Results for “africa” 1079 found
African Americans and Government
Tyler may be correct that “the government as employer has done more for black communities than the government as purveyor of affirmative action.” But isn’t there something disturbing about this? Consider the following: Who do you think wrote:
The widely proclaimed growth in the black middle class in the 1960s and early 1970s associated with claims of “dramatic black progress” were in large measure attributable to the expansion of Great Society programs and the professional employment repercussions at levels of government. These programs played less of a role in generating an increase in the black middle class by uplifting the black poor than by providing direct employment to many blacks as social service providers to other impoverished blacks. Thus, one of the main legacies of the Great Society was to cement the symbiosis between the black poor and the black middle class – the former as the clients of the social service system and the latter as the service providers.
No, it wasn’t Charles Murray. It was the radical-leftist economist William Darity Jr., himself an African-American, writing in the May 1990 issue of the AER (JSTOR link). If true, what this suggests is that even middle-class black Americans were, and perhaps are, much less well integrated into the American economy than we might think from income statistics. I find this disturbing from just about any angle.
African food scandal
Zambia, Lesotho, Malawi, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe — not exactly marvels of good nutrition — have been destroying food shipments from America. Why? This will sound like a sick joke, but they are afraid of genetically-modified foods. These countries have now expressed official opposition to American food entering their country, at a time when almost 3 million Zambians, to cite just one example, desperately need food aid.
There is another villain in the story, namely some of the European nations. The Africans fear that if they accept genetically-modified foods, the seeds will mix with their current crops. Europe will then be reluctant to import African foodstuffs. By the way, Greenpeace opposes the food shipments as well.
Peter Pringle offers a good survey of the debates on genetically-modified foodstuffs.
Thursday assorted links
1. Interview with Ulrike Malmendier, a regional thinker in the best sense of the term.
2. “Paying Off People’s Medical Debt Has Little Impact on Their Lives, Study Finds.” (NYT) Model that.
3. Another look at suicide rates.
4. Should you have privacy rights to your brainwaves? (NYT) And should you have the right to sell or give away those rights?
5. C. Thi Nguyen on Value Capture, an interesting philosophy paper about overreliance on metrics and external evaluations.
6. Alas, Robert Hessen has passed away, RIP.
7. Productivity problems and sometimes even declines in African agriculture.
Tuesday assorted links
1. Paul Christiano appointed to USG Head of AI Safety.
2. Further worries about the anti-cavity thing. I don’t pretend to know the answers here, but this has not been thought through well enough. And SSC update.
3. Fritz Peterson, RIP, MIE. Very 1970s.
Zimbabwe launches new gold-backed currency
Zimbabwe has introduced a new gold-backed currency called ZiG – the name stands for “Zimbabwe Gold”.
It is the latest attempt to stabilise an economy that has lurched from crisis to crisis for the past 25 years.
Unveiling the new notes, central bank governor John Mushayavanhu said the ZiG would be structured, and set at a market-determined exchange rate.
The ZiG replaces a Zimbabwean dollar, the RTGS, that had lost three-quarters of its value so far this year.
Annual inflation in March reached 55% – a seven-month high.
Zimbabweans have 21 days to exchange old, inflation-hit notes for the new currency.
However, the US dollar, which accounts for 85% of transactions, will remain legal tender and most people are likely to continue to prefer this…
He committed to ensuring that the amount of local currency in circulation was backed by equivalent value in precious minerals – mainly gold – or foreign exchange, in order to prevent the currency losing value like its predecessors.
Here is the full story, file under “less than fully credible.” That said, I do think that many of the important monetary innovations of the future are likely to come in Africa.
Friday assorted links
1. Matt Lakeman on El Salvador, recommended.
2. Paxlovid not having a positive impact for the healthy and already-vaccinated.
3. Under what conditions will every Japanese person be named Sato by 2531?
4. Is “dark energy” weakening? And more from the NYT.
5. The Economist seeks a new economics writer.
6. How to lead coordinated research programs. A playbook.
7. A relatively positive view on how lenders are viewing Africa these days.
Thursday more assorted links
1. Percentage of women in C-Suite jobs is now declining in the U.S.
2. Short piece by my colleague Dan Klein on misinformation (WSJ).
3. A thread on new minimum wage results, noting that Dube has a response in there as well. Paper here.
4. Can GPT-4 talk people out of conspiracy theories? Maybe.
5. Mobile money for bitcoin, for Africa, and not requiring internet connections.
Thursday assorted links
Saturday assorted links
1. 101 things Leila would tell her past self.
2. “The colonel was then carried to the Dotonbori river and tossed into the murky water.”
3. Leadership lessons from Shakespeare’s Henriad.
4. Good thread on the Apple case.
5. Where do the major African economies stand? And fellowship in Tanzania.
Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic
I am setting aside most of the cultural and “macro” issues, and just considering policy, in my latest Bloomberg column. Excerpt:
Consider agriculture. If you fly over Hispaniola, you can see a notable difference between the Haitian and Dominican sides of the border. The Dominican side has plenty of trees, whereas the Haitian side is denuded. Much of that can be explained by Haiti’s history of weaker property rights. A “tragedy of the commons” has led to systematic exploitation of Haitian land.
The deforestation of Haiti dates from at least 1730, when French colonial policies, timber exports and the clearing of the land for coffee production all did damage. That hurt the prospects for Haitian agriculture, but much of the tree-clearing took place in the middle of the 20th century. Haitians have long used charcoal as an energy source, which led to unchecked deforestation, soil erosion and desertification. Thus, despite its beautiful natural setting, most of Haiti does not appear green and sparkling.
In the Dominican Republic, deforestation is also a problem — but not nearly on the scale of Haiti. Forests still cover about 40% of the country’s land (estimates for Haiti have ranged as low as 2%). The Dominican Republic has some national parks and reforestation programs, and developed alternative energy sources to reduce the demand for charcoal. Forest cover, and the quality of the soil, made a comeback. The country is also working toward selling its reforestation for carbon credits, giving it further economic incentive to protect its land.
To the extent that the Dominican Republic still experiences deforestation, it often comes from livestock cultivation, a far more economically productive activity than gathering wood for charcoal.
To citizens of wealthy countries, these differences may not sound enormous. But agriculture is an important driver of early economic development. Surpluses from agriculture enable the accumulation of savings, which finances broader commercial investment and helps people start small businesses. The economy obtains a base for diversifying into manufacturing, as happened in East Asia. Ethiopia’s double-digit growth spurt, before the recent tragic civil wars, also was rooted in agricultural productivity gains.
Today the Dominican Republic is essentially self-sufficient in food, including rice. According to the US government, Haiti now relies on imports for “a significant portion of the agricultural products it consumes,” including 80% of its rice. In 1981, by contrast, food imports were only 18% of the Haitian diet.
There are further arguments at the link.
Wednesday assorted links
1. The largest worms on earth.
2. AI safety is not a model property.
3. Dan Schulz podcast with Nabeel Qureshi, with transcript.
4. African influencers who make it big in Brazil.
7. Be careful what you wish for: “The proposed legislation may force app stores to remove TikTok. But restricting access through web browsers or already-installed apps—which would be necessary to really limit the platform’s reach—would represent another level of intrusive regulation.” (WSJ)
Tuesday assorted links
1. Over 2015-2021, the number of Chinese workers in Africa fell by 64 percent (note the link has too many pop-ups, click only if you have to).
2. Seasonal pollen boosts traffic fatalities.
3. Golden Mall reopens in Flushing, Queens (NYT).
4. Katja Grace and AI worries (New Yorker). And a general update on the AI worries.
5. Henry Oliver on James Joyce.
6. A post-mortem on neoreaction.
7. The Alliance for the Future Manifesto, on AI, by Brian Chau.
Saturday assorted links
1. “In sports, South Korean women generally outnumber men in the stands.” (NYT)
2. Why don’t people talk about fat-tailed sheep more?
3. China-Africa donkey trade wars? (NYT) Donkey nationalism!
4. “Roosevelt fixed his VP mistake.”
5. New Oliver Kim Substack, he is an economist from Berkeley, first piece is on public housing.
Wednesday assorted links
1. AI-generated advice doesn’t help lesser performers as much as you might think: data from chess.
2. Incels are slightly left of center on average.
3. How AI is changing the internet (WSJ). And here is Consensus, which summarizes scientific papers for you.
4. Why isn’t solar scaling in Africa?
5. Counties with the highest life expectancy in the United States.
6. Four individual Beatles movies are coming out, I predict Ringo’s will be best.
Saturday assorted links
1. Liverpool man who inherited £100,000 lets 12 strangers give the money away.
2. Jonathan Eaton, RIP. And more on his work in trade economics.
3. ACX grants from Astral Codex. And new African School of Economics coming in Zanzibar.
4. The Monk and the Gun is a fun Bhutanese movie about the foundations of democracy (and markets).
5. Using AI to campaign and deliver your victory speech, while in jail.
6. Another 2014 post on Putin: “Putin is signaling to the Russian economy that it needs to get used to some fairly serious conditions of siege, and food is of course the most important of all commodities. Why initiate such a move now if you are expecting decades of peace and harmony?”
7. John Bruton, RIP (NYT, he negotiated peace with Northern Ireland and also set the corporate income tax rate low in Ireland and designed the referendum that overturned the country’s ban on divorce).