Give Directly are my favourite charity and they should be yours too. They give money to poor people. Not just any poor people, but really poor people in East Africa. There’s a minimum of bureaucracy and they are innovating new ways to remove the bureaucracy which currently exists. It is simplicity itself, and it works. And […]
Every month I’ll be donating $50 to some of the poorest people in the world. I won’t be visiting them in sandals to build them a school or supporting some egocentric project I think they need. I’ll just be sending money directly to poor people. This sounds great to me. GiveDirectly find poor households in […]
On Monday I wrote about the reality invariant. Often these people are reality invariant because they can afford to be wrong. Nothing too bad will happen. They won’t be brutalised by the police if they crack down on non-existent crime. They won’t be detained at the border. They won’t discover themselves poor. Some people can’t afford that […]
One incredibly effective way to tackle poverty is to give people money. This is sadly an exciting new idea in poverty alleviation. Not a bad idea you might think. I’ve always been skeptical of people going off to India to build schools. Its self indulgent bullshit frankly, the one thing which the developing world has […]
Even unemployment, poverty or the death of your spouse have smaller effects on life-satisfaction than mental health, despite this, even in rich countries under a third of people with diagnosable mental illness are in treatment. That comes from this paper, linked to by Chris on twitter. This paper is a contribution to the second World Happiness […]
If you would like this essay as a pdf you can download it here. You can also download a pdf version of Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation itself here. I recommend you do both. What is happening in China? Mao’s China has been transformed – a market society has been created. This week I will be writing about the political […]
Thank you for reading last week. If you would like this week’s posts collated as an essay you can download a pdf of “Karl Polanyi in Beijing.” You can also download a pdf version of Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation itself here. I recommend you do both. The collated posts also follow below the fold. I […]
GiveWell, the charity rating company, has promoted GiveDirectly to top charity in the world. The Malaria Foundation used to be top but has been finding it difficult to put extra money to use. GiveDirectly doesn’t have that problem and can be scaled up unlimitedly so all donations over the next few weeks will be doubled. […]
Last week Larry Summers brought the idea of secular stagnation right into the mainstream (of the little read econoblogosphere). In my eyes it was a big presentation in a “only Nixon can go to China” kind of way. Larry Summers is a creature of technocratic centrism in America, ex-President of Yale (whoops, thanks Tim/a>) Harvard […]
The last time we checked in on GiveDirectly they’d published a report outlining the amazing results they’d recently registered from their latest trial project. The full report detailed, amongst other things, that a pound given freely, without condition, to someone in absolute poverty generated a 28% annual rate of return. Restated, that means that every two years your […]
So, charity update. As you’ll know I signed up with GiveDirectly to transfer my beer money to slightly more useful purposes. They’re the charity that Less sclerosis for me, more money for poor people. It’s so pareto optimal. They’ve done a trial, and it was good news! Of course, they publish plans for all their […]
Chris here talks about the current deceleration of globalisation. Figures from the OECD show that globalisation is already slowing down. It estimates that import penetration in developed economies – the share of imports in total final spending – rose from 13.4 to 21.4 per cent between 1993 and 2007 – a rise of 0.5 percentage […]
The principle “first, do no harm” is a good one in most situations. But one situation where I find it hard to apply is in development: getting poor countries rich. Harm is inevitable and unavoidable and to some degree unmitigatable. Owen Barder lays it out thus: We should pursue policies which do (much) more good than harm, […]
The FT reports that “cabinet ministers” – it’s Vince Cable, everybody knows it’s Vince! – are looking into completely nationalising RBS and setting it to work directly lending to firms in an effort to boost growth. It would cost £5bn to buy the remainder of RBS and the betting I expect is that this would […]
As far is my understanding, there were two periods of Libor fixing at Barclay and elsewhere; one prior to 2008 which involved manipulating Libor to boost trading profits indirectly and a second after 2008 where they manipulated Libor to prevent themselves going under. First of all, disclaimer for Barclays, “they” were all at it, Barclays were just […]
I like Laurie Penny’s writing, but its not subtle. Laurie’s recent review of a Game of Thrones was so poor that it has driven me to write a review of her review. Necessarily, here be Spoliers, beware. Superficially Game of Thrones appears like a normal, goodies versus baddies fantasy adventure. Were it my job to write […]
Monetary policy is confusing, but one thing most people understand is currency devaluation: Make your currency cheaper and foreigners will buy lots of stuff from you generating jobs and growth. The two are largely synonymous but not a lot of people understand that. One person who I thought would understood that is renowned macroeconomist and economic geographer Paul Krugman. […]
Apparently Paul Staines [1] is angry with the UK Government’s foreign aid budget, and has pulled a stupid stunt harassing old ladies. To highlight the injustice of wealthy Briton’s being taxed to give aid to poor Indians, Paul tried to hijack a joint aid event. Apparently India has a third of the world’s poor. Although precise numbers are […]
On Europe Day, I just want to say, I don’t understand why the EU is so unpopular. I can understand why Tim hates it. He is a market fundamentalist. I can understand why Carl hates it. He is a socialist. But for 95% of possible near futures, neither Tim’s nor Carl’s prefered policies are likely […]
Every widening of state activity is looked upon by business with suspicion, but the creation of employment by government spending has a special aspect which makes the opposition particularly intense. Under a laissez-faire system the level of employment depends to a great extent on the so-called state of confidence. If this deteriorates, private investment declines, […]
Left Outside 
You must be logged in to post a comment.