How should we measure inequality?
Author Archive | Jason Hickel
How not to measure inequality
When we look at inequality from the perspective of the poor – using the theory of increasing egregiousness – it becomes clear that the relative metric is inappropriate as a tool for assessing distribution. Certainly if our objective is to end poverty, this is the conclusion we must draw, as an additional dollar going needlessly […]
Inequality and the ecological transition
Last month Branko Milanovic published a blog post about the Yellow Vest movement against the fuel tax in France. He was worried–like many analysts–that the uprising proves it will be virtually impossible to roll out the policies necessary to reduce carbon emissions. He’s convinced that people simply won’t accept it.
The Nobel Prize for climate catastrophe
The economist William Nordhaus will receive his profession’s highest honor for research on global warming that’s been hugely influential—and entirely misguided.
Prosperity or Plunder? Nigeria Slipping at an Oily Crossroads
“Disaster” doesn’t begin to describe the troubled oil scene in Nigeria. Last June, in the immediate wake of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the New York Times ran an article exposing a crisis in Nigeria that should have been capable of piquing the conscience of even the most hardened oil barons. It […]
Rethinking Jeffrey Sachs and the “Big Five”: New Proposals for the End of Poverty
Jeffrey Sachs has become something of a force in international development circles over the past decade. As special advisor to the UN’s Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, former director of the UN’s Millennium Development Project, and a decorated economist at Columbia University, Sachs certainly has much to brag about. The publication of his runaway bestseller, The […]
Africa, Nature, and the March of the Development Technocrats
“Development,” I’ve discovered, operates as a flagrantly racist discourse in some guises. Scrambling to explain the reasons for Africa’s perpetual poverty and apparently incurable misery, laypersons in the West point to Africans’ “savagery” and alleged incapacity for civilization. This is not just a fringe opinion; even among putatively educated individuals such nonsense recurs with disturbing […]
From Rights to Commons: Dispatches from South Africa’s Revolution
“But we can’t eat rights, hawu!” Those five words of protest from the lips of South Africa’s underclass sting like a slap in the face. Good liberals will always take offense. We find ourselves scrambling desperately to battle the mad claim that “things were better under apartheid.” “But of what worth is a job,” we […]
Hollywood Pretends to Learn from Nelson Mandela
Since its release last December Invictus has caused quite a stir among American movie-goers, garnering relatively high reviews from critics, bagging third place among box-office openers, taking home a series of award nominations, and — perhaps most importantly — winning airtime on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. But while director Clint Eastwood’s successes with this […]
