{"168058":{"id":"168058","parent":"167808","time":"1580121000","url":"http:\/\/newsnet.fr\/168058","source":"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/archive\/nobel-poverty-economics-duflo\/","category":"Business","title":"The Science of (Not) Ending Global Poverty","catalog-images":"3\/\/1\/newsnet_168058_4d3231.jpg","image":"http:\/\/newsnet.fr\/img\/newsnet_168058_4d3231.jpg","hub":"newsnet","url-explicit":"http:\/\/newsnet.fr\/art\/the-science-of-not-ending-global-poverty","admin":"newsnet","views":"809","priority":"4","length":"22269","lang":"en","content":"\u003Cfigure\u003E\u003Cimg src=\"http:\/\/newsnet.fr\/img\/newsnet_168058_4d3231.jpg\" \/\u003E\u003Cfigcaption\u003ECo-laureates of the 2019 Nobel in economics Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo hold up a signed chair as part of the traditional Nobel Chair Signing ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. (Henrik Montgomery \/ TT via AP Photo)\u003C\/figcaption\u003E\u003C\/figure\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn 1974, the neoliberal Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek was awarded the newly instituted Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. In his \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/prizes\/economic-sciences\/1974\/hayek\/speech\"\u003Eacceptance speech\u003C\/a\u003E, Hayek stated bluntly: \"If I had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics, I should have decidedly advised against it.\" Such a prize, he held, \"confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/advertising-policy\"\u003EAd Policy\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEconomists are unlike physicists or chemists in that they \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/155205\/tyranny-economists\"\u003Ewield tremendous power\u003C\/a\u003E over laypeople without being subject to almost any democratic accountability. To grant them unthinking adulation, as even Hayek realized, would be a dangerous thing. Even though Hayek's cautions against economists' authority were rooted in his \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/05\/08\/books\/review\/f-a-hayek-big-government-skeptic.html\"\u003Econviction\u003C\/a\u003E that markets are \"unknowable\" and thus best left unregulated, the cautions themselves are still worth listening to, but have gone unheeded. Since the 1970s, economists have enjoyed unparalleled success in establishing themselves as unquestionable authorities: \"One would have to look at the history of religions to find anything like it,\" David Graeber \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/2019\/12\/05\/against-economics\"\u003Eaptly notes\u003C\/a\u003E in a recent \u003Ci\u003ENew York Review of Books\u003C\/i\u003E essay.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAll this faith in economists-and their long-held belief that growth, however unequal, is good-has helped get us to \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/nonprofitquarterly.org\/highest-inequality-human-history-societies-ripe-social-change\"\u003Ehistoric levels of inequality\u003C\/a\u003E, a \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.globalpolicy.org\/component\/content\/article\/219\/46726.html\"\u003Eglobal\u003C\/a\u003E crisis of chronic \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2019\/dec\/3\/despite-record-low-unemployment-44-us-workers-are-\"\u003Eunder\u003C\/a\u003E- and \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/opinion\/gallup\/233459\/billion-worldwide-looking-great-jobs.aspx\"\u003Eunemployment\u003C\/a\u003E (especially among \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2015\/mar\/24\/youth-unemployment-timebomb-developing-countries-committee\"\u003Eyoung people\u003C\/a\u003E), and, despite much \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.jasonhickel.org\/blog\/2019\/2\/3\/pinker-and-global-poverty\"\u003Efalse advertising\u003C\/a\u003E, a \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/static1.squarespace.com\/static\/51b8d8a3e4b012fbeaff36db\/t\/56e74f15f850828ed1f93428\/1457999638124\/Sanjay+Reddy,+Rahul+Lahoti,+190+a+Day+What+Does+It+Say,+NLR+97,+January-February+2016.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Erise in global poverty\u003C\/a\u003E documented by scholars such as Sanjay Reddy, Camelia Minoiu, Arjun Jayadev, and Rahul Lahoti.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYet economists' \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/735166\/the-end-of-economists-influence-is-nigh\"\u003Eefforts\u003C\/a\u003E to pass themselves off as scientists continue. Take development economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo-two of the \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/prizes\/economic-sciences\/2019\/press-release\"\u003E2019 Nobel laureates\u003C\/a\u003E-who begin their \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.penguin.co.uk\/books\/305\/305539\/good-economics-for-hard-times\/9780241306895.html\"\u003Enew book\u003C\/a\u003E, \u003Ci\u003EGood Economics for Hard Times,\u003C\/i\u003E by lamenting that economists are among the \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/52458788-fcc0-11e9-98fd-4d6c20050229\"\u003Eleast trusted\u003C\/a\u003E experts on both sides of the Atlantic, beating out even weather forecasters.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe new laureates naturally don't see this as a positive development: They invoke the term \"trust deficit\" to discuss how the public's disillusionment can be fixed. The call for \"trust\" comes at a moment when, \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/id\/32156155\/ns\/business-world_business\/t\/sorry-maam-we-just-didnt-see-it-coming\/#.XdhXQi2ZPHo\"\u003Eafter 2008\u003C\/a\u003E, more people are coming to see that economics is \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2015\/oct\/11\/nobel-prize-economics-not-science-hubris-disaster\"\u003Enot a science\u003C\/a\u003E. Unlike particles and forces, \"economies\" and \"markets\" are \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.economicprincipals.com\/issues\/2016.09.25\/1928.html\"\u003Emade\u003C\/a\u003E by people. Economists \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/press.princeton.edu\/books\/paperback\/9780691138497\/do-economists-make-markets\"\u003Ecreate the systems they claim to merely be describing\u003C\/a\u003E. Their research advances their own, \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/inequality\/2019\/jun\/06\/socialism-for-the-rich-the-evils-of-bad-economics\"\u003Eoften pro-rich\u003C\/a\u003E, answers to the political and moral questions of \"How we should distribute power and resources?\" while it purports only to be explaining the technical question \"How does the economy work?\" Things, people are realizing, can be otherwise.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut even as faith in economists begins to be questioned in the West, when it comes to the \"developing world,\" many economists continue to enjoy free rein. The 2019 Nobel laureates are a case in point. Far from being beset by the mistrust that they fret about in their new book, Banerjee and Duflo are riding a wave of \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/goatsandsoda\/2019\/10\/15\/770346240\/how-the-3-nobel-winners-for-economics-upended-the-fight-against-poverty\"\u003ENPR profiles\u003C\/a\u003E and audiences with \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/economictimes.indiatimes.com\/news\/politics-and-nation\/pm-explained-how-he-is-trying-to-reform-bureaucracy-abhijit-banerjee-after-meeting-modi\/articleshow\/71703883.cms?from=mdr\"\u003Eprime ministers\u003C\/a\u003E. Their work, crossing science with humanitarianism-you might even call it an attempt to \"save\" poor black and brown people-has been an \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-asia-india-50048519\"\u003Einstant hit\u003C\/a\u003E with Western liberals. And even as poverty policy in the West is, albeit slowly, becoming \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.huffpost.com\/entry\/poverty-eradication-is-possible-united-nations-economics_b_59e5d3b9e4b0a2324d1d64ab\"\u003Eunderstood\u003C\/a\u003E as a \u003Ci\u003Epolitical\u003C\/i\u003E matter having to do with power and inequality, poverty in the Global South continues to be treated as a \u003Ci\u003Escientific\u003C\/i\u003E matter, requiring data and deference rather than democracy and dissent.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EPoverty in the Global South has always been a political matter, having to do with both money and power. To take just one example, since the 1980s the IMF and World Bank, advised by economists and bankers, implemented devastating \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.zedbooks.net\/shop\/book\/structural-adjustment\"\u003EStructural Adjustment Policies\u003C\/a\u003E (SAPs) across the Global South under which countries on the verge of defaulting on their (un-repayable) loans were offered debt refinancing-with strings attached. To get new loans, countries \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.whirledbank.org\/development\/sap.html\"\u003Ehad to\u003C\/a\u003E dismantle public spending, privatize vital state-run services, and remove trade protections for domestic businesses. Thanks to SAPs, poverty and inequality \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/jan\/29\/bill-gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal\"\u003Eincreased\u003C\/a\u003E dramatically throughout the Global South in the late 20th century. Since 1981, the world's poor population is estimated to have risen by 1 billion, a number that London School of Economics anthropologist \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.jasonhickel.org\/the-divide\"\u003EJason Hickel\u003C\/a\u003E reminds us is three times the size of the US population.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESAPs have faced decades of intense \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2001\/apr\/29\/business.mbas\"\u003Eprotests\u003C\/a\u003E from the Global South's poor, so much so that since the late 1990s they've had to be rebranded as \"Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers,\" or PRSPS. These merely continue privatization and austerity under a different name. \"The strength of the new consensus,\" as David Craig and Doug Porter \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/289438852_Development_Beyond_Neoliberalism_Governance_Poverty_Reduction_and_Political_Economy\"\u003Enote\u003C\/a\u003E, \"was evident in the fact that [the IMF and the World Bank] barely discussed the efficacy of its underpinning neoliberal market orthodoxy.\" Instead, since 2000, insidious projects of privatization and \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/thewire.in\/economy\/weve-got-the-ease-of-doing-business-but-for-whom\"\u003Epro-rich advocacy\u003C\/a\u003E have been carried out not through a direct macroeconomic assaults but rather by intervening in the \"organizing rubrics and technical means\" of service provision.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe 2019 laureates are a product of their time. Rather than overtly preaching market fundamentalism, the laureates ignore the devastation caused by colonial and neocolonial processes like SAPs, quietly remove the question of restoring public budgets from the table, and lay the groundwork for further privatization, deregulation, and defunding at all levels of the economy.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMore impressively, they make their work look apolitical, if not downright benevolent, paralleling the World Bank's capacity to adopt an ever more pro-poor veneer while still advocating policies that are ever more pro-wealthy. Development economists, who seem inherently nobler and more liberal than their financial crisis-inducing macroeconomist counterparts, might in fact be more dangerous to the world's poor. If the injustice of global poverty is to be challenged, their work deserves intense scrutiny, not uncritical celebration.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAbhijit Banerjee \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/india-news\/abhijit-banerjee-dedicates-nobel-to-global-movement-for-poverty-alleviation\/story-4yuZURtYS2lhighH0ld4yJ.html\"\u003Eacknowledges\u003C\/a\u003E that the 2019 Nobel was a victory not for the individual scholars but also for their wider \"movement\" of using the \"experimental method\" in development economics. Drawing inspiration from Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs)-lab-based experiments used in the fields of medicine and public health-randomistas (as proponents of Banerjee's movement are called) began treating the lives of the poorest as a giant open-air lab. Instead of studying already existing initiatives to understand what reduces poverty, randomistas introduced their own interventions to randomly chosen groups of poor people. One group might be given anti-malaria bed nets for free and another at 75 percent off, for instance; the two would then be compared to check the impact of price on bed-net usage. The cheaper it was to help poor people, randomista wisdom suggested, the more people could be helped.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBanerjee and Duflo have claimed that randomista economists pursue a simple technical repair devoid of all ideology-much like the way \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/oct\/30\/changing-world-better-economics-honest-humane\"\u003Eplumbers\u003C\/a\u003E might fix a clogged drain, or engineers might construct a footbridge. But \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/urpe.org\/2019\/10\/18\/impoverished-economics-unpacking-the-economics-nobel-prize\"\u003Emany\u003C\/a\u003E economists disagree. Randomistas' work is dogged with \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/oxfamblogs.org\/fp2p\/the-randomistas-just-won-the-nobel-economics-prize-heres-why-rcts-arent-a-magic-bullet\"\u003Emethodological\u003C\/a\u003E, \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/2019\/10\/22\/economics-development-rcts-esther-duflo-abhijit-banerjee-michael-kremer-nobel\"\u003Eethical\u003C\/a\u003E, and \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/finance-and-economics\/2019\/11\/21\/this-years-nobel-prizes-prompt-soul-searching-among-economists\"\u003Epolitical\u003C\/a\u003E assumptions that follow no laws of physics. Do RCT findings from Kenya \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/biosocieties\/article\/are-rcts-the-gold-standard\/0A53C381EDDC6FE52EF8D5E79B2A179B\"\u003Eapply\u003C\/a\u003E to India? What gives economists license to use the poor as \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.theindiaforum.in\/article\/indecent-proposals-economics\"\u003Eguinea pigs\u003C\/a\u003E?\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFifteen development experts, including three former Nobel laureates, \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2018\/jul\/16\/buzzwords-crazes-broken-aid-system-poverty\"\u003Epublicly denounced\u003C\/a\u003E randomista methods in \u003Ci\u003EThe Guardian\u003C\/i\u003E in 2018, recognizing that RCTs in development ignore root causes of poverty, \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/developingeconomics.org\/2018\/11\/09\/why-positive-thinking-wont-get-you-out-of-poverty\"\u003Eexcessively narrow\u003C\/a\u003E the size of the problem, and focus solely on \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/bostonreview.net\/books-ideas\/john-mcmahon-richard-thaler-misbehaving-behavioral-economics\"\u003Ebehavioral issues\u003C\/a\u003E, casting poverty as the problem of \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.ras.org.in\/randomise_this_on_poor_economics\"\u003Ebad choices\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe robust criticism is necessary and needs to be extended. The new development economics not only ignores structural determinants but also furthers austerity as the solution to existing austerity, casting more capitalist inequality as the solution to Global South poverty.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELet's take one example: the 2019 laureates' \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/uploads\/2019\/10\/advanced-economicsciencesprize2019.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ework on education\u003C\/a\u003E. The question they started with was: In India, in Kenya, do kids learn in school? The answer was a resounding \"no,\" which led to the next question: Why?\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFaced with uneducated parents, large class sizes, teacher absenteeism, a lack of textbooks, and the absence of midday meals, the laureates decided to choose among these problems instead of adding them up. What was the problem? Missing textbooks or missing midday meals? Worms in bellies or large class sizes? It turned out the problem was teachers. Test scores improved when poor children got remedial after-school lessons offered by \"paraprofessional\" NGO workers; when they played educational computer games run also by NGO workers; when researchers hired contracted teachers who were much more \"motivated\" (read: desperate thanks to insecure employment) than tenured counterparts; and when researchers put cameras in schools and began to dock pay for each day permanent teachers missed.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAll of this obscures the simple fact that-according to calculations I carried out as part of doctoral research at Harvard-India \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/ceid.educ.cam.ac.uk\/publications\/WP18-ADfin.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Espends\u003C\/a\u003E 0.3 percent of its per capita GDP on each child. In comparison, the United States \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows\"\u003Espends\u003C\/a\u003E 26 percent. Many existing randomized control trials are biased from the start because they leave out this most significant variable outside the frame of measurement. Even within the RCT method, there might be space to ask better questions. Why not offer a randomly selected school sufficient public funds and compare it with an underfunded school? Why not try increasing teachers' salaries or making their jobs more secure? Why not improve teacher certification programs and raise standards?\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EInstead, the laureates' strategy tries to get a poor school to produce the same educational results as a well-funded school, just without the funding. In fact, all the solutions actually involve further cuts to already dismal public school budgets: \u003Ci\u003Elower\u003C\/i\u003E teacher pay and \u003Ci\u003Efewer\u003C\/i\u003E permanent teaching staff. Their \"small solutions\" not only let the government off the hook and fail to solve the political problems at the heart of the matter, they also tend to make those problems worse by advocating for \u003Ci\u003Efurther\u003C\/i\u003E privatization and deregulation.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor example, Abhijit Banerjee has \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraphindia.com\/culture\/books\/nobel-laureate-abhijit-banerjee-on-what-ails-india-s-healthcare-sector\/cid\/1711667\"\u003Esuggested\u003C\/a\u003E that the solution to India's health crisis might lie in legalizing untrained practitioners (\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/sci-tech\/health\/the-spin-doctors-indias-quacks-imperil-lives-but-are-god-to-their-patients\/article23398980.ece\"\u003Equacks\u003C\/a\u003E) using \"a simple test which allows the government to certify these practitioners as health extension workers.\" This is yet another cost-effective, regulation-lite strategy that enables further cuts to the health budgets.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe laureates' work responds similarly to problems ranging from hunger to credit, not just \u003Ci\u003Eignoring\u003C\/i\u003E the structural determinants of poverty but actively advocating public defunding and advancing unregulated markets as development solutions. In this context, other RCTs in India investigating \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nber.org\/papers\/w25880\"\u003Ehow to get daily wage workers to accept lower wages\u003C\/a\u003E appear not as aberrations but as logical endpoints of the dangerous trend started by the much-admired 2019 laureates and their followers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn a revealing 2006 article in \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/bostonreview.net\/banerjee-making-aid-work\"\u003EBoston Review\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Ci\u003E,\u003C\/i\u003E Abhijit Banerjee ranked potential interventions to increase school attendance by their price tags: deworming (costs $3.25 per child per year), school meals ($35), uniforms ($100), cash transfers to families ($6,000). \"Choosing the wrong option,\" he notes grimly, \"can be very costly indeed.\" For Banerjee, \"cost\" here is emphatically \u003Ci\u003Enot\u003C\/i\u003E referring to children having worms in their stomachs or going hungry; it instead refers to the extra money that donors might end up paying if the \"wrong\" choice was made between deworming, meals, uniforms, and family incomes.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMeanwhile, the laureates live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a city whose public school system \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.cpsd.us\/UserFiles\/Servers\/Server_3042785\/File\/departments\/administration\/financial\/budget\/fy2018\/Budget_at_a_Glance_2017-18_web.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Espends\u003C\/a\u003E a total of $28,000 per pupil per year. Teachers at these schools always show up. They are not only tenured but unionized. Students attend school and they invariably learn to read and write. There are school nurses, nutritionists, counselors, athletic coaches, \u003Ci\u003Eand\u003C\/i\u003E there is a cafeteria, \u003Ci\u003Eand\u003C\/i\u003E there is soap in the bathrooms. The success of Cambridge public schools need not be a mystery: It's because they are funded and regulated (and work in tandem with a larger public goods regime) that outcomes are good.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIf the direction of causality isn't clear, try (as \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/answer-sheet\/wp\/2018\/06\/23\/there-is-a-movement-to-privatize-public-education-in-america-heres-how-far-it-is-has-gotten\"\u003Econservatives suggest\u003C\/a\u003E) cutting Cambridge public school budgets by 99 percent. Test scores \u003Ci\u003Ewill\u003C\/i\u003E plummet. Well-trained teachers and wealthier students \u003Ci\u003Ewill\u003C\/i\u003E leave for private schools. Undertrained teachers will be hired who stop coming to class. Imagine if, to respond to this crisis, economists recommended putting Cambridge schoolchildren in after-school remedial lessons with an NGO, installing cameras to monitor permanent teachers, docking their pay if they weren't in class, and replacing permanent teachers with more \"motivated\" temps-all while the remaining 1 percent of the public education budget was further cut and the public school system was handed off to Teach for America volunteers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIf an economist recommended cutting permanent staff at public schools across the United States, they would be pegged as asking to privatize a public good. Some people, mainly conservatives and the wealthy, would surely be for that, but many wouldn't: Just look at the ongoing \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2019\/12\/medicare-for-all-m4a-nhs-national-health-service-boris-johnson\"\u003Etransatlantic debate\u003C\/a\u003E over the fate of public health care. But because it's India, because it's Kenya, and because it's \"development,\" few can identify the economist's political agenda. It's as if in the Global South there is no right and left, only the neutral, scientific \"forward.\"\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECountries of the Global South are regularly made into political exceptions. For example, even though the 2019 laureates' RCTs have repeatedly \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/voxeu.org\/article\/limitations-randomised-controlled-trials\"\u003Eignored\u003C\/a\u003E local contexts when scaling up experiments, their work has never attempted to breach the place-specificity of the \"developed world.\" If they wanted to scale up successful models from \u003Ci\u003Eany\u003C\/i\u003E decontextualized location that shows a good track record, why not scale up Cambridge to India?\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIt is hypocritical to sit in Cambridge, enjoy its comparatively robust public goods regime, and act like public goods have nothing to do with the well-being of Indians and Kenyans. The wealthy have never been experimented on by economists in order to become wealthy, and no RCTs were conducted in Cambridge before deciding to spend $28,000 per student per year. These are not questions of science that need to be left to experts. They are political questions that require political solutions-even in the Global South.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOrdinary people increasingly understand this, but many economists do not. In a gushing 2010 \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2010\/05\/17\/the-poverty-lab\"\u003ENew Yorker profile\u003C\/a\u003E of Esther Duflo, the French economist is pictured with the poor Rwandan farmers whose lives she claims to be improving. As if posing for a \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/international\/archive\/2012\/03\/the-white-savior-industrial-complex\/254843\"\u003Ewhite savior\u003C\/a\u003E photo-op weren't condescending enough, the picture is accompanied by an article in which Duflo argues, \"Most people who are not economists don't get it. They don't get the idea that there are budget constraints.\"\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut if there is one thing working people the world over can grasp, it's budgetary constraints. What they also understand is the \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2018\/08\/09\/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-why-do-we-write-blank-checks-war-our-pockets-are-empty-when\"\u003Ehypocrisy\u003C\/a\u003E and the injustice of those constraints, which are only ever applied to them, not to billionaires or the IMF. In the streets across the world, people are \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/oct\/25\/protests-rage-around-the-world-hong-kong-lebanon-chile-catalonia-iraq\"\u003Erejecting\u003C\/a\u003E IMF-led austerity and market fanaticism and demanding a redress to longstanding inequities. Development organizations are joining in, recognizing that being liberals at home and capitalists abroad won't solve poverty. \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.oxfamamerica.org\/explore\/stories\/billionaire-wealth-grows-by-25-billion-a-day-while-poorest-wealth-falls\"\u003EOxfam\u003C\/a\u003E has notably taken the unequivocal position that poverty in the Global South will be solved the same way it will in the Global North: progressive taxation, public funding for basic services, and labor protections.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe message is clear: Good economics isn't rocket science for those who have an understanding of structural injustice and a moral compass. It's time to stop \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/scroll.in\/article\/941279\/indias-economy-is-in-crisis-and-adulation-for-abhijit\"\u003Edelegating our thinking\u003C\/a\u003E on poverty to the seemingly benevolent development economists, especially those who seem to have neither.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/archive\/nobel-poverty-economics-duflo\/\"\u003Ethenation.com\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","_links":{"parent_art":[{"title":"Les oligarques se rassemblent \u00e0 Davos","url":"http:\/\/newsnet.fr\/apicom\/id:167808,json:1"}],"related_by":[{"title":"A la source de l'alliance des gouvernements avec le monde de la haute finance. Lhk","url":"http:\/\/newsnet.fr\/apicom\/id:168010,json:1"}]}}}

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