Lessons for South Sudan

"When a new government comes into power, especially an inexperienced one, there's one phenomenon that never fails: every crook on Earth shows up. And every crook on Earth has the biggest promises, has access to billions of dollars of lines of credits, of loans."

Deborah Brautigam (via co-blogger TH)

Does media pessimism on migration and urbanisation get any worse than this?

China's rural poor left stranded as urbanites race ahead 

As workers leave the countryside in the hope of better pay, the communities they leave behind face increasing poverty

... 

Wang Fang and her husband, Chen Shuangfu, arrived in the provincial capital, Guiyang, 10 years ago, with just 10 yuan in their pockets. Their hard, unappealing work - collecting and sorting rubbish for recycling - earns them as much as 20,000 yuan a year, compared with their 1,000 yuan income back home. But their rural hukou means they are not entitled to many services - and, since the hukou is inherited, neither are their sons. (The Guardian)

So,  a couple living in rural poverty increase their income by a factor of TWENTY, from about £100 a year (at market exchange rates) to £2,000 a year, JUST BY MOVING TO THE PROVINCIAL CAPITAL, and you still want to find GRIPES!? Are you INSANE? Totally innumerate?!! Or know of some other secret government policy that nobody else has heard of that can increase the incomes of those living in rural poverty by MORE than 2000%?!! Get a grip!

Not for a second to deny that there are challenges to be overcome in the process of urbanisation. But writing long miserable articles about the woes of rural poverty without for a second stopping to celebrate the absolute wondrous miracle that is overnight 2000% pay increases for the poor, is insane. I would sort rubbish for recycling in a hovel for a 2000% pay raise. Wouldn't you?

That is the real story here. Not the fact that some poor rural people are still poor and rural.

Can Chindian Urban Planning Save the World?

If per capita carbon emissions in both China and India rise to U.S. per capita levels, then global carbon emissions will increase by 139 percent. If their emissions stop at French levels, global emissions will rise by only 30 percent. Driving and urbanization patterns in these countries may well be the most important environmental issues of the twenty-first century. 

Glaeser, Edward (2011). Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier (Kindle Locations 298-301). The Penguin Press. Kindle Edition.

Easterly on China

I don’t normally bother link to Easterly because you should all be reading him anyway. But this is too good to miss:

I’m saddened to see my favorite magazine [The New Yorker] publish an article seemingly in search of every possible fallacy about growth, the main one being that if you have a high growth rate, then the current autocrats and their economist advisors must be Gods…
… another way of stating China’s rapid growth recipe would be something like the following:
Have a succession of crazy autocrats, political chaos, and war savagely repress one of history’s most inventive peoples, along with not allowing one of the most successful trading diasporas in history to operate in China proper.  Then have things calm down a bit and have somewhat less crazy rulers allow more of the people’s energy and creativity to burst out. Presto, the change from EXTREME NEGATIVE to LESS NEGATIVE is called a “growth rate,” and it will be high. Now accept worship from around the world.

2000-2009 - A Great Decade

via The Monkey Cage, apparently Paul Krugman has been whining about the "naughties" and how nothing good happened in America. This is why I don't read Paul Krugman. He focuses too much on America.

Erm Paul, the continuation of the WORLD'S GREATEST ANTI-POVERTY PROGRAMME EVER? NO? NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU?!!