I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of work by my CUNY colleague Branko Milanovic showing that if you look at income growth by percentile of the whole world population for the past 25 years, you see “twin peaks”: rapid growth near the middle, representing China’s middle class, and at the top, representing the global elite, with a sag in the region representing the OECD working class. But was it always thus? I asked Branko what a similar picture looked like for the previous generation — and he has obliged.
Here’s a version of the original Milanovic history of the world in one chart:
Branko calls this the elephant picture, although I don’t see it; Janet Gornick says it’s a camel. I say it’s very like a whale …
But here’s the picture for the preceding generation — by “ventile”, that is, 5 percent interval, rather than percentile — and it doesn’t look at all similar:
So pre-1990 or so we had no visible tendency toward either inequality or equality at a world level; the elephant-camel-whale is for the later period. That’s interesting, because post-1990 is also the period of hyperglobalization, of unprecedented growth in trade due to slicing up of the value chain.
How big is the causal link? I don’t know. But there is, I’d argue, an important and interesting stylized fact here for us to work with.
theedrich on Tue, 1st Dec 2015 4:16 am
¿Inequality? Youze ain’t seen nuttin’ yet. Tainter’s world complexification means massive joblessness. Quite apart from Peak Oil, robots alone are eliminating ecological niches for the low end of humanity. Among other analyses on this theme, a recent 300-page report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch concluded:
“[T]his revolution [i.e., replacement of humans by robots] could leave up to 35% of all workers in the UK, and 47% of those in the US, at risk of being displaced by technology over the next 20 years, according to Oxford University research cited in the report, with job losses likely to be concentrated at the bottom of the income scale.”
Also, there are other projections that, even by 2025, 40% of all human employment in the U.S. will be replaced by robots. Despite innumerable attempts to interpret such findings optimistically (e.g., ghetto dwellers will become computer geniuses), the reality is that that above-mentioned bottom is in large part composed of low-IQ types — especially, of course, Blacks, closely followed by others in the losing flange of the bell curve, as well as by the many who prefer not to work at all.
These unemployables will predictably gravitate into crime, with heavy concentration in the narcotics area. The controllers of the political machines will undoubtedly preach yet more Communism under various cloaks, mainly to conceal their own skullduggery and their corrupt hold on power. But the underlying reality will persist and worsen. America will turn/is turning into another ThirdWorld sewer under pretextual names such as “compassion” and “dream.”
In the now-emerging globalism, only industrious people with skills needed in a complex world will be able to keep their heads above water — and only if they can be protected against the surging criminality. Recognizing official propaganda for what it is and escaping forced affirmative action benefitting parasites will be a major task for survivors.
Meanwhile, all the mindless academic marches and carefully cultivated rage by Negroes screaming in their best pidgin English will have no effect on the robotization of the planet. For evolution is a law of nature.
The current suicidal importation of yet more of the lower primates (“refugees”) into the West will only deepen the unemployment sinkhole. Featherbedding by socialist governments will explode, but to no avail. And as Maslov’s hierarchy of needs is decapitated among Whites, Liberal-leftist insanity will attempt to fill the void of meaninglessness pervading the public with the usual incitement to “revolution.” The flaccidity of effete, effeminized Christianity will give way to Mohammedan barbarism in the permanent doldrums of the human Sargasso Sea of the jobless, as neutered Christians cry “peace and love!” and fast-breeding Musselmen cry “conquest!”
The profound nihilism implicit in modern materialism is leading willy-nilly to White genosuicidism. Its motto is the notorious, “He who dies with the most toys, wins.” Because media manipulation of the mass mind can go only so far and cannot, with its sanctimonious and sissified propaganda about “coming together,” “community,” “sharing,” “anti-racism” (i.e., anti-Whitism), and similar drivel, stem the plunge of the lemmings into the abyss.
Since the complexifying White world seeks not to cleanse itself, but annihilation, it will get it. As Tainter has predicted.
Davy on Tue, 1st Dec 2015 7:59 am
Looney Plunges As Canadian GDP Collapses Most Since 2009
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-01/looney-plunges-canadian-gdp-collapses-most-2009
“Who could have seen that coming? It appears, for America’s northern brethren, low oil process are unequivocally terrible. Against expectations of a flat 0.0% unchanged September, Canadian GDP plunged 0.5% – its largest MoM drop since March 2009 and the biggest miss since Dec 2008. With Canada’s housing bubble bursting, it’s time for the central planners to get back to work and re-invigorate the massive mal-investment boom (and ban pawning of luxury goods).”
“In the past year, we have extensively profiled the collapse of ground zero of Canada’s oil industry as a result of the plunge in the price of oil, in posts such as the following:”
“Canada Crude Contagion: Calgary Home Prices Drop Most In 2 Years”
“Canada’s Biggest Oil Casualty To Date: Calgary’s Nexen Shutters Oil Trading Desk”
“The Canadian Housing Bubble Has Begun To Burst”
“Canada’s Oil Patch Confidence Crashes”
“Canada Mauled by Oil Bust, Job Losses Pile Up – Housing Bubble, Banks at Risk”
“The Stage Is Set For A Massive Housing Market Correction in Canada’s Oilpatch”
“Since then it has gotten far, far worse for Canada…”
GregT on Tue, 1st Dec 2015 11:13 am
The international banking cartels have seized control of the western banking systems. The USD and debt are their tools of control. The previous governor of the Bank of Canada was Mark Carney, a former investment banker with Goldman Sachs. He has now been appointed the Governor of The Bank of England. Stephen Poloz, the currently appointed Governor of The Bank of Canada, is a member of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, a regular contributor to the IMF, and an attendee of the Bilderberg Conferences. These are the true CEOs of the NWO syndicate, not the politicians that the people believe are in control. The USD will be propped up by any means necessary, without it the plans for the NWO would be impossible. If not for CB policies around the world, the USD would have already collapsed into the quagmire of debt that it really is. The USD is a facade, as is the US economy.
Rodster on Tue, 1st Dec 2015 12:30 pm
It looks more like “RICS” instead of “BRICS”
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Brazil Releases Shocking GDP “Obituary”: “It’s Mutated Into An Outright Depression,” Goldman Exclaims
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-01/brazil-releases-shocking-gdp-obituary-its-mutated-outright-depression-goldman-exclai