Group items tagged

A movie ticket costs about 380 bolívars. Calculated at the government rate, that is $60. At the black-market rate, it is just $0.54. Want a large popcorn and soda with that? Depending on how you calculate it, that is either $1.15 or $128.The minimum wage is 7,421 bolívars a month. That is either a decent $1,178 a month or a miserable $10.60.

country’s income has shrunk

the black market for dollars has soared

strict controls on prices and foreign exchange for imports

“It’s crazy,” he said. “We’re living a nightmare. There’s nothing to buy, and the money isn’t worth anything.”

“Necessity has a dog’s face,”

Israel was unable to achieve the goals that it announced before the war. It was unable to disarm the various resistance movements and turn Gaza into a demilitarized zone, nor was it able to put an end to the tunnel system, or impose calm and guarantee the security of its own citizens.

t is neither possible nor acceptable that 1.8 million Palestinians continue to live in the world’s biggest open-air prison, and that they be required to surrender and acquiesce to the conditions of their detention.

It is unacceptable that Palestinians living there are banned from travelling out of Gaza. How much longer will Israel continue to rule the lives of Palestinians and demand their compliance, branding all those who resist the state of siege and occupation terrorists?

Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed

When members of the Israeli cabinet claim that the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, who is criticized for his dovishness in Palestinian circles, is not a possible partner for peace, they are essentially demanding a puppet, who completely submits to all Israeli demands.

If Israel is unwilling or incapable of understanding that this is the only way to end the conflict, then the international community must take it upon itself to intervene and enforce the two-state solution. It can no longer be claimed that direct negotiations between two unequal partners, Israel the occupier and the Palestinians who live under its occupation, are the only way to achieve this. It hasn’t worked for over 20 years.

Once again we see no indication that public insurance generosity has had a damaging effect

Note also that the employment rate increased in nearly all of the countries during this period. On average, it rose by nine percentage points between 1979 and 2013. That’s not what we would expect to see if generous public insurance programs were inducing large numbers of able adults to withdraw from the labor market

What we see in the chart is that countries with more generous public insurance programs tend to have less material deprivation.

With globalization, the advance of computers and robots, increased pressure from shareholders for short-run profit maximization, union weakening, and other shifts, wages have been under pressure. Couple this with the fact that many people at the low end of the income ladder have labor market disadvantages — disability, family constraint, geographic vulnerability to structural unemployment — and we have a recipe for stagnation in the market incomes of the poor.

here’s a good reason for these shifts: government provision offers economies of scale and scope, which reduces the cost of a good or service and thereby makes it available to many people who couldn’t or wouldn’t get it on their own.

Government provides more insurance now than it used to. All of us, not just some, are dependent on it. And life for almost everyone is better because of it

hese expenditures are encouraged by government tax advantages.22 But they do little to help people on the bottom of the ladder, who often work for employers that don’t provide retirement or health benefits.

To make them more affordable, the government claws back some of the benefit by taxing it as though it were regular income. All countries do this, including the United States, but the Nordic countries do it more extensively. Does that hurt their poor? Not much. The tax rates increase with household income, so much of the tax clawback hits middle- and upper-income households.

Another difference is that public services such as schooling, childcare, medical care, housing, and transportation are more plentiful and of better quality for the poor in the Nordic countries. Public services reduce deprivation and free up income to be spent on other needs. It’s difficult to measure the impact of services on living standards, but one indirect way is to look at indicators of material deprivation,

Targeted transfers are directed (sometimes disproportionately, sometimes exclusively) to those with low incomes and assets, whereas universal transfers are provided to most or all citizens.

Targeted programs are more efficient at reducing poverty; each dollar or euro or kroner transferred is more likely to go to the least well-off. Increased targeting therefore could be an effective way to maintain or enhance public insurance in the face of diminished resources.

“the more we target benefits to the poor … the less likely we are to reduce poverty and inequality.”

Korpi and Palme found that the pattern across eleven affluent nations supported the hypothesis that greater use of targeting in transfers yields less redistribution

The hypothesis that targeting in social policy reduces political support and thereby lessens redistributive effort is a sensible one. Yet the experience of the rich countries in recent decades suggests reason to question it. Targeting has drawbacks relative to universalism: more stigma for recipients, lower take-up rates, and possibly less social trust.44 But targeting is less expensive. As pressures to contain government expenditures mount, policy makers may therefore turn to greater use of targeting. That may not be a bad thing.

Public insurance programs boost the incomes of the least well-off and improve their material well-being. If such programs are too generous, this benefit could be offset by reduced employment or economic growth, but the comparative evidence suggests that the world’s rich nations haven’t reached or exceeded the tipping point.

Spending lots of money on social protection is not in and of itself helpful to the poor. Total social expenditures in the United States are greater than in Denmark and Sweden, because the US has a large private welfare state. But relatively little of America’s private social spending reaches the poor.

Public services are an important antipoverty tool. Their benefit doesn’t show up in income data, but they appear to play a key role in reducing material hardship. Services expand the sphere of consumption for which the cost is zero or minimal. And they help to boost the earnings and capabilities of the poor by enhancing human capital, assisting with job search and placement, and facilitating work-family balance.

CO2 embedded in imported goods minus the CO2 embedded in exported goods.

some of the CO2 produced (and reported) in emission records of Asian and Eastern European countries is for the production of goods consumed in Western Europe and North America

The composition of this trade is also important in terms of carbon intensity.

The goods exported from Russia, China, India, and the Middle East typically have a high carbon intensity, reflecting the fact that their exports are often manufactured goods. In contrast, we see that exports from the UK, France, Germany and Italy are low; this is likely to be the higher share of export of service-based exports relative to those produced from heavy industry.