A armadilha da renda media - Otaviano Canuto et alii

O Brasil parece ter sido afetado pela armadilha da renda media. Tem jeito de sair, mas apenas se o governo praticar as politicas corretas e deixar de praticar as erradas.Aqui parece que o governo gosta de praticar so as erradas.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Avoiding middle-income growth traps

Pierre-Richard Agénor, Otaviano Canuto, Michael Jelenic, 21 December 2012

Many of the emerging economies of the last two decades are now ensnared by ‘the middle-income trap’, in which middle-income countries don’t quite push through to high income status. This column presents recent research suggesting that, if governments act early and decisively to improve access to advanced infrastructure, enhance the protection of property rights, and reform labour markets, trapped economies – like their East Asian counterparts in the 1990s – can push on through.

Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailShare on gmailMore Sharing Services26

A

A

Related

• China: From imitator to innovator?Zhihong Yu , Markus Eberhardt, Christian Helmers
• Why did Europe’s growth take-off happen first?Quamrul Ashraf, Oded Galor

In the postwar era, many countries have managed to quickly reach middle-income status, but few have gone on to become high-income economies¹. Rather, after an initial period of rapid ascent, many countries have experienced a sharp slowdown in growth and productivity, falling into what has been called a ‘middle-income trap’:

• The World Bank (2012) estimates that of 101 middle-income economies in 1960, only 13 became high income by 2008.

Those countries were Equatorial Guinea, Greece, Hong Kong SAR (China), Ireland, Israel, Japan, Mauritius, Portugal, Puerto Rico, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Spain, and Taiwan, China (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Per capita incomes relative to the US, 1960 and 2008

Stuck in the middle

• Formal evidence on growth slowdowns² and middle-income traps has suggested that at per capita incomes of about US$16,700 in 2005 constant international prices, the growth rate of per capita GDP typically slows from 5.6 to 2.1%.
• Using regression and standard growth accounting techniques, recent analysis (Eichengreen, Park, and Shin 2011) suggests that growth slowdowns are essentially productivity growth slowdowns, whereby 85% of the slowdown in the rate of output growth can be explained by a slowdown in the rate of total factor productivity growth; much more than by any slowdown in physical capital accumulation.

What causes the trap?

A common explanation of growth slowdowns is based on a Lewis-type development process (Canuto 2011; Eichengreen et al 2011; and World Bank 2012):

• Switching labour from low-productivity sectors (e.g. agriculture) to higher-productivity sectors (e.g. industry and modern services) provides a massive, but one-off, rise in per capita income.
• The switch in this initial phase of development is triggered by the application of imported technologies adopted in sectors producing labour-intensive, low-cost products.
• Once these countries reach middle-income levels, the pool of underemployed rural workers drains and wages begin to rise, thereby eroding competitiveness.

Productivity growth from sectoral reallocation and technology catch-up is eventually exhausted, while rising wages make labour-intensive exports less competitive on world markets – precisely at the time when other low-income countries become engaged in a phase of rapid growth.

Accordingly, growth slowdowns coincide with the point in the growth process where it is no longer possible to boost productivity by shifting additional workers from agriculture to industry and where the gains from importing foreign technology diminish significantly.

An overlapping generations perspective

We present an alternative characterisation of middle-income traps (Agénor and Canuto 2012)³. Our approach agrees with the idea that productivity slowdowns are a major cause of middle-income traps, but differs from the existing literature in terms of how to explain this and what public policies can do about it.

In particular, several factors may affect productivity growth, including individual decisions to acquire skills, access to different types of public infrastructure, and knowledge network externalities (defined as the possibility that a higher share of workers with advanced levels of education has a positive impact on performance, that is, the ability to benefit from existing knowledge, of all workers engaged in innovation activities)⁴.

By extension, there are a number of public policies that developing countries can employ to avoid or escape from middle-income growth traps. Such measures include developing advanced infrastructure in the form of high-speed communications networks, improving the enforcement of property rights through patent protections, and reforming labour markets to ensure that rigidities do not prevent the efficient firing and hiring of employees.

Fundamentally, these policies attract more high-ability workers into the design sector, improve productivity and wages in that sector, and increase a country’s capacity for innovation.

Access to advanced infrastructure

Escaping from a middle-income trap may be achieved by a sufficiently large increase in investment in advanced infrastructure, particularly in high-speed communications networks. The availability of good-quality information and communications infrastructure play an important role in fostering innovation, both by facilitating the cheap circulation of disembodied knowledge flows across and within national borders as well as by reducing the transaction costs of international trade and foreign investment. Thus, improving access to advanced infrastructure boosts productivity and wages in the design sector, which draws more labour and triggers the shift in labour supply, magnifying – at least temporarily – the benefit associated with exploiting the existing stock of ideas.

Enforcement of property rights

To create incentives for individuals and firms to engage in innovation and design activities, the enforcement of patents is essential; however, this is often lacking in developing countries. A poorly functioning system to administrate patents and enforce property rights may create a deadweight loss for the economy and make it more likely for countries to be caught in a middle-income trap. Conversely, improved enforcement of property rights enhances innovation and translates into higher wages in the design sector, which would draw more high-ability workers into that sector.

Consequently, it is more likely that the knowledge network externalities alluded to earlier would kick in and set the economy on a path to higher productivity and output growth.

Labour market reforms

By exacerbating the misallocation of talent, labour market distortions may make it more likely that the economy will end up in a lower-growth equilibrium. To be sure, some types of labour market restrictions, especially those on firing costs, may be particularly detrimental to design or innovation activities. The reason is that in such activities, it is often more difficult to observe the productivity of a worker before hiring – in contrast to routine tasks in manufacturing, where your ability to observe, both ex ante and ex post, is less costly. Thus, the risk of hiring a worker who turns out to be a poor performer is higher in activities where a college degree does not necessarily provide a reliable signal about future performance. In such conditions, the labour market distortion acts as a disincentive to seek higher education, with adverse consequences for innovation and growth.

Middle income traps and the East Asian experience

As mentioned earlier, only 13 countries were able to transition from middle- to high-income status since the 1960s. Of these countries, five were from East Asia – Hong Kong SAR (China), Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, and Singapore – four of which comprise the so called ‘Asian Tigers’. Given their success, let’s reflect on their experience in order to draw lessons for other middle-income countries seeking to move into high-income status. Many of the public policies highlighted above – as well as a larger framework for innovation based on technological learning and public sector support of research and development investments – can be extrapolated from the East Asian success story.

• Of the East Asian economies that were able to escape the middle income trap, all have succeeded in developing advanced infrastructure, particularly in the form of high-speed communications networks and broadband technology.

For a number of countries, the evolution of these services has been fostered by the liberalisation of telecommunications markets and related regulatory framework reforms (Gill and Kharas 2007).

• The success of the East Asian economies that were able to transition from middle- to high-income status was based on their ability to push the technological frontier and move from imitating and importing foreign technologies to innovating technologies of their own.

Strong protection of intellectual property rights has been a major factor in facilitating this home-grown innovation. According to the World Bank’s Doing Business Database⁷, intellectual property rights in economies such as Hong Kong SAR (China), Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, China, rival those in place in Japan, the US, and other high-income countries. As a result of a well-functioning system of intellectual property rights protection, many countries in the region have also become global leaders in patenting their own technologies.

• Flexible labour markets and open economic policies have allowed for the reallocation of labour across sectors within the most successful economies in the region.

Countries in the region have relied extensively on international trade to accelerate their labour transfer by inserting themselves into the labour-intensive segments of global value chains. Such a transfer was facilitated by advances in information and communication technologies, by decreasing transport costs and lowering international trade barriers (Canuto 2011). This labour market flexibility has facilitated a new labour transition that is increasingly directed toward innovative occupations.

Conclusion

The middle-income trap is avoidable if governments act early – rather than late, when the benefits of cheap labour and the gains from imitating foreign technology are all exhausted – and decisively to promote innovation.

Doing so requires timely implementation of public policies aimed at improving access to advanced infrastructure, enhancing the protection of property rights, and reforming labour markets. As the East Asian experience illustrates, such policies are central to fostering technological learning, attracting talented individuals into research and development activities, and encouraging the build-up of national and international knowledge networks.

References

Agénor, P-R and O Canuto (2012), “Middle-Income Growth Traps”, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, 6210.

Canuto, O, M Dutz, and J G Reis (2010), “Technological Learning and Innovation: Climbing a Tall Ladder”, In O Canuto and M Giugale (eds.) The Day After Tomorrow: A Handbook on the Future of Economic Policies in the Developing World, 51–66, Washington, DC, World Bank.

Canuto, O (2011), “Navigating the Road to Riches”, Project Syndicate.

Canuto, O (2012), “Harnessing Trade Opportunities for Growth and Development”, Capital Finance International.

Commission on Growth and Development (2008), The Growth Report: Strategies for Sustained Growth and Inclusive Development, Washington, DC, World Bank.

Eeckhout, J and B Jovanovic (2012), “Occupational Choice and Development”, Journal of Economic Theory, 147, 657–83.

Eichengreen, B, D Park and K Shin (2011), “When Fast Economies Slow Down: International Evidence and Implications for China”, Working Paper, 16919, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.

Gill, I, H Kharas with D Bhattasali et al. (2007), “An East Asian Renaissance: Ideas for Economic Growth”, Washington, DC, World Bank.

IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) (2010), “The Aftermath of the Global Crisis”, Washington, DC, IDB Publications.

Langdale, J (1997), “International Competitiveness in East Asia: Broadband Telecommunications and Interactive Media”, Telecommunications Policy, 21(3), 235–49.

OECD (2010), The OECD Innovation Strategy: Getting a Head Start on Tomorrow, Paris.

UNIDO (2009), “Industrial Development Report 2009: Breaking In and Moving Up; New Industrial Challenges for the Bottom Billion and the Middle-Income Countries”.

US Chamber of Commerce (2012), “China’s Drive for Indigenous Innovation”, Washington, DC, APCO Worldwide.

Weinberg, B A (2011), “Developing Science: Scientific Performance and Brain Drains in the Developing World”, Journal of Development Economics, 95(May), 95–104.

World Bank (2012), “China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative High-Income Society”, Washington, DC.

WIPO (2011), “World Intellectual Property Report: The Changing Face of Innovation”, WIPO Publication, 944E, Geneva.

---

1 The term ‘middle income trap’ was apparently first used by Gill and Kharas (2007); see also Commission on Growth and Development (2008) ‘Middle-income economies’ are defined in accordance with the World Bank’s classifications by income group, as given here.
2 The authors define a growth slowdown based on three conditions: the first requires that prior to the slowdown, the seven-year average growth rate is 3.5% per annum or greater. The second condition identifies a growth slowdown with a decline in the seven-year average growth rate by at least 2 percentage points. The third condition limits slowdowns to cases in which per capita GDP is greater than US$10,000 in 2005 constant prices—thereby ruling out episodes related to countries that have not yet successfully developed.
3 Another view of the middle-income trap, which also focuses on occupational choices in a globalized world, is developed in Eeckhout and Jovanovic (2012).
4 Indirect evidence of the importance of (local) knowledge networks is provided by Weinberg (2011), who found that per capita GDP in developing countries is positively related to the number of important scientists born in and staying in a country.
5 Of course, all production sectors (not only design activities) may benefit from advanced infrastructure. For instance, it is well documented that in recent years ICTs have helped integrate supply chains both within and across borders, thereby boosting efficiency in the production of manufactured goods (Canuto 2012). However, this does not affect the logic of this argument.
6 Imitation activities may take the form of task-based production, that is, specialization in some stage of a value chain rather than in final products. However, task-based production may reinforce a country’s specialization in low-technology, less sophisticated activities—which can be viewed as another form of a middle-income trap, that is, an ‘imitation trap’. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO 2009) compared the sophistication of product- and task-based manufacturing and found no evidence that task-based production is less technologically sophisticated than production of final products.
7 Doing Business Database, World Bank and International Finance Corporation,
 

Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailShare on gmailMore Sharing Services26

Topics: Development, International trade, Labour markets, Productivity and Innovation
Tags: income, innovation, investment, labour market reform, middle income

Related

• China: From imitator to innovator?Zhihong Yu , Markus Eberhardt, Christian Helmers
• Why did Europe’s growth take-off happen first?Quamrul Ashraf, Oded Galor

• 1577 reads
• Printer-friendly version

Partido dos companheiros: uma inclinacao totalitaria - Sergio Fausto

A caracterização não é do articulista e sim minha: ele faz uma avaliação leniente do partido dos companheiros, censurando-o pelos malfeitos (que atribui a alguns dirigentes), reconhecendo seu papel no sistema político brasileiro, mas esquecendo o principal: o inevitável DNA totalitário dos companheiros e de seu partido, uma indisfarçavel inclinação pela ditadura, pelo controle dos corações e mentes dos cidadãos, pelo monopólio completo sobre o Estado e suas agências executivas. Sem reconhecer isso, fica difícil entender porque o partido derivou para o crime: justamente ele não derivou, essa inclinação é congenital ao espírito totalitário que preside a sua formação e atuação.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida  

Aonde irá o PT?

Sergio Fausto*

O Estado de S.Paulo, 22 de dezembro de 2012

Nenhum outro partido tem raízes populares comparáveis às do PT. Não há outro líder político brasileiro com a história de Lula. Essas duas credenciais, no entanto, têm sido utilizadas para negar, encobrir e/ou justificar práticas flagrantemente contrárias ao próprio ideário republicano de que o partido e seu líder maior se diziam os mais legítimos defensores. Não se trata de práticas episódicas, mas de ações sistemáticas pelas quais instituições e recursos públicos são postos a serviço dos interesses do PT e de seus membros.

É uma tragédia política, porque todo país civilizado precisa de uma esquerda verdadeiramente republicana e democrática. E o PT, que poderia representá-la, afasta-se cada vez mais dessa possibilidade. O partido adquire semelhanças crescentes com o velho PRI mexicano - pela interpenetração de partido, Estado e sindicatos - e com o peronismo argentino - pelas mesmas razões, acrescidas da mística criada em torno de seu líder maior.

A possibilidade histórica de o PT representar uma esquerda democrática e republicana se perdeu - resta saber se definitivamente - em meio à sua transformação num partido pragmático e organizado. O velho PT sectário, fechado dentro da esquerda, e consumido por uma vida interna tão vibrante quanto entrópica, cedeu lugar a uma organização partidária orientada para acumular recursos financeiros, ganhar eleições e governar com amplas alianças.

A experiência em governos estaduais e municipais de grandes cidades tornou o partido mais realista e moderado. O acesso a fundos e empregos públicos em cargos de confiança substituiu, em boa medida, para uma parte importante da militância, os estímulos morais que a crença ingênua num difuso ideal socialista oferecia ao petismo original. O horizonte político-teórico convergiu para o projeto de colocar o "Lula lá". Toda discussão sobre socialismo e democracia, ética e política foi posta à margem.

Quando o PT chegou ao governo federal, abriram-se portas ainda mais largas para fortalecer a máquina partidária, organizações e movimentos ligados ao partido. Além disso, criaram-se perspectivas de ascensão social sem precedentes para quadros e militantes partidários. Por meios formalmente legais (nomeação para cargos de confiança, transferência de parte da contribuição obrigatória às centrais sindicais, etc.) ou inteiramente ilícitos, o governo Lula atuou com desenvoltura, em todas as frentes, para contemplar o conjunto dos apetites. O presidente foi pródigo, pelo menos na complacência com o malfeito. Como houve maior redução da desigualdade e da pobreza em seu governo, qualquer crítica passou a ser "udenismo golpista".

O paradoxo desse processo é que a incorporação do PT ao governo e às elites políticas - um elemento indispensável e positivo da democratização do País -, ao invés de fortalecer, enfraqueceu as instituições e a ética republicanas. Um conservador cínico diria que esse foi o custo inevitável para domesticar o partido. Para quem não é uma coisa nem outra, cabe fazer duas perguntas: era realmente inevitável? E, mais importante, devemo-nos conformar com esse custo, mesmo sabendo que ele se pode perpetuar e crescer?

Há exemplos históricos recorrentes de que a ascensão de novos grupos sociais à elite política vem acompanhada de aumento da corrupção. Esta frequentemente ganha caráter sistemático quando a democratização da elite se faz pela entrada de partidos de massa e corporações sindicais. Dessa perspectiva, a Europa é a exceção no mundo ocidental. Nos Estados Unidos, essa foi a regra, em particular nas grandes cidades industriais do norte, como Nova York e Chicago. Na América Latina também, salvo no Chile e no Uruguai.

Essa constatação, porém, não isenta os atores políticos de responsabilidade. No caso do PT, sobressaem dois movimentos concomitantes ao longo de sua história: de um lado, seus líderes e sua militância, com honrosas exceções, jamais assumiram como patrimônio coletivo da democracia brasileira a construção institucional feita a partir da Constituição de 1988 (valeram-se dessas instituições, isso sim, seletiva e instrumentalmente, como é notório na relação esquizofrênica do partido com o Ministério Público e a imprensa); de outro, curvaram-se à lógica da conquista e manutenção do poder quando esta se chocou com princípios éticos em episódios cruciais da trajetória do partido.

Nunca será demais lembrar de Paulo de Tarso Venceslau, militante histórico da esquerda e então secretário de Finanças de São José dos Campos, que em 1995 levou ao conhecimento de Lula denúncias sobre um esquema de corrupção orquestrado por Roberto Teixeira, empresário-compadre do líder maior do partido, em prefeituras do PT. Para apurar as denúncias criou-se uma comissão que recomendou punição a Teixeira. Nada foi feito. Três anos depois, Venceslau seria expulso do partido. Dos membros daquela comissão, o único a se insurgir foi Hélio Bicudo. E se outros tivessem tido a sua coragem? E se Lula tivesse dado o exemplo, cortando na própria carne? A verdade é que não dá para se esconder atrás da história e da sociologia para justificar tudo isso que está aí.

Coragem cívica anda em falta. Não se espere isso dos apparatchiks da máquina petista. O que mais constrange é o silêncio dos intelectuais próximos ao partido. Uma exceção é Eugênio Bucci. Leia-se e releia-se o seu O inferno astral da estrela branca" (29/11, A2). Diz ele que o PT "precisa arcar com a responsabilidade de fortalecer a democracia que ajudou a conquistar". O difícil é que isso implica enfrentar a herança de Lula e José Dirceu, sem os quais, para o bem e para o mal, o PT não seria o que é hoje.

Uma coisa é certa: o PT não mudará enquanto estiver no Planalto. Caberá aos eleitores fazê-lo descer novamente à planície. Pois só a derrota ensina.

* DIRETOR EXECUTIVO DO iFHC, É MEMBRO DO GACINT-USP. E-MAIL: SFAUSTO40@HOTMAIL.COM

Assad, do Partido Bath: um aliado dos companheiros...

Este é o líder do partido que tem um acordo de cooperação com o partido dos companheiros. Entendo que alguma nota virá, de alguma parte, só não sei ainda adivinhar o teor...

Syria Uses Cluster Bombs to Attack as Many Civilians as Possible
Cluster bombs are impossible to use precisely, and the victims of such attacks describe them as collective punishment against populations that side with the rebels.

Intervencionismo governamental: artigo PRAlmeida

Meu mais recente artigo publicado: 

1082. “Intervencionismo governamental: na ótica deVon Mises e na prática brasileira”

 Revista Brasileira de Planejamento e Orçamento 

(Brasília: Assecor; vol. 2. N. 2, 2012, p. 211-222; ISSN: 2237-3985; 

link: http://assecor.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=56d75c193bddb16f909e168d3&id=08ceed1a63&e=8764970788). 

Relação de Originais n. 2423.

Legislando em causa propria: prisoes carinhosas...

O deputado federal Domingos Dutra, do PT maranhense, apresentou projeto que cria prisões mais caprichadas: água quente, cosméticos, academia de ginástica, acesso a jornais, rádio e TV a cabo. Os detentos manteriam os direitos políticos. Dutra é boa gente, pensa no bem-estar futuro dos colegas políticos.
(Da coluna política do jornalista Carlos Brickmann, 21/12/2012)

Venezuela: incertezas no pos-Chavez (entrevista PRA)

Um assistente do jornalista Sidney Rezende solicitou-me uma opinião sobre a Venezuela pós-Chávez. Como sempre, jornalistas reduzem tudo o que conseguem em poucas linhas, o que deveria valer para o jornal impresso (não para blogs e sites).
Em todo caso, transcrevo primeiro o que saiu publicado, e logo abaixo, a íntegra do que escrevi, para conferir o que faltou...
Eu não disse, exatamente, que o pós-Chávez seria traumático para a Venezuela. Acho, na verdade, que seria uma boa coisa, um alívio, para todos (menos para os que gostam de ditaduras, como os companheiros), mas que o processo, em si, seria traumático, pois ditadores fascistas costumam dividir o país, e contribuir para o aumento da violência, com brigadas de energúmenos armados. Acho que o potencial de termos mais sofrimento humano, além do desastre econômico é muito grande.  
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

'Seria traumático para a Venezuela', diz professor sobre saída de Chávez

Aldir Cony | Internacional | 21/12/2012 12h10

Nesta semana, o presidente da Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, internado em Cuba devido a um câncer na região pélvica, foi vítima de uma infecção pulmonar que agravou seu estado de saúde. O quadro aumentou a possibilidade de Chávez não assumir seu novo mandato no próximo 10 de janeiro e acendeu o debate sobre as consequências de uma possível troca de presidente no país.
Para entender melhor o que pode acontecer não só na Venezuela mas em todo o continente americano caso o atual líder deixe o poder, o SRZD conversou com Paulo Roberto de Almeida, doutor em Ciências Sociais pela Universidade de Bruxelas e professor do Instituto de Relações Internacionais do Centro Universitário de Brasília.
Almeida não tem dúvidas de que uma troca no posto mais alto do executivo venezuelano provocaria grandes transformações no contexto político do continente. "As consequências seriam extremamente significativas para a Venezuela, para os países dependentes dos petrodólares e para os alinhados às suas teses políticas, como Bolívia e Equador", afirma.
O professor ressalta que Chávez representou uma mudança de impacto imensurável em sua nação. "Ele minou as bases do antigo sistema político e o substituiu por um baseado na oposição entre o próprio caudilho e todos os demais", comenta Almeida. "Apesar da linguagem de esquerda, seu governo teve traços fascistas como a exaltação de sua figura, a concentração de poderes do executivo, a transformação ideológica das forças armadas e a constituição de brigadas de milicianos".
Segundo o professor, a saída de Chávez do poder também provocaria uma
reviravolta econômica, já que o socialista intensificou a dependência do petróleo na economia "sem qualquer controle institucional sobre esses recursos, convertidos segundo as preferências pessoais do caudilho", nas palavras do especialista.
Se Hugo Chávez não vier a tomar posse em seu novo mandato, Almeida prevê
uma grande instabilidade no país. "É provável que o grau de anomia política, de desestruturação institucional e mesmo de violência política aumentem. Nenhum país consegue sair impune de um regime de exceção como foi o de Hugo Chávez", declara o professor.
Caso a doença impeça Chávez de se manter no poder, novas eleições seriam convocadas em 30 dias. O candidato da situação seria o atual vice-presidente, Nicolás Maduro. Segundo Paulo Roberto, "ele teria de construir seu comando sobre as forças chavistas e estabelecer sua própria legitimidade política, o que não se baseia apenas em resultados eleitorais, mas em apelo popular, o que não se sabe se ele terá".
Por fim, o professor compara a situação com a de países socialistas que passaram por trocas de comando. "Em outras nações, ou se adotou a solução 'dinástica' ou ocorreram rupturas traumáticas. A China, por exemplo, estabilizou temporariamente o regime cuidando da sucessão em bases colegiais, algo impossível na Venezuela. A ruptura ocorrerá mais cedo ou mais tarde. É só uma questão de tempo", conclui Almeida.
==============

A Venezuela de Chávez no pós-Chávez

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Diplomata, professor de Economia Política

no Mestrado e Doutorado do Uniceub (Brasília)

Respostas a questões colocadas por

Aldir Cony (aldir.cony@sidneyrezende.com)

para site de informações de Sidney Rezende (SRZD)

1) Quais seriam as implicações políticas na Venezuela e no restante do continente americano caso Chávez não possa assumir a presidência no novo mandato?

PRA: Existe inclusive a hipótese de que Hugo Chávez não termine seu atual mandato. Em todo caso, se ele não conseguir tomar posse para um novo mandato presidencial, a partir de 10 de janeiro de 2013, as consequências para a Venezuela seriam extremamente significativas, talvez menos para o resto do continente, embora de grande importância para alguns países dependentes dos petrodólares chavistas, como Cuba, e outros alinhados com suas teses políticas (ditos “bolivarianos”), ou seja, a Bolívia, em primeiro lugar, e de modo bastante significativo, mas talvez o Equador, igualmente. Essas implicações não se resumem à convocação de novas eleições em 30 dias, conforme determina a Constituição por ele mesmo promulgada, mas levarão à completa transformação do panorama político venezuelano, como comentado a seguir.

Do ponto de vista da política e da sociedade venezuelanas, as implicações seriam bem mais relevantes do que a simples sucessão de uma liderança carismática, o que sem dúvida alguma o caudilho militar o foi, dotado de enorme receptividade entre os mais pobres e os militantes de esquerda. Mas o chavismo representou, sobretudo, um conjunto de mudanças de enorme impacto no país, bem mais inclusive do que ditaduras do passado (a de Perez Jimenez, por exemplo, de 1952 a 1958).

O caudilho – que se autodenominou, um pouco abusivamente e arbitrariamente, “bolivariano” – desmantelou completamente as bases do antigo sistema político e o substituiu por um novo, menos baseado na competição livre entre partidos de ideologias diferentes, e bem mais na oposição maniqueísta entre o próprio caudilho (e o seu movimento, depois partido) e todos os demais que não rezavam por sua cartilha, uma mistura de nacionalismo e de marxismo vulgar.  Ele também inaugurou um novo modo de governar, baseado na extrema centralização de decisões em sua própria pessoa (e num número reduzido de áulicos, seguidores e familiares), com impactos significativos sobre a distribuição da principal riqueza do país – os royalties e a venda do petróleo – e sobre o equilíbrio entre os poderes (que de fato cessou de existir). Todas essas mudanças também representaram uma transformação nas bases sociais do regime, uma vez que Chávez alijou completamente os velhos e corruptos oligarcas, mas também a classe média educada, e colocou no aparato do Estado seguidores fieis, que passaram a mobilizar as novas camadas de apoio, basicamente setores subalternos e o enorme contingente de pobres, num país que tinha uma das mais altas rendas per capita do continente (até a desestruturação da economia pelo “socialismo do século 21”).

Curiosamente, a esquerda, venezuelana, continental e mundial, não percebe que Chávez, a despeito de sua linguagem aparentemente de esquerda – feita de invectivas contra o capitalismo, a burguesa, o imperialismo e assemelhados –, criou um regime que pode ser basicamente assimilado ao fascismo mussoliniano e, sob certos aspectos, ao nazismo hitlerista. O fascismo do coronel também está construído com base na exaltação da figura do líder, da extrema concentração de poderes e decisões no executivo – na verdade, no próprio caudilho --, na transformação ideológica das forças armadas e na constituição de brigadas de milicianos devotados – que podem ser equiparados aos antigos camisas negras do fascismo europeu – e na mobilização permanente das massas deseducadas pela completa manipulação dos meios de comunicação e no alijamento destes dos partidos tradicionais, a começar pela oposição política. O fato de que o regime chavista seja bastante identificado com os ideais da revolução cubana – que derivou numa simples tirania personalista – e com alguns slogans aparentemente de esquerda, faz com que muitos observadores, e certamente a própria esquerda, considere o caudilho como um dos seus, quando ele tem, de fato, um DNA fascista claramente expresso no seu perfil mussoliniano. Esta constatação apenas confirma, aliás, que fascismo e socialismo, em lugar de serem opostos, possuem princípios e valores muito semelhantes, senão totalmente coincidentes. O caudilho é o mais próximo exemplo de fascismo latino-americano conhecido nos últimos cinquenta anos no continente, depois do encerramento da experiência peronista em 1955.

Existem, igualmente, enormes implicações econômicas, bem mais para a própria Venezuela do que para outros países, a despeito do fato de que o regime chavista construiu uma rede de “clientes” e dependentes de seus petrodólares. Hugo Chávez, além de desmantelar o antigo sistema político venezuelano, também atingiu profundamente as bases da economia nacional, já anteriormente muito dependente do petróleo, o que foi exacerbado durante o regime chavista, mas sem qualquer controle institucional sobre esses recursos, totalmente convertidos para uso do caudilho, segundo suas preferencias pessoais. Poucos economistas saberiam analisar o orçamento da Venezuela e a contabilidade da PDVSA com bases em critérios normais de contas nacionais ou de normas contábeis aplicadas a empresas, uma vez que o caudilho exerce manipulação sobre todos esses fluxos de recursos. Se em alguma coisa a economia da Venezuela se parece com um regime “socialista”, sem dúvida isso está refletido na enorme penúria de bens de todo gênero no comércio varejista, ademais, e bem mais importante, a estatização dos chamados setores estratégicos da economia, mas também por vezes de simples atividades do terciário que sempre foram privadas. Aqui também o desparecimento do caudilho provocará impacto significativo, pois já não haverá um líder cesarista a decidir sozinho sobre o uso de enormes recursos financeiros como são os da economia petrolífera (ela também bastante diminuída pelo completo descalabro administrativo e a incompetência manifesta que marcaram o regime chavista).

2) Sendo eleito, o atual vice-presidente Nicolas Maduro tenderia a manter a mesma forma de governar de Chávez?

PRA: Se o vice-presidente designado pelo caudilho for eleito, não é seguro que ele consiga manter a unidade das hostes chavistas, seja no PSUV, seja nas forças militares (tanto as das Forças Armadas quanto as da milícias bolivarianas). O que é seguro é que ele jamais conseguiria governar como Chávez, ou seja, manipular completamente todos os poderes e todos os meios de comunicação a seu serviço exclusivo; para isso se requer carisma, por certo, mas também uma vontade férrea para impor sua vontade, dividindo, cooptando e afastando parceiros e aliados, esmagando opositores, concentrando todos os recursos financeiros em suas mãos, e uma série de outras alavancas de poder que apenas o caudilho podia controlar.

Difícil dizer quais seriam as previsões, mas é provável que o grau de anomia política, de desestruturação institucional, e mesmo de violência política aumentem, até o ponto de ruptura e de uma futura “normalização” da qual os contornos exatos estão longe de serem definidos atualmente. Será, em todo caso, uma experiência traumática para a Venezuela, pois nenhum país consegue sair impune de um regime de exceção como foi o de Hugo Chávez, ainda que com aparências formalmente democráticas.

Nicolas Maduro teria de construir seu comando sobre as forças chavistas – o que talvez não seja fácil – e estabelecer sua própria legitimidade política, que não se baseia apenas em resultados eleitorais, mas em apelo popular que não se sabe se ele terá. Ou seja, o potencial de incertezas e de tensões é enorme.

3) E mesmo caso Chávez possa assumir a presidência, a situação no país fica instável devido à doença do presidente estar se agravando?

PRA: Ainda que ele consiga tomar posse em 10 de janeiro de 2013, sua sobrevida física e, sobretudo política, não está assegurada, o que apenas transfere para algumas semanas ou meses além o desenlace que poderia ocorrer atualmente. Talvez o caudilho consiga “institucionalizar o carisma”, o que sempre foi difícil em qualquer regime de tipo autoritário e personalista como o dele. Em alguns países socialistas, se adotou a solução “dinástica” ou familiar, ou ocorreram rupturas traumáticas; a liderança comunista chinesa conseguir estabilizar temporariamente o regime, cuidando da sucessão de líderes em bases colegiais, o que no entanto é impossível em regimes como o castrista ou o chavista. A ruptura ocorrerá, mais cedo ou um pouco mais tarde. É apenas uma questão de tempo...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brasília, 19 de dezembro de 2012.

France: the choc of the decadence - NYTimes

O governo francês, a começar pelo seu presidente ultra-hesitante (quase parando), não quer fazer o "choque de competitividade", como recomendado em relatório de empresário que ele mesmo pediu. No lugar do choque, ele prefere um "pacto", ou seja, a mesma conversa mole entre sindicatos, governo e patrões que paralisa a França há mais de meio século.
Vão continuar um belo caminho para a decadência, assim.
Enfim, nós também estamos no mesmo caminho, se querem saber: nada de reforma, apenas alguns ajustes aqui e ali, e a indústria vai para o brejo, na França e no Brasil.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Challenging France to Do Business Differently

Pool photo by Bertrand Langlois

President François Hollande must find a way to make palatable a shift in French labor practices.

By LIZ ALDERMAN

The New York Times, December 19, 2012

PARIS — Louis Gallois, one of France’s most influential industrialists, knew he was about to make waves for the country’s Socialist president.

Tracking Europe's Debt Crisis

Graphic

In Tough Times, French Economy Loses Ground

Johann Rousselot for the International Herald Tribune

The industrialist Louis Gallois has called for vast changes. 

It was late October, and President François Hollande, faced with an alarming deterioration in the economy, had turned to Mr. Gallois for advice on how to put corporate France on a more competitive footing with the rest of Europe.

Mr. Gallois didn’t sugar-coat the message. His report called for a “competitiveness shock” that would require politicians to curb the “cult of regulation” he said was choking business in France.

The report said that unless France relaxed its notoriously rigid labor market, the country would continue on an industrial decline that had destroyed more than 750,000 jobs in a decade and helped shrink France’s share of exports to the European Union to 9.3 percent, from 12.7 percent, during that period. The report also called for cuts to a broad range of business taxes used to pay for big government and France’s expensive social safety net.

But some wonder whether those measures, even if they can be adopted, would suffice. For them, there is a larger question: Can France be fixed?

While the European crisis has made the French acutely aware of the need to modernize the economy, the country may be running short on time. And there are mixed signals on whether the Hollande government is willing to heed the advice.

As details of the report leaked, the French news media went into a frenzy over whether their country was prepared for such upheaval.

Mr. Hollande quickly provided an answer: a competitiveness “pact” between business and government would better suit French society.

As Mr. Hollande’s finance minister, Pierre Moscovici, hastened to explain, “A shock causes trauma, whereas a pact reassures.”

But many observers say reassurance may no longer be an option.

Even the Germans are alarmed: Behind closed doors, Chancellor Angela Merkel and officials in her entourage are said to be worried that a failure by Mr. Hollande to improve competitiveness could ricochet back to the weakening German economy, further stalling what had long been twin engines of growth for Europe.

“The concern is not just that France could be the next candidate affected by turbulence” from the euro crisis, said Lars P. Feld, an economics professor at the University of Freiburg and an adviser to the German government. “The fear is that it doesn’t manage to cope with the loss of competitiveness and therefore produces little growth or perhaps even stagnation for the next few years,” Mr. Feld said. “And that after that, it could become the new sick man of Europe.”

France still has much working in its favor. Second only to Germany as Europe’s biggest economy, and the fifth-largest in the world, France is a wealthy country with a high savings rate, large foreign direct investment and world-class research and development capabilities.

And the interest rate on French 10-year bonds is only about 2 percent. That is much closer to Germany’s rate than to those of the euro zone’s staggering giants, Italy and Spain, which are above 4 percent and 5 percent respectively, as they struggle to clean up their economies.

Yet, last week the French central bank warned that growth would shrink 0.1 percent in the last three months of 2012, after stagnating for most of the year. Last month Moody’s Investors Service followed Standard & Poor’s in stripping France of its triple-A credit rating, saying the government was failing to ignite competitiveness fast enough.

Meanwhile, an ambitious effort Mr. Hollande began shortly after his election in May to cut the deficit to 3 percent next year from 4.5 percent through tax increases and spending cuts may dampen growth further and ratchet up unemployment, which recently neared 11 percent, twice the rate in Germany.

Taxes on businesses are rising, and a 3 percent dividend tax recently sent money fleeing the country. A plan to lift the capital gains tax to 60 percent from 19 percent sparked a revolt among e-commerce entrepreneurs.

Amid the turmoil, Mr. Hollande seized on the Gallois report. The day after its release, the government announced a €20 billion, or $26.6 billion, payroll tax break for business and endorsed a handful of other recommendations, including trying to compel bosses and union leaders to agree on more labor market flexibility.

Those moves fanned hopes that France might finally be becoming more friendly to business. But the message was soon muddied.

Within a few weeks, Mr. Hollande’s administration was in a showdown with a major employer, the Luxembourg-based steel giant ArcelorMittal, over a plan to cut about 630 jobs at two mothballed blast furnaces at a production complex in Florange. The jobs at issue were but a small fraction of the 20,000 the company employs in France, and the Hollande government’s threat to nationalize the Florange plant over the matter sent a shudder through foreign multinationals doing business in France.

The International Monetary Fund recently urged France to curb government spending, which at 56 percent of output is among the highest levels in the euro zone. Belgium, Denmark and Finland are in a similar range, according to the European data agency Eurostat.

The I.M.F. also called for France to tame bureaucracy, cut taxes and make labor markets more flexible. France’s “significant loss of competitiveness” is the main hurdle to growth and job creation, the fund added, indicating that those problems would very likely grow worse if France “does not adapt.”

Creating the political momentum to achieve that is not easy. Culturally, France and many of its leaders are wedded to the idea that a social safety net — despite its expense — is needed to protect society from the ravages of laissez-faire economics. Economists say a pullback would have to happen to enhance competitiveness, something Mr. Hollande is aware of but has so far treaded lightly around.

In other countries, “people roughly understand what modern economics are about — if you say competitiveness, it’s not a dirty word,” said Pascal Lamy, the director general of the World Trade Organization, who is also a rare member of the French Socialist Party who favors open markets.

The hurdle to modernizing the French economy, he added, is that the state “is still considered a magic wand to cure every illness.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Gallois, a sober but energetic man who was once nicknamed God by his former employees at the French national railroad company for imposing hard decisions, has largely maintained a public silence since releasing his “competitive shock” report — despite being tailed for weeks by news cameras.

Recently, in his first interview since the report’s release, Mr. Gallois, sitting in his gilt-trimmed office in central Paris and wearing the red-cross Légion d’Honneur pin he received for his past business contributions to France, acknowledged that his choice of language posed a challenge to the government. “They did not want to use the word ‘shock,”’ he said. “I was only focused on industrial competitiveness, and they were also focused on employment.”

At least his report, unlike many before it, was not left to gather dust. “For the first time, I had the feeling that people were not trying to put their heads in the sand,” he said. Because of the European crisis, “public opinion was ready to welcome change,” he added; even militant union leaders were ready to listen.

But change can take years in France. While the €20 billion payroll tax credit will help, Mr. Gallois said, France still needs to do much more to make entrepreneurs feel welcome. A thicket of regulation must be cleared, he said, so that more small and midsize firms can grow and create jobs.

A hostile climate between workers and management must also be replaced with dynamic dialogue, he said, as was done in Germany in the mid-2000s, helping turn that country into an industrial powerhouse.

“In France, there is not actually agreement that companies must be competitive to create value,” Mr. Gallois said. “We need to create that consensus first, and after that people can fight over sharing the benefits of competitiveness.”

He paused and looked at a large photo on his wall of an Airbus A380 soaring above the clouds — a symbol of what French industrial might can achieve.

Mr. Gallois’s type of straightforward thinking is relatively common in corporate boardrooms. But getting an entire nation to sign on to a new way of doing business is a challenge.

“People have to understand that France is a special animal,” Mr. Gallois said. “We could be more business-oriented, but only if we ensure justice and fairness for everybody.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 21, 2012

Because of an editing error, an article on Thursday about a report by Louis Gallois, a prominent French industrialist, that urged actions to improve France’s competitiveness, included outdated information on French regulatory authority. While the government once fixed the price of a baguette, it lost that power several decades ago. It is not the case that it still controls the price of a loaf of bread.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 20, 2012, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: A Harsh Prescription For France’s Economy.

Related

• France Details Plan to Shrink Banking Risk (December 20, 2012)

 

A Literary Ambassador: Ampuero book on political orphans of socalism

A Literary Ambassador

By JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA

The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2012
Mexico City

Roberto Ampuero, an exile from the bloody Chilean coup of 1973, had recently arrived in East Germany, a country he thought represented the utopian future. But a German girlfriend soon disabused him of his illusions. In whispered pillow talk, she told him he was an idiot for having gone east when it was every East German's hope to go west.

At the time, Mr. Ampuero was an earnest young Communist, studying Marxist-Leninism at Karl Marx University in Leipzig. He would shortly marry the daughter of Fidel Castro's attorney general, and spend a decade in East Germany and Cuba.

Today, Mr. Ampuero, 59, is the ambassador to Mexico of Chile's center-right government. He is also a best-selling novelist and the creator of Cayetano Brulé, one of Spanish-language crime fiction's most traveled modern private eyes. Now, Riverhead-Penguin has published an English-language translation of his detective novel "The Neruda Case," and plans to publish more of his books.

Mr. Ampuero's life of exile is representative of the experiences of a now-graying generation of idealists who lived through Latin America's heady decades of revolutions, coups and guerrilla wars, only to be shipwrecked on the shoals of history, living Robinson Crusoe-like lives in the wreckage of socialist island paradises. He draws heavily on his own time spent in East Germany, Cuba and Chile to create the characters that populate his books.

Brulé, the neophyte detective in "The Neruda Case," could be a fun-house mirror image of his creator. The detective is a Cuban-American émigré who falls in love with a revolutionary Chilean student he meets in Miami, and follows her to Chile just in time to experience the bloody 1973 coup against socialist President Salvador Allende.

Just before the coup, Brulé takes on his first case on behalf of Pablo Neruda, the Nobel Prize-winning poet and Communist Party politician. In the book, Neruda is dying of cancer and wants to find a loved one who has been missing for decades.

Brulé will travel from Havana to Berlin to La Paz, Bolivia and back to Chile's capital of Santiago before he finds the answer. During the harrowing last hours of the Allende government, as jets strafe the presidential palace, Brulé dodges army patrols scouring Santiago's streets, in an attempt to bring peace of mind to the dying poet.

Chile's coup ended with Mr. Allende's suicide, and the beginning of a military dictatorship under Gen. Augusto Pinochet that lasted until 1990. The coup, and the dark night that followed it, represents for Brulé a "loss of illusion," and a realization of the costs when political dialogue collapses, says Mr. Ampuero. Brulé, he says, "is skeptical of political utopias that produce nightmares."

Mr. Ampuero, who was 20, remembers the coup well. He rushed to his university, where fellow members of the Communist Youth burned their party ID cards. For the next three months, he used his Austin Mini Cooper to ferry militants on the run from safe house to safe house until he himself was spirited out of Chile by an East German agent.

Brulé is a man of the tropics who, lured by romance and revolution, goes to the Andes. His creator, Mr. Ampuero, went in the other direction. Once in East Germany, after he married, he left for Havana, which for many leftists represented a fresh take on their dreams of a revolutionary utopia, unencumbered by Soviet guns and dogma.

But before long, the young Communist became disillusioned, finding Cuba to be a warm-weather version of the same Cold War Stalinism. In Havana, he fell out with fellow Chilean Communist exiles over the persecution of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla, a seminal case which led many leading intellectuals around the world to break with the Castro regime. After four years in Cuba, his options limited by scant travel documents, Mr. Ampuero returned to East Germany. All in all, he spent a decade living under Communist regimes before crossing to West Germany in 1983.

His autobiographical novel "Nuestros Años Verde Olivo," or "Our Olive Green Years," a reference to Cuban military fatigues, chronicled Cuba's reality of scarcity and secret-police paranoia, and became a sensation in Latin America.

The novel, published in 1999, is one of a handful of texts by disillusioned Latin American leftists critical of Cuba and communism in general. "Latin Americans who knew real socialism from the inside or saw how it fell apart, mostly opted for silence," says Mr. Ampuero.

The book put Mr. Ampuero on Havana's black list. "Neither Ampuero or anybody who remotely looks like Ampuero will ever be able to travel to Cuba," the Cuban ambassador in Chile said after the book was published, according to the writer.

Mr. Ampuero's latest novel, which translates as "Salvador Allende's Last Tango," has been on Chile's best-seller list since April. He is in the final edit of another Brulé novel.

A version of this article appeared December 21, 2012, on page D5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Literary Ambassador.

Previsoes imprevisiveis para 2012: prestando contas...

Ahah, ahah!
Ganhei!
Depois de ter postado minhas previsões para 2013, fui verificar o meu desempenho nas previsões de um ano atrás feitas para este belíssimo ano de 2012, o qual, aliás, passei metade fora deste país maravilhoso, e imprevisível.
Desafio qualquer inimigo deste blog (e eles são muitos, talvez dezenas de masoquistas) a apontar qualquer erro meu nas minhas previsões para o ano que vai encerrar-se dentro em pouco.
Ganhei, ganhei!
Se tivesse apostado contra mim mesmo, em algum bookmaker inglês, teria perdido gloriosamente.
Mas se tivesse apostado a favor, teria ganho ingloriosamente, já que ninguém gosta de desgraça, não é mesmo?
Mas, enfim, o que se há de fazer?
O Brasil não ajuda em previsões certeiras, e otimistas...
Em todo caso, seguem as minhas previsões de um ano atrás.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

-->

Previsões imprevisíveis para 2012

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Postado no blog Diplomatizzando

(16/12/2011; link: http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com/2011/12/minhas-previsoes-imprevisiveis-para.html)

2012 vai ser um grande ano, como todos sabem. A começar que é bissexto, assim que teremos um dia a mais para não fazer nada, espichar na praia, ficar na rede, ou pensar em adotar um novo feriado nacional, desses idiotas que o Congresso aprova todo ano, homenageando categorias profissionais, evangélicos ou qualquer heroi da pátria.

Aliás, começamos o ano comemorando -- se é o caso de dizer -- os cem anos da morte de um verdadeiro heroi da pátria, o Barão do Rio Branco, que teve a má sorte de morrer pouco antes do Carnaval de 1912. Como lembra meu amigo e historiador (mas uma coisa não está relacionada à outra) Luis Cláudio Villafañe Gomes Santos, autor de um excelente "O dia em que adiaram o Carnaval" (Unesp, 2011), o presidente Hermes da Fonseca resolveu adiar o Carnaval, em homenagem ao Barão, de fevereiro para abril. Não deu outra: o povo pulou carnaval duas vezes naquele ano: em fevereiro (que ninguém é de ferro) e em abril também, uma justa homenagem ao Barão (podia ser com "b" minúsculo, pois só tem um).

Bem, uma vez passado o Carnaval, e lembrando que continuaremos atrasados nos preparativos para a Copa, para as Olimpíadas, para os 200 anos de independência, em 2022, e que continuaremos atrasados para quase tudo, bem, como eu dizia, independentemente disso tudo, cabe, como é a tradição, e como é meu hábito, ainda assim registrar a passagem de mais um ano perdido para o futuro do Brasil por meio de previsões otimistas para o ano que se aproxima (ou que se abaterá sobre nós, conforme é sua disposição).

Como sabem muitos, todo final de ano eu faço minhas previsões para o ano que se aproxima, com esta pequena peculiaridade que minhas previsões NÃO SÃO para acontecer, são exatamente de coisas que não têm a mínima chance de se materializarem, de se transformarem em realizações práticas, uma vez que essa coisa de cumprir boas promessas não entra simplesmente nos hábitos nacionais.

Não, não vou prometer coisas simples como emagrecer ou arrumar meus livros, jogar papéis velhos fora, ou escrever aquele livro longamente planejado.

Minhas promessas, ou previsões, são grandiosas, elas atingem nada mais nada menos do que o orgulho nacional, daí a razão de expô-las em público, como faço agora:

1) O governo vai finalmente reduzir as despesas públicas abaixo do crescimento do PIB e da inflação.

2) Os deputados e senadores passarão a trabalhar mais de um dia e meio por semana.

3) Os mesmos deixarão de aumentar seus próprios salários até o limite constitucionalmente estabelecido (mas que representa apenas uma pequena parte do dinheiro que passa pelos gabinetes...).

4) O Brasil vai deixar de ser protecionista.

5) Um ex-presidente vai deixar de subir em palanques reais e virtuais e parar de ofender a inculta e bela.

6) O MST não vai mais invadir terras públicas e fazendas privadas.

7) Os estudantes da Fefelech vão parar de fumar maconha no campus.

8) Juízes vão reconhecer que ganham desproporcionalmente (inversamente) à sua produtividade.

9) Professores vão começar a dar aulas.

10) Um partido de espertos vai parar de fazer conferências nacionais sobre qualquer coisa e parar de pedir a "democratização da mídia."

Por fim, uma promessa pessoal, imprevisível, como tantas outras: prometo que vou parar de escrever besteirol neste blog.

Bom 2012 a todos...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Este blog sobreviveu ao fim do mundo, mas...

...talvez não consiga sobreviver ao acúmulo de bobagens que se disseminam rápida e perigosamente por todas as partes do Brasil, e em várias outras partes do mundo, também.

Não tenho medo de catástrofes, mesmo as mais terriveis, mas tenho alergia, horror, terror do besteirol, das estupidezes que vejo, ouço, contemplo um pouco em todos os lados para os quais olho.
Seja na TV, no rádio, nos jornais e revistas, na internet, enfim, por todos os veículos aos quais tenho acesso ou que literalmente "caem" sobre mim todos os dias, tudo o que tenho em volta me deixa preocupado, e me sinto cercado por um exército de bárbaros, seja de qual setor for, do governo, na imprensa, das escolas (inclusive superiores), na TV, tantas são as bobagens repetidas, velhas e novas, que brotam como champignons depois da chuva.
Estou cercado, num quilombo de resistência intelectual contra o besteirol costumeiro que circula no país.
Será que vou ter de pedir socorro, me asilar, virar um eremita?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

PIB: tirar o G da equacao melhora o calculo - Mises Daily

Governos, como se sabe, não produzem um centavo de riqueza. Podem até ajudar a criar, se forem bem comportados (o que não é o caso do nosso), mas costumam cobrar um preço pesado por isso.
Está na hora de tirar o G da equação do PIB, onde nunca deveria ter entrado.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

NationalAccounts


Government Bloat is Not Growth: Real Gross Domestic Private Product, 2000–2011


by Robert Higgs

Mises Daily,December 20, 2012

In the 1930s and 1940s, when the modern system of national income and product accounts (NIPA) was being developed, the scope of national product was a hotly debated issue. No issue stirred more debate than the question, Should government product be included in gross product? Simon Kuznets (Nobel laureate in economic sciences, 1971), the most important American contributor to the development of the accounts, had major reservations about including all government purchases in national product. Over the years, others have elaborated on these reasons and adduced others.

Why should government product be excluded? First, the government’s activities may be viewed as giving rise to intermediate, rather than final products, even if the government provides such valuable services as enforcement of private property rights and settlement of disputes. Second, because most government services are not sold in markets, they have no market-determined prices to be used in calculating their total value to those who benefit from them. Third, because many government services arise from political, rather than economic motives and institutions, some of them may have little or no value. Indeed, some commentators—including the present writer—ultimately went so far as to assert that some government services have negative value: given a choice, the people victimized by these “services” would be willing to pay to be rid of them.

When the government attained massive proportions during World War II, this debate was set aside for the duration of the war, and the accounts were put into a form that best accommodated the government’s attempt to plan and control the economy for the primary purpose of winning the war. This situation of course dictated that the government’s spending, which grew to constitute almost half of the official GDP during the peak years of the war, be included in GDP, and the War Production Board, the Commerce Department, and other government agencies involved in calculating the NIPA recruited a large corps of clerks, accountants, economists, and others to carry out the work.

After the war, the Commerce Department, which carried forward the national accounting to which it had contributed during the war (since 1972 within its Bureau of Economic Analysis [BEA]), naturally preferred to continue the use of its favored system, which treats all government spending for final goods and services as part of GDP. Economists such as Kuznets, who did not favor this treatment, attempted for a while to continue their work along their own, different lines, but none of them could compete with the enormous, well-funded statistical organization the government possessed, and eventually almost all of them gave up and accepted the official NIPA.[1]

Thus did government spending become lodged in the definition and measurement of GDP in a way that ensuing generations of economists, journalists, policy makers, and others considered appropriate and took for granted. Nonetheless, the issues that had been disputed at length in the 1930s and 1940s did not disappear. They were simply disregarded as if they had been resolved, even though they had not been resolved intellectually, but simply swept under the Commerce Department’s expansive (and expensive) rug. In particular, the inclusion of government spending in GDP remained extremely problematic.

Generations of elementary economics students since World War II have come away from Economics 101 having learned, if anything, that gross domestic product is defined as

GDP = C + I + G + (X - M).

That is, GDP for a given period, usually a year, is the sum of spending for final goods and services by domestic private consumers, domestic private investors, and governments at all levels, plus foreign purchases of U.S. exports minus American purchases of U.S. imports.

This sort of accounting supplies the basic framework for the Keynesian models that swept the economics profession in the 1940s and 1950s, from which a key policy conclusion was derived—that the government can vary its spending to offset shortfalls or excesses of private spending and thereby stabilize the economy’s growth while maintaining “full employment.” From the beginning, the most emphasized part of this conclusion was that increases in government spending can offset declines in private spending and thereby prevent or moderate macroeconomic contractions.

Much of the increase in government spending in recent decades has taken the form of increased transfer payments—payments for which the government receives no current good or service in return—such as Social Security pensions, disability benefits, and payments via Medicare or Medicaid to subsidize program beneficiaries’ health-care services. In 2000, such payments amounted to 56 percent of all federal spending; in 2011, they were more than 61 percent. Transfer payments do not enter the computation of national income and product; only purchases of final goods and services do so. Keynesian economists argue, however, that government may use increases in transfer payments to cushion business slumps in the same way that it may use increases in its purchases of final goods and services because increases in transfer payments augment personal income and stimulate greater consumption spending, hence greater investment spending, and therefore, from both sources, an increase in GDP.

The foregoing issues have taken on special cogency during the past five years, as the federal government has greatly increased its total spending. Real total federal outlays increased by 32 percent, from $2,729 billion to $3,603 billion (in chained 2005 dollars), between fiscal years 2007 and 2011. Although much of this increase has taken the form of increases in transfer payments, the part that is included in GDP has also risen substantially—at the federal level, it increased by 15.6 percent (in real dollars) between 2007 and 2011. Some of this increase was offset by a decrease in state and local government purchases of final goods and services, which fell by 3 percent during this period. (Data come from BEA, Table 1.1.6, Real Gross Domestic Product, Chained Dollars.)

As the basic Keynesian model implies, the recent increases in government spending appear to have prevented an even greater decline in real GDP during the recession that began in the winter of 2007-2008. But however that may be, because so much of this spending may have had little or no value—or even negative value—in itself, the question remains as to whether, despite what the official GDP figures show, the population’s true economic well-being might have suffered a greater contraction than mainstream economists, journalists, policy makers, and others for the most part believe.

To resolve this question, I have computed what I call gross domestic private product (GDPP), which is simply the standard real GDP minus the government purchases part of it. (Data come from BEA, Table 1.1.6, Real Gross Domestic Product, Chained Dollars.) The figure shows the movement of this variable from 2000 to 2011, the most recently completed year.

Real Gross Domestic Private Product (billions of chained 2005 dollars)

If real GDPP had grown at its long-run average rate of about 3 percent per year during the period from 2000 to 2011, it would have increased by about 38 percent. In reality, however, GDPP increased during this period by only 18 percent, or by about 1.5 percent per year on average. (Real GDP, by comparison, increased by about 1.6 percent per year on average, producing a small increase in the government share of GDP.) So, during this period of more than a decade, private product grew at only about half of its historical average rate. Between 2002 and 2007, while the housing bubble was giving rise to seemingly buoyant growth even beyond the housing sector, the good times appeared to have returned, but the inevitable bust from 2007 to 2009 and the slow recovery since 2009 pulled the intermediate-run growth rate for 2000-2011 back to an anemic level. The recovery of the period 2009-2011 brought the GDPP back only to its 2007 level, signifying four years in which no net gain had been made and much suffering had occurred between the beginning and the end of the period.

Perhaps the most positive statement we can make about the private economy’s performance during this twelve-year period is that it has been somewhat better than complete stagnation. But private product has lost ground relative to total official GDP. Moreover, many of the measures taken to deal with the contraction—the government’s huge run-up in its spending and debt; the Fed’s great expansion of bank reserves, its allocation of credit directly to failing companies and struggling sectors, and its accommodation of the federal government’s gigantic deficits; and the government’s enactment of extremely unsettling regulatory statutes, especially Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank Act—have served to discourage the private investment needed to hasten the recovery and lay the foundation for more rapid economic growth in the long run. To find a similar perfect storm of counter-productive government fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policies, we must go back to the 1930s, when the measures taken under Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt turned what probably would have been an ordinary, short-lived recession into the Great Depression.[2] If the government and the Fed persist in the kind of destructive policies they have undertaken since 2007, the potential for another great depression will remain. Even without such a catastrophe, the U.S. economy presents at best the prospect of weak performance for many years to come.

Notes:

[1] Robert Higgs, Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 64-68; and Ellen O’Brien, “How the ‘G’ Got into the GNP,” in Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought, vol. 10, Method, Competition, Conflict and Measurement in the Twentieth Century, ed. Karen I. Vaughn. (Aldershot, England: Edward Elgar, 1994), p. 242.

[2] Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 159-95; Higgs, Depression, War, and Cold War, pp. 3-29.