O que é este blog?

Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;

Meu Twitter: https://twitter.com/PauloAlmeida53

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paulobooks

Mostrando postagens com marcador The Globalist. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador The Globalist. Mostrar todas as postagens

sexta-feira, 1 de fevereiro de 2013

A globalizacao e a pobreza no mundo - The Globalist

Contrariamente às equivocadas afirmações dos altermundialistas, como gostam de se chamar os antiglobalizadores, a pobreza tem diminuido no mundo e nao foi' exatamente graças à ajuda externa, ou à assistência publica internacional, e sim em virtude da globalização.
Já escrevi alguns artigos sobre a redução da pobreza em nível mundial, apoiando-me nos trabalhos do economista catalão da Columbia University, Xavier Sala-i-Martin. Os interessados nesses meus trabalhos podem buscar no meu site (www.pralmeida.org) pelas palavras-chave "pobreza", "redução", ou pelo nome do economista, creio.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

The Globalist Quiz > Global Economy
Marketplace Globalist Quiz: How Poverty Shrinks Globally
By The Globalist | Thursday, January 31, 2013

The developed world's attention seems to shift all too briefly to the fight against poverty in the developing world. There are signs of progress in this fight, but there are also concerns about the impact of the global financial crisis. We wonder: What is the share of the population of developing countries that now lives in extreme poverty?

Answers:
A. Over half
B. About one-third
C. About one-fifth

A. Over half is not correct.
As recently a 1981, 52.2% of the population living in developing countries lived in extreme poverty. The World Bank defines this status as people living on no more than $1.25 a day (in constant dollars). Back in 1981, the total number of people living in extreme poverty was 1.94 billion.

Even today, the level of extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is still around that level, at 47% as of 2008 (the latest data available). However, many countries around the world — not just China, as is often assumed — have made big strides in reducing poverty levels.

Mexico's extreme poverty rate, for example, fell from 19% in 1999 to only 5%. And even in Ethiopia, Africa's second most-populous country, the level of extreme poverty fell by over 30 percentage points in a decade, from 86% in 1999 to 54% in 2008.

B. About one-third is not correct.
As recently a 1999, 34.7% of the population in developing countries lived in extreme poverty. That year, the total number of very poor people was 1.74 billion. The decline in percentage terms is all the more impressive, as the size of the developing world's population has increased by about 2.3 billion people since 1981, or by 66%.

Still, in the developing world outside China, the absolute number of people in extreme poverty — at 1.1 billion — is still the same as it was in 1981. While that number was on the rise in the 1980s and 1990s, it has been falling since 1999.

In the Middle East, extreme poverty is down to 2.7% of the population. In East Asia, it is down to about 14%, and in South Asia 36%.

C. About one-fifth is correct.
As of 2008, 22.4% of the population in developing countries — or 1.29 billion people — lived in extreme poverty. That is roughly equivalent to the current population of China.

Indications are that the steady decline of extreme poverty in the developing world has not been halted by the global financial crisis. It is estimated that the incidence of extreme poverty in developing countries had fallen to 20% by 2010.

That would not only move another 100 million people out of extreme poverty, but also mean that the first of the UN's Millennium Development Goals — cutting extreme poverty in half from its 1990 level — can been achieved before the 2015 deadline. Moreover, the absolute number of extremely poor people in developing countries is steadily decreasing to the one-billion level.

Copyright © 2000-2013 by The Globalist. Reproduction of content on this site without The Globalist's written permission is strictly prohibited. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
The Globalist claims full trademark rights to The Globalist name and logos.
1100 17th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036

terça-feira, 25 de dezembro de 2012

The Globalist's Top Books of 2012

The Globalist's Top Books of 2012
December 25, 2012

From the legacy of British colonialism and the possibility of Hitler's assassination to Turkey's role in the Arab Middle East and Afghanistan's cotton fields, The Globalist Bookshelf crisscrossed the world and spanned centuries of history in 2012. As a year-end special, we present ten of the best books featured on The Globalist this year (along with five others for good measure).

1.    Ghosts of Empire: Britain's Legacies in the Modern World
By Kwasi Kwarteng
Excerpt: How has the British and U.S. to desire to control Iraqi oil shaped the
 country's recent history?   

2.    Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else
By Chrystia Freeland
Excerpt: Why have Americans been so tolerant of the rising gulf between rich and poor?   

3.    Who Stole the American Dream?
By Hedrick Smith
Excerpt: Why has the American Dream slipped out of the reach of more and more of the middle class?   

4.    Waging War on Corruption: Inside the Movement Fighting the Abuse of Power
By Frank Vogl
Excerpt: How can transparency help end the fleecing of resource-rich countries by their corrupt leaders?   

5.    Economics After the Crisis: Objectives and Means
By Adair Turner
Excerpt: Why do economists — and the policymakers who heed their advice — need to reconsider the conventional wisdoms of their profession?   

6.    Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity
By Lester Brown
Excerpt: What can be done to help those on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder cope with rising food prices?   

7.    The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as If the Future Matters
By Diane Coyle
Excerpt: What policies should governments focus on to ensure that future generations live at least well as the current generation?   

8.    Borrow: The American Way of Debt
By Louis Hyman
Excerpt: What is "patriotic" about cutting taxes for the rich? And how is the middle class "empowered" by piling up mountains of debt?   

9.    The Revenge of Geography
By Robert D. Kaplan
Excerpt: Will water make Turkey a greater power in the Arab Middle East in the 21st century than it was in the 20th?   

10.    Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power
By Andrew Nagorski
Excerpt: How did Hitler's relationship with a young American woman change history in the 20th century?   

Honorable mention:
Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy
By William H. Janeway
Excerpt: Can the United States muster the will to step into the 21st century world of energy?   

Bull by the Horns
By Sheila Bair
Excerpt: Mitt Romney badly lost the women's vote. But are Republicans the only party with a "woman problem?"   

Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Excerpt: Why would USAID not get behind an effort to turn Afghan farmers from poppy to cotton?   

No One's World
By Charles A. Kupchan
Excerpt: Western dominance will wane in the 21st century, but what will take its place?   

Exits from the Rat Race
By Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky
Excerpt: How did mid-century concerns about economic fairness give way to today's crisis-prone, Darwinian capitalism?   

For a complete listing of books featured on The Globalist Bookshelf in 2012, click here.

Copyright © 2000-2012 The Globalist | 1100 17th Street, NW, Suite 605, Washington, DC 20036

sexta-feira, 30 de novembro de 2012

Brazil and India compared with each other ??? My God !!! (only in the mess...)

Parece que o autor deste livro acha que o Brasil se parece mais com a Índia do que com qualquer outro país, ou vice-versa (faz diferença). Não creio, ou pelo menos não quero crer: a Índia é uma coisa (I beg your pardon) caótica fazem mais ou menos 4 mil anos, e aparentemente vai demorar mais uns 4 mil anos para deixar de ser um caos.
Acredito que o Brasil deve diminuir sua caótica situação doméstica em menos tempo do que isso: talvez só mais uns 150 anos...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida


Learn more about Breakout Nations at Amazon.com

Globalist Bookshelf > Global Economy
The India-Brazil Axis
 

By Ruchir Sharma | The Globalist, Saturday, August 11, 2012
 
There has been plenty of talk in recent years about the parallels and contrasts that mark the India-China relationship. But Ruchir Sharma, author of "Breakout Nations" and a managing director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, points out that Brazil — although half a world away — shows many more real-life parallels to India than China does.

ndia has its reasons for self-confidence. By many indicators, from the number of TV sets in the hands of consumers to the number of cars on the road, to the large and increasingly young population, India does indeed look much like China of the 1990s.
Culturally and politically, India has far more in common with the chaos and confusion of modern Brazil than with command-and-control China.
Back then, China was poised to supplant Thailand as the world's fastest-growing economy. But to assemble a true composite picture of India that would argue that India looks just like 1990s China, one has to leave out many of the less flattering images. Moreover, China is not the only possible model for India to consider. It turns out that, culturally and politically, India has far more in common with the chaos and confusion of modern Brazil than with the command-and-control environment that defines China.
While China has summoned the willpower to produce a new round of landmark economic reforms every four or five years for some decades now, the once-dynamic reform cycle stopped in Brazil back in the 1970s.
After that, the dynamism and optimism the world associated with the then-very modern buildings of Brasilia, its new capital city, began to languish. Brazil became self-absorbed and, before long, fell off the list of up-and-coming economies and entered the abyss of having to contend with one of the worst bouts of hyperinflation the world had ever seen.
Both India and Brazil are "high-context" societies, a term popularized by the anthropologist Edward Hall. It describes cultures in which people are colorful, noisy, quick to make promises that cannot always be relied on, and a bit too casual about meeting times and deadlines.
These societies also tend to be particularly family-oriented, with tight relationships even beyond the immediate family, based on close ties that are built over long periods of time. In an environment this familiar, there is a lot that goes unsaid — or is said very briefly — because values are deeply shared.
By the same token, much is implicitly understood from context. The spoken word is often flowery and vague. Apologies are long and formal. In that regard, Indians and Brazilians are a lot more like Italians than, say, Germans.
Both India and Brazil are "high-context" societies in which people are colorful, noisy, quick to make promises that cannot always be relied on, and a bit too casual.
High-context societies believe deeply in tradition, history and favoring the in-group, whether it is one's own family or business circle. They are vulnerable to corruption. If this description sounds questionable to businessmen or tourists who know Brazil and India as open, familiar and straightforward, think again. It could very well be that what you have experienced is only the low-context facade adopted by the outward-facing elites who need to deal with foreigners. Sure, everyone is welcome at Brazil's Carnival or an Indian wedding, and they may even be made to feel like an insider. But the reality is that it takes decades to become a real part of these cultures.
India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, is fond of remarking that whatever can be said about his country, the exact opposite is also true. There is something to this — India is rife with contradictions, no doubt.
But his remark also represents a convenient form of high-context analysis. It is a way of avoiding overt confrontation with hard facts — or with the side of India that could drag it down.

A passage to India

Of course, Brazil and India are far from the only high-context cultures. This kind of social interaction is typical in much of Asia and Latin America. Yet I am convinced that there is a particular bond between Brazil and India. I feel it all the time when I visit these countries. The parallels range from the late dining habits and colorful personalities to casual informality and cultural choices.
Attesting to this is that fact that the most popular soap opera in Brazil in recent time has been "A Passage to India." This is a Brazilian-Indian love story, filmed in the Indian cities of Agra and Jodhpur, and in which Brazilian actors play the Indian roles and pass easily for North Indians. To Indians who have seen it, the show is right on the mark in terms of look, mood and even lighting.
At the same time, Indians and Brazilians are only very loosely aware of their connection, if at all. And yet the mutual admiration and emulation society works in some very ephemeral ways.
High-context societies believe deeply in tradition, history and favoring the in-group, whether one's own family or business circle. They are also vulnerable to corruption.
Consider Google's purchase in 2002 of a California-based social networking site called Orkut. Google was keen to compete with Myspace and Facebook in Orkut's 48 languages. The site fizzled out in just about every country — except for in India and Brazil, which together generate more than 80% of Orkut's traffic. Evidently, something about the site's look, feel and features hits that Indo-Brazilian chord of brotherhood.
Social media habits and preferences aside, there is also a distinct Indo-Brazilian connection in politics. This is visible in the desire for state protection from life's risks — social welfare for the nation as one big in-group — to a degree that is rarely found in other high-context societies, such as China and Chile.
The political elites of India and Brazil share a deep fondness for welfare-state liberalism. In addition, both countries' populations demand high levels of income support — even though their economies do not yet generate the necessary revenue to support a welfare state.
Per capita income is about $12,000 in Brazil and only $1,400 in India. Brazil offered what was probably the emerging world's most generous, yet strategically placed and effective welfare program — the Bolsa Familia income supports.
Not to be outdone, India's governing Congress Party has lately turned to generous spending in an effort to recover the political backing it lost in recent decades to an array of regional parties. In 2005, it pushed through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which guarantees the rural poor a hundred days of public-sector employment each year, at an annual cost to the Indian Treasury of nearly $10 billion.
It was easy enough for India to increase spending in the midst of a global boom, but the spending has continued to rise in the post-crisis period. Inspired by the popularity of the employment guarantees, the government now plans to spend the same amount extending food subsidies to the poor.
There is also a distinct Indo-Brazilian connection in politics in the desire for state protection from life's risks in the form of social welfare.
If the government continues down this path, India may meet the same fate as Brazil in the late 1970s, when excessive government spending set off hyperinflation and crowded out private investment, ending the country's economic boom. One of the key mistakes made in Brazil at the time was indexing public-sector wages to inflation, which can trigger a wage-price spiral. India's central bank has voiced its fears of a similar price spiral as the wages guaranteed by MGNREGA (an inept acronym to be sure) pushed rural wage inflation up to 15% in 2011.
Furthermore, under the current regime of drift in India, crony capitalism has become a real worry. Widespread corruption is an old problem, but the situation has now reached a stage where the decisive factor in any business deal is the right government connection.
When I made this observation in a September 2010 Newsweek International cover story titled "India's Fatal Flaw," I was treated as a party spoiler. Top government officials in India told me that such cronyism is just a normal step in development, citing the example of the robber barons in 19th-century America.
Since 2010, the issue has exploded in a series of high-profile scandals, ranging from rigged sales of wireless spectrum to the shoddy construction of facilities for the Commonwealth Games that India hosted that year.
India's place in Transparency International's annual corruption perception index fell to 88 out of 178 nations in 2010. That was down from 74 in 2007. (A lower rank indicates higher official corruption.) India is approaching the point that Latin America and parts of East Asia reached in the 1990s.
That was also the point in those countries when a backlash started to build against continued economic reforms — because any opening up of the economy was tragically, but not without reason, seen to favor just a select few. That delayed true growth strategies, which were very much needed to benefit the population at large, for well over a decade in many places.
India may meet the same fate as Brazil in the late 1970s, when excessive government spending set off hyperinflation, ending the country's economic boom.
In India, similar stirrings of deep middle-class discontent about the direction (read: true beneficiaries) of economic reform appeared in 2011. That was when many urban Indians started to rally behind social activist Anna Hazare, who morphed quickly from being a hunger striker protesting corruption to the leader of a civil movement capable of paralyzing Parliament and damaging business confidence. No other large economy has so many stars aligned in its favor as does India, from its demographic profile to its entrepreneurial energy and, perhaps most important, an annual per capita income that is only one-fourth of China's.
But destiny can never be taken for granted. India's policymakers cannot assume that demographics will triumph and that problems such as rising crony capitalism and increased welfare spending are just sideshows instead of major challenges. These are, after all, exactly the factors that have prematurely choked growth in other emerging markets.

Editor's note: This article is adapted from Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles (W.W. Norton & Co.) by Ruchir Sharma. Published by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 2012 by Ruchir Sharma.

Brazil's Strategy for Economic and Social Sustainability -Brazil's Strategy for Economic and Social Sustainabilityds

 

Photo credit: Vepar5/Shutterstock.com

Globalist Perspective > Global Economy
Brazil's Strategy for Economic and Social Sustainability
 

By Carlos Ivan Simonsen Leal | Friday, November 30, 2012
 
Brazil's economic history provides a valuable lesson for policymakers hoping to solve global problems such as climate change. For decades, writes Carlos Ivan Simonsen Leal, Brazil's leaders refused to deal with the country's runaway public finances, leading to one economic crisis after another. Do world leaders want to risk the same with the global environment?

n Brazil, the mood is very different from Europe. We don't have a recession, we have mild growth. Of course, we don't have the same high standards of living as either Europe or the United States.
Only those countries that are laying the groundwork for global cooperation at home are making a positive contribution to solving the problems at hand.
But the crucial thing we have learned over the last 25 years of managing our economy — and especially from the periods when we mismanaged it — is this: Whenever you don't face up to the problems you have, they will end up bigger than they are. For many years, we made the political decision to avoid the issue of public deficits. And so we had a series of hyperinflations — not one bout with it, but an entire series. This, of course, halted the growth of our country.
That was a hard lesson. The first thing the new president, Dilma Rousseff, upon being inaugurated in January 2011 was to rein in fiscal expenditures. This, of course, coincided with a global economic slump. It is therefore no surprise that Brazil's growth slowed from 7.5% to around 2.5% to 3%.
Our new president has also come under pressure from some of her own party's core constituencies — in particular, public-sector unions — to raise wages well in excess of current inflation. President Rousseff could have taken the easy path and said, "Well, let me raise wages by 5%, 7% or even 10%, while inflation is 4%."
One might have expected her to give in to that demand — she is a socialist, after all. But she did not do that. She resisted.
The impression that I get from what is happening in some other parts of the world is that political leaders do not have the courage to resist the excessive demands of the public sector. It is conveniently forgotten that someone always has to pay the bills.
The European Union started out with countries that had very good credit positions and that could raise debt quite easily in the markets. Now, Europe faces a crisis whose root is not only financial, but concerns the ability to compete.
There are clear downsides to the European consensus that growth shouldn't be measured just in terms of increases in GDP. One also has to be aware that if GDP basically "grows" at 0% for ten years, while other parts of the world are experiencing 5% or 9% growth in GDP, then one will become increasingly irrelevant.
What is happening in some other parts of the world is that political leaders do not have the courage to resist the excessive demands of the public sector.
This is a very basic but often forgotten point about the direct linkages of fiscal discipline, economic performance, and a society's long-term future. He who seeks to avoid facing the hard choices will have to face even harder, even less pleasant choices down the road. We in Brazil have accumulated too much experience of seeking to avoid many hard choices. If there is one positive aspect of this, however, it is that we now have a surprisingly broad-based consensus that we should no longer engage in such short-sighted and ultimately self-defeating strategies.
At the present time, we are halfway between making most of the hard choices we need to make - and not doing so. Of course, an inclination to make half-decisions is the nature of things everywhere. We try to avoid the worst scenarios and then play according to those constraints.
But the important matter is that we have to be ready to discuss the consequences of our partial inaction. If we do not do so, then things can become unmanageable quickly.
This is especially true when it comes to matters such as the environment, trade (including protectionism), monetary policy, income distribution and access to energy.
On each of these big agenda items, we are dealing with a dynamic process. We will have to choose between short-term and the long-term goals. Ultimately, the nature of politicians and the citizenry alike is to try and delay those decisions.
The political and economic reality, especially in an integrating world economy, is if you don't make your choices, they will be made for you. They will arrive at your doorstep whether you want them to or not.
The dynamic nature of this process is very interesting. You may be a loser in the short run, and you may be winning in the long run. There is a problem of credibility in the game.
But if we have processes that entail faith and credibility among players, it is much easier. If we don't have those, it will be much more difficult.
Given the strong competition for access of markets and natural resources, we are inclined not to devote resources to anything but making gains in those arenas.
What is even more interesting with regard to this dynamic process is that the domestic inclination to procrastinate may be dealt with by virtue of the fact that the process is ever more international in character. Take the issue of the environment. No doubt we are facing a very difficult situation. The evidence is indisputable that we cannot proceed for another 20 years doing what we have been doing — unless we want to really compromise the world for the rest of time.
The choice we face is between gambling our very existence on living in a world under climactic conditions that we have never known or not. The rational choice would be not to do that.
On the other hand, given the very strong geopolitical competition that is going on for access of markets and access to natural resources, we are inclined not to devote any resources to anything but making gains in those arenas.
Someone has to start playing the card of comparative gain rather than playing the card of non-cooperation. Other nations have to join this game and realize that this non-maximization is the best path.
We have to be smart enough to think of what could happen to the world a few years from now if we don't change course. Are we going to continue on a path the consequences of which are going to be very difficult to repair within ten years?
In my view, the best approach is to focus on two or three topics that represent the most important constraints on everyone, whether it is trade, labor mobility, technology transfer or the protection of our environment.
If at least we could do that, much would be gained. Solutions, preferably market-based, will come soon afterwards. To be sure, each region and each country will have its own solutions according to its own politics, but the world as a whole will become more maneuverable.
The way in which we are currently trying to proceed — by trying to interact on everything — is bound to make progress on anything impossible.
Each region and each country will have its own solutions according to its own politics, but the world as a whole will become more maneuverable.
The biggest price of entry to the global game, though, may be just this: That only those countries that are laying the groundwork for global cooperation and progress at home are making a positive contribution to solving the problems at hand. The reason why they would be willing to do this is not to make any concessions to other nations, but to improve their own lot, their national standard of living, as measured in terms of quality of life.
Measured against that mark, we Brazilians feel that we are moving in the right direction and are making a positive global contribution. We have learned the core lesson from our not-so-distant past.
The border between being lax on dealing with pressing realities and falling into the trap of self-delusion is very thin.














This essay was adapted from a presentation given by the author at the 2012 Salzburg Trilogue.

Hosted by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, the Salzburg Trilogue facilitates international cultural dialogue by bringing together recognized public figures to consider matters of current importance.
Series Archive






Find more of The Globalist's coverage on these topics:

Brazil
Economy
Sustainability



Join the discussion of this article on our Facebook page.

Follow The Globalist on Twitter.

domingo, 4 de novembro de 2012

Ayn Rand: a deusa do conservadorismo americano, 2


Globalist Perspective > Global PoliticsAyn Rand: The Siren of U.S. Conservatism (Part II) 

By Brent Ranalli | Saturday, November 03, 2012
 
Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency, may not view himself as an acolyte of Ayn Rand. But his adulation of the wealthiest Americans as job creators and his contempt for those who earn too little to pay income taxes is certainly Randian in nature. Brent Ranalli examines Rand's influence on the economic and political thinking inside today's Republican Party.

n its purest form, Ayn Rand's philosophy is startlingly radical and of dubious moral value, and in any case makes apparently impossible demands on human nature. (Part I of this article is here.)
An observer of Republican politics would have to conclude that the 2012 campaign season has been the season of Ayn Rand.
Yet Rand has enjoyed a wide following. Who looks up to Rand, and what have they absorbed from her writing? How is Rand's influence felt in today's political culture?

Rand's first hard-core disciples, her inner circle in what was called, with irony, the "Collective," were overwhelmingly Jews of Eastern European heritage, like herself, who hailed from Canada and the United States.

They were secular Jews but unassimilated — people who didn't quite "fit in" in their communities. It would appear that in Rand's circle they found a place to belong, one that affirmed their undoubtedly great intelligence and permitted them a feeling of superiority.

It was by all accounts an oppressive environment, and some have compared it to a mini-Stalinist society, complete with periodic purges.

Members of the Collective strove for super-human individualism on the basis of cold rationality. They managed to produce a stifling conformity (since there is only one most rational answer to any question) in matters great and small — politics, dress, musical and artistic taste.

Rand's influence on the wider world of American politics was first felt in the fledgling libertarian movement. Rand herself refused any association with the libertarians, and called them plagiarists and worse. But her writings helped galvanize the movement.

Over the decades, as the libertarians have grown in stature and influence within the conservative "big tent," Randian ideas have become more mainstream.

Individual Rand devotees have occasionally achieved positions of power and been able to shape policy. The most prominent of these was Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006.

As the libertarians have grown in stature and influence within the conservative "big tent," Randian ideas have become more mainstream.
Greenspan was among the few early disciples who remained on good terms with Rand to the end of her life. As many commentators have noted, Greenspan's policy career provides a cautionary tale about putting Rand's ideas into practice.

Greenspan wrote articles for Rand's publications espousing an ideology of extreme deregulation, looking forward to a world in which even building codes were abolished. Such requirements simply set low expectations, he thought.

"If building codes set minimum standards of construction," Greenspan wrote in an essay he contributed to Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, "a builder does not get very much competitive advantage by exceeding those standards and, accordingly, he tends to meet only the minimum."

Why not take away all codes and let builders figure out for themselves how safe they need to make their buildings?

When he was in a position of power inside the Beltway, Greenspan was able to conduct the experiment on a supreme scale: he presided over and lent support to a systematic dismantling of financial regulations designed to provide minimum protection to creditors.

And he got his answer: when minimum standards are taken away, you get chaos, disaster. For deregulation does not mean eliminating standards, it means lowering them.

When the minimum consumer protection expected of a builder or a banker is zero, he does not get very much competitive advantage by exceeding those standards. Accordingly, he tends to meet only the minimum — zero — and the consumer suffers the consequences.

The conventional journalistic account of the Greenspan story ends in 2008 with his acknowledging to Congress that he recognized a "flaw" in the economic ideology that had guided him for decades. The Randian policy program of extreme deregulation was dead, it seemed — refuted by events and repudiated by its great architect.

Sales of Rand's books have skyrocketed since the financial crisis. Atlas Shrugged sold more copies in 2011 than it did in 1957.
But that is not how the story ends. Greenspan hasbacktracked from his statement on numerous occasions and reaffirmed his Randian convictions. And in the culture at large, proponents of extreme anti-regulatory ideology are still heard.

Indeed, the Republican Party is leaning ever more heavily in the direction of Rand-influenced libertarianism. Reductions in regulation and taxation, always front and center in the Party's platform, are increasingly discussed not merely as purported means to economic prosperity but as moral imperatives.

At the same time, the incoming president of the Cato Institute, the libertarians' flagship think tank, has declared an intention to adhere even more strictly to a Randian orthodoxy.

Sales of Rand's books have skyrocketed since the financial crisis. According to the Ayn Rand Institute,Atlas Shrugged sold more copies in 2011 than it did when it was a best seller in 1957.

While some see the economic crisis as proof of the bankruptcy of Randian policies, other see the government's struggle to response to the crisis as a replay of the slow societal meltdown depicted in Atlas Shrugged. They are convinced that we are on a path marked out prophetically by Rand.


The Republicans' Randian moment


An observer of Republican politics familiar with Rand's ideas would have to conclude that the 2012 campaign season has been the season of Ayn Rand.

The selection of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate is the most obvious signpost. For political reasons, Ryan has tried to distance himself from Rand. But his affinity is well known.

He has addressed crowds at organizations dedicated to promoting Rand's thinking. In a 2005 speech at the Atlas Society, then-Congressman Ryan described the profound influence Rand has had on his thinking. He has distributed Rand's writings to his staff.

It is hardly necessary that the rest of us share Rand's paranoia. No one needs to be burdened with the idea that a health care bill is the moral equivalent of a pogrom.
The Randian mood of the Romney campaign, though, consists of far more than Ryan's private views. It is pervasive, in discussions of taxes and regulations as moral issues. Perhaps most glaringly, it has been visible in Romney's comments about the 47% of American who don't earn enough to pay federal income tax.

Ayn Rand taught that "ideas matter." Given that we are living in a peculiarly Randian Republican moment, a good way to analyze some of the current presidential campaign propaganda is to strip it down to its Randian essentials.

  Exhibit 1: Preoccupation with the notion of "socialism"

The current obsession of conservative pundits in the United States with the threat of "socialism" and "communism" is, on its surface, difficult to fathom.

A recent political ad by Thomas Peterffy, the billionaire founder of a stock brokerage, has brought the message to viewers in major television markets, conjuring up images of the dark days of totalitarian communism in Peterffy's native Hungary.

But the Soviet empire is long gone, and international Marxism is a dead letter. U.S. socialist political parties are even more marginal than the Greens. The Democratic Party is a centrist party by international standards. Why, in the 21st century, the hysteria about socialism?

The answer lies, at least in part, in Rand's ideological paranoia about Soviet communism.

Rand's younger sister Nora, who grew up in Russia, when finally reunited with Rand in New York in later years could not shake the fear that Rand's chauffeur and cook were U.S. government spies. Rand too — understandably, given the trauma of her adolescent years — had similarly magnified ideas of the menace of communism.

In her black-and-white way, she equated Soviet tyranny and collectivist ideology with each other and with governmental activity of every sort. She saw the threat of international communism in every shadow, and resisted it with every fiber.

Mitt Romney's derision of the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income tax could have come straight out of Atlas Shrugged.
The immorality of nearly every aspect of government was a central theme of Rand's ideology. Rand's system of belief also gave us the notion that there is a perfectly transparent slippery slope from almost any sort of government coercion to Soviet-style despotism, and from almost any sort of government service to helpless dependency.

Rand's paranoia was entirely understandable. It is hardly necessary that the rest of us share it. No one needs to be burdened with the idea that a health care bill is the moral equivalent of a pogrom.

  Exhibit 2: Worshiping the wealthy

Both left and right have been playing at class welfare this election cycle. The way the right is going about it has a peculiarly Randian imprimatur.

Consider Mitt Romney's derision of the 47% of Americans who don't earn enough to pay federal income tax. (He ignored the fact this group pays other federal, state, and local taxes, many of which are regressive.)

Romney accused these citizens — half of the nation — of lacking in personal responsibility, being dependent on government, and having an entitlement mentality. The speech could have come straight out of Atlas Shrugged.

Romney may not be a Rand follower himself, but he has clearly absorbed the talking points, whether consciously or merely from digesting the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.

In Rand's literary imagination there were two kinds of people: the productive and the parasites. The productive, an elite minority, create and amass wealth.

Meanwhile, the masses of parasites use their numbers and the power of government to extract that wealth. The less well-off are derided for their "victim mentality," while the wealthy elite are seen as the true victims.

Rand lived in a simple, polarized world. She exhibited little curiosity about the lives of others, especially those she deemed "degenerate," whether individuals or groups (e.g., Native Americans, Arabs). This lack of curiosity and empathy was her own personal limitation and failing.

Seizing on Ayn Rand's simple story of virtue and vice focuses energy on nonexistent threats rather than real, pressing, complex problems.
That in the fantasy world of Atlas Shrugged, she should paint the masses with a broad brush as entitlement-minded and lacking in personal responsibility is an acceptable if dubious literary conceit.

That a candidate for the U.S. presidency should spout these generalizations as if they applied to the real 47% in all its diversity — students and the elderly, educators and military personnel, the working poor and the middle class, lifelong Republicans and Democrats — is merely inane.

As for the wealthy: In the current campaign, we see the Randian moral double standard applied on a class basis by some conservative commentators. The poor are chastised for accepting government assistance, but no stigma attaches to the wealthy who (like Romney at Bain Capital) accept government subsidies.

The poor are scolded for not contributing enough in taxes, but Romney's relatively low tax rate (low by middle-class standards, because based on capital gains rather than earned income) is justified and defended.

  Exhibit 3: Individualism

The central positive message of Rand was individual responsibility and individual initiative. These themes are at the center of the Romney's campaign, and the guiding sentiment behind the adoption of the "We Built This" slogan.

Despite the mileage Romney got out of the slogan, one of the great ironies of the campaign has been that there is really not all that much difference between his views and those originally articulated by President Obama.

Romney talks about the supportive environment of family, church and community that enables the individual entrepreneur to thrive. Obama spoke of the inspiring teacher, the previous generations of entrepreneurs and workers on whose shoulders we stand.

It is only through Randian glasses that Obama's views can be interpreted as "collectivist" and Romney's as radically individualist. That this debate has become a flashpoint in the campaign speaks to the pervasiveness of the Randian perspective.


Capitalism, not democracy


Ayn Rand is a peculiar figure in the history of American political consciousness. She stood for classic American values like hard work, individual responsibility and free enterprise.

Asked what the best sort of political system was, Rand spoke unhesitatingly in favor of American capitalism, not American democracy.
But as they passed through the prism of her tortured Russian mind into her romantic novels, they refracted into grotesque caricatures of themselves.

Hers is a black-and-white world in which reason, wealth, virtue and free enterprise are pitted against unreason, squalor, mediocrity and collectivism, in an apocalyptic drama painted right across the body of the American public.

Asked by an interviewer what she thought the best sort of political system was, Rand pronounced unhesitatingly in favor of the system in her adopted homeland — but her response was not "democracy," it was "capitalism."

And she did not stop to correct herself, but elaborated on the notion of capitalism as a political system. The thought of democracy, or of a republic, did not appear to enter her mind.

This episode epitomizes the depth of her naiveté about American traditions and values, of being caught up in her own system of political thought, forged by her experience under czarist autocracy and totalitarian communism.

The Republican Party is facing an identity crisis. In recent decades, it has been the bastion of the Protestant white male — now, increasingly, a demographically endangered species.

To survive, the party must adapt. Seizing on Ayn Rand's simple story of virtue and vice, heroes and villains, "socialism" and radical individualism, is a strategy that must seem particularly tempting.

But it is both unwise and dangerous. It divides rather than unites. It focuses energy on nonexistent threats (socialism) rather than real, pressing, complex problems.

It demands an adherence to a black-and-white worldview and discourages curiosity about the messiness of reality and the legitimate perspectives of other people.

And it is pierced through with a dangerous and anti-democratic Nietzschean quality, a moral double-standard for the "right sort of people" — the wealthy and the self-styled virtuous, the heroes of the Randian drama in their head.

Part I of this article is here.




Join the discussion of this article on our Facebook page.

Follow The Globalist on Twitter.