No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

Is Globalization Reducing World Poverty?

Outlook India reports the results of a study into how useful the World Bank figures are in answering that question. The study is important because there is no other source of statistics that can answer that question, so the accuracy of the World Bank's methods and statistics is extremely important.

Here is a quote from the article "The figures are compiled by the World Bank.1 It claims to know, to within the nearest 10,000, how many of the world's people are living below the international poverty line. The response of those who criticize the way the global economy works is to accept the Bank's calculations, but to argue that there are more equitable and less destructive means of achieving the same results. But the figures are without foundation.

A new paper by the economist Sanjay Reddy and the philosopher Thomas Pogge demonstrates that the World Bank's methodology is so flawed that its calculations cannot possibly be correct.2 Not only do they appear wildly to underestimate the level of global poverty, but the downward trend they purport to show seems to be an artefact of the way in which they have been compiled. The World Bank's figures, against which the success or failure of the entire global economy is measured, are useless. "

Read the article for the details.
posted by Richard at 10:29 PM