seems like a good time to be tweeting about it. So I’ll do one chapter a day in a thread starting here.
I flunked out of the school I was in at age seven and repeated the year at a different (nicer) school. Things worked out for me but it was a pretty grim year. Here’s the Easter term report.