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Venezuela fact of the day
...despite Chavez's "revolution for the poor" the Gini coefficient [in Venezuela] has increased from 0.44 in 2000 to 0.48 in 2005.
Here is the post and source.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 21, 2007 at 04:46 PM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
You don't say...
Posted by: Christopher Monnier at Aug 21, 2007 5:13:27 PM
Despite?
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at Aug 21, 2007 6:02:23 PM
A Gini tonic?
Posted by: dearieme at Aug 21, 2007 6:03:30 PM
In Dec 2001, Chavez was worried that oil would go to $5 a barrel. How things have changed!
Posted by: Eric G at Aug 21, 2007 6:29:59 PM
Part of it has to do that after soon nine years of chávez´s “socialist government” gas is sold at less than 12 US cents per gallon, less that its direct cost of distribution and with this about 10% of GDP is transferred from those who have nothing to those who buy gasoline. Annual gasoline subsidies amount to US$ 3.000 per car.
Posted by: Per Kurowski at Aug 21, 2007 8:07:19 PM
Oh brother I posted this elsewhere and got the good old "it would have rose higher if not for Chavezs programs".
Posted by: KevinLin at Aug 21, 2007 8:55:34 PM
Hmm... didn't Venezuela go through a serious recession during 2003? So, taking this five year interval isn't really an accurate (not to mention honest) way of measuring?
Posted by: JSK at Aug 21, 2007 9:31:52 PM
But that's the fault of George Bush and the USA, of
course.
Posted by: TS at Aug 21, 2007 9:37:07 PM
Perhaps this is evidence that Hugo Chavez believes a rising tides raises all boats? Just kidding. It is evidence that not only is the revolution for the poor a poor idea but they might be experiencing a crony-type environment.
Posted by: Stan at Aug 21, 2007 9:55:16 PM
Haha, despite?
Posted by: Erik at Aug 22, 2007 12:58:23 AM
I don't see the relevance of this post for a critique of Chavez. We all know that left-wing leaders are to be judged by their stated intentions and never by their achievements.
Posted by: J. at Aug 22, 2007 8:41:31 AM
A left wing leader who hasnt cured poverty, who would of ever thought that? I am a bit shocked because I always thought that one of the benefits of modern day left wing leaders is their penchant for dolling out dollars downward. At the very least you would of thought that all of this current short-run redistribution by Chavez would have eaten into the gini coefficient a small bit.
Posted by: John Pertz at Aug 22, 2007 9:01:05 AM
A left wing leader who hasnt cured poverty, who would of ever thought that? I am a bit shocked because I always thought that one of the benefits of modern day left wing leaders is their penchant for dolling out dollars downward. At the very least you would of thought that all of this current short-run redistribution by Chavez would have eaten into the gini coefficient a small bit.
Posted by: John Pertz at Aug 22, 2007 9:01:19 AM
Oh boy, yet another example of ideological confirmation bias by Tyler with no backup research.
2 minutes googling with '"Gini coefficient" Venezuela' showed the cherry-picking nature of this argument. Perhaps Tyler should have titled it "Factoid of the Day".
First clue was the US State Department claims a Venezuelan Gini coefficient of 0.618 during 2003 and 0.45 during 2006.
Latin America News Review has an entry refuting this talking point:
Posted by: Mike Huben at Aug 22, 2007 9:11:11 AM
(Gack: my comment was truncated at the URL. I'll try again.)
http://lanr.blogspot.com/2006/04/venezuelan-presidential-candidate.html
The idea that Chavez is solely responsible for the Gini coefficient (as implied in the quote) is stupid on its face, but typical of propaganda. How does an economist like Tyler (who should know better) excuse this sort of lapse?
Posted by: Mike Huben at Aug 22, 2007 9:16:46 AM
Yes this gini coefficient calculation seems mighty suspicious. It cannot possible take into account the equalizing effect from when chávez distributed 100.000 Kalashnikovs to who knows who, or of what he last weekend announced among laughs, that he was now going to distribute 5.000 sniper rifles so that “any gringo running around on a riverbed…boom!”
Posted by: Per Kurowski at Aug 22, 2007 9:49:08 AM
Alas for those of us who are highly skeptical about Hugo Chavez, but this information seems to be incorrect. I expect that most will find the UN Humand Development Report to be a fairly neutral source.
According to the 2006 UN Human Development Report, Venezuela's Gini coefficient was 44.1. According to the 2001 UNHDR, it was 48.8. Thus, it seems to be going down.
http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/ (see page 336)
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2001/en/ (see human development indicators, page 53)
Posted by: Thelonious_Nick at Aug 22, 2007 12:22:22 PM
The standing question: why are so many people on the net infatuated with the Mugabe of the Andes? By the time he's done with the place, Venezuelans will be lucky if their GDP is above North Korea's.
He's, sadly, only one of several prototypes for my Ten Step Plan to becoming an entrenched dictator.
Posted by: Foobarista at Aug 22, 2007 1:19:27 PM
The standing question: why are so many people on the net infatuated with the Mugabe of the Andes? By the time he's done with the place, Venezuelans will be lucky if their GDP is above North Korea's.
He's, sadly, only one of several prototypes for my Ten Step Plan to becoming an entrenched dictator.
Posted by: Foobarista at Aug 22, 2007 1:20:32 PM
The only people who care about Gini numbers are socialists and their cousins.
People who actually have both a brain and a heart prefer to look at poverty numbers instead, noting that countries like North Korea are surely amongst the most equal.
I'm only being slightly provacative, I'm basically serious here. There is a huge framing issue here, and Gini is a substitue for inequality, therefore even aknowledging that Gini matters is to lose the battle before you even fight it.
I care desperately about helping the poor. I could care less about inequality. I'm seriously disturbed by how many people care about the latter and seem to ignore the former, not to mention how many people don't seem to realize that many policies designed to "help" one problem hurt the other "problem".
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at Aug 22, 2007 1:39:42 PM
To happyjuggler: you're wrong in not caring about inequality.
Unequal societies function much better politically: they're more stable and the way they're setup virtually assures good governance. They're also at a big advantage in a knowledge-based world economy, which is really not about the skill level of the average worker. Finally, on top, they're comfy.
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