We need worthy and decent unemployments

What politician does not speak up for the need to create decent and well paid jobs for young people? But, if that's not possible, and the economy is not able to deliver that on its own ... What on earth do we do?

Society must of course do its utmost seeking to solve the problem of youth unemployment ... including taking leisure to levels never thought of… six months vacations! But it also needs to prepare itself to handle a growing number of unemployed, not cyclical but structural, that is, those who never ever in their life will have a chance to get an economically productive job.

Two decades ago, concerned about growing unemployment, half in jest, in an Op-Ed in El Universal of Caracas, I asked something like whether it was better to have one hundred thousand unemployed running each on his side as broody hens, or to seat them all in a huge human circle where everyone would scratch the backs of one of his neighbors, charging a lot for his services, while his own back was scratched by his other neighbor, at an equally high price. The tragedy is that this question seems to me now less and less hypothetical.

And is not necessarily an act of desperation to think about what to do with the unemployed ...because sometimes, in seeking to unravel a tangled twine, starting with the other end, may be the best way to release the first. Which is better: educating for a source of employment likely to be absent and therefore only create frustration, or educate for unemployment, and suddenly perhaps reaching, when on that route, the pleasant surprise of some jobs?

The power of a nation, and the productivity of its economy, which so far has depended primarily on the quality of its employees may, in the future, also depend on the quality of its unemployed, as a minimum in the sense of these not interrupting those working.

That the gentleman of the leisure class to which Thorstein Veblen referred did not work, was essentially a result of them being free of economic needs. But that does not also mean that the economy and the social peace of the moment, were not also in need of these men not competing for the fewer jobs to be had resulting from an industrial revolution.

The gentleman was encouraged to study philosophy and art by means of the social status he gained when knowing about such matters. In this respect, one of the most important challenges we currently have as a society is how to create social status and other incentives, for the unemployed to become solid and worthy unemployed citizens?

And we need to imbue the unemployed with special pride, because only this way will we keep them from making impossible economic demands... so far I have found no clues about how to handle a bargaining with their union representatives.

Given that we do all have to guard against the dangers of idleness, since the last thing we need is for the structurally idle to be idle, even circumstantially. Many of the current unemployed youth keeps busy with their smart-phones, and we do not want them not to be busy… and so using what is really their net oil revenues, to help them to immediately upgrade to an iPad, sounds like a good start. 

Friends, Venezuela should aspire to good jobs, but also to have the world's best unemployed.

Translated from El Universal, Caracas

PS. July 30, 2014 the new shareholders of El Universal, friends of Chavez and Maduro censored me, and all links to my 14 years of Op-Eds were erased.

PS. Minimum wages helps cause minimal wages.

PS. To get more jobs and higher salaries: Call on all capitalists to exploit any low salaries, for as much as they can. J

PS. Throw out the useless credit-risk-weighted capital (equity) requirements for banks and… if you absolutely must distort, then use potential-of-job-creation-weights instead (and throw in some sustainability-weights too for good measure). J

PS. A Universal Basic Income, since that is not a not-having-a-job-or-not related social contribution, could be a part of the efforts needed. That said these would be my minimum minimorum rules on a UBI

PS. Increased tariffs and minimum wages are superb news… for robot manufacturers :-)

PS. Perhaps we must put payroll taxes on robots to permit us humans to compete for jobs on more level grounds.

PS. Once social cohesion breaks down it is too late. As a Venezuelan I should know.

PS. If #AI dislikes being blamed for growing unemployment, is it possible that it starts to invent and market unnecessary jobs?

Why I support Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for President of the World Bank

One criteria that I would beg to for to be applied when choosing the next World Bank president is the one of not being prone to be entrapped by groupthink or, much worse, being a promoter of a groupthink. 

While being an Executive Director of the World Bank, 2002-2004, the search for a new Chief Economist was announced, and we directors were told that although it was obviously quite a delicate task, it should not take too long, as the search had to be carried out within “quite a small and exclusive community of development economists”… and I immediately reacted with a “hold it there!... being in the hands of a small and exclusive community of development economists sounds like something really frightening and unhealthy to me. 

One of the reasons why I support Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is precisely because I remember her, in the context of a very risk-adverse World Bank, to be more willing to discuss new ideas in delicate issues than most of her peers. This does of course not mean that any of the other two candidates, whom I do not really know, would not be capable of doing that as well.

My tax paradise (Nothing as powerful against tax havens as tax heavens)

My tax paradise is not, as some could think, a country where there are no taxes paid, but a country with a just, transparent and efficient tax system which, without weakening the citizen, allows for the fiscal revenue necessary for the government to undertake what the citizen considers it should undertake on their behalf… and nothing more. 

Currently such a fiscal paradise does not exist anywhere. In fact what dominates in the world is the existence of real Kafkaesque tax infernos. Countries capable of transforming themselves into tax paradises have all to gain. 

My tax paradise would be governed by the following two principles: 

1. Every person has the inalienable right to contribute to his country by the payment of taxes, no matter how poor he is. It is also unacceptable that citizens can be odiously divided by interested politicians and bureaucrats, in those paying and those not paying taxes.

2. The state must not receive any income other than those taxes paid directly by the citizens in their own name. It should be an inalienable right of citizens to have their governments work exclusively for them, without patrons or other interested parties, introducing confusion into such relation.

In this respect, in my tax paradise, any person who receives a single dollar in income, for any reason or from any source, pays taxes. The tax rate, progressive of course, could for example be between 10 and 49 percent. Never should the government be able to get hold of the largest portion of the income of any citizen, no matter how wealthy that citizen might be.

Companies would not be taxed at all, because their function is to create jobs and increase the taxable income of the citizens, something they can do much better without any distortions. Of course, companies would have to withhold and pay taxes on dividends paid to those who are not fiscally domiciled in the country.

All other revenue that may enter the state, such as the net oil revenues (Venezuela) and net import duties, should be distributed directly to citizens, in the extent that macroeconomic realities so permit, and will become part of their taxable income.

The tax revenues collected by the central state should be automatically distributed on a highly decentralized basis, which in our case (Venezuela) I visualize to be about 10 percent for the governorates and 40 percent to municipalities, 90 percent of these to be distributed based on population and 10 percent based on the territory. Municipalities may also collect their residential property taxes.

In cases of national emergency, and with the favorable vote of 80 percent of the Assembly, the National Assembly may also enact a tax on the value of financial assets up to a maximum of 1 percent per year, up to a maximum period of 3 years.

¿Could public services be privatized? Absolutely, but always allocated on the basis of minimizing user fees and not, as is usual, maximizing state revenues.

¿What about public debt? Not a penny more that 30 percent of GDP, and only long term debt.

I appreciate any suggestions you may have to help make even more paradisaical my tax paradise. 

Translated from Op-ed in El Universal

PS. Phrased in other words: Corporate taxes only dilute citizen's tax representation or... clearer yet... the corporations have hijacked the citizen's tax representation... to the delight of politicians.

PS. In order for the government to timely collect taxes on what derives from corporate profits, these profits, as shown on financial statements, should yearly be passed through to the shareholders, and the corporations, in order to assist the shareholders in the payment of those taxes, decree and pay some dividends.

PS. And of course, VAT and similar, beside being regressive do not give real representation, as there is not an identified citizen behind its payment.

PS. April 2016 "Panama Papers" Don't let redistribution agitation profiteers raise your expectations.

PS. Public borrowing capacity (or money printing seigniorage) is a valuable strategic asset that should not lightly be consumed or squandered.

Flashback: April 3, 1998 The taxes we have to pay! Daily Journal Please read it.

PS. Oh, how I dislike redistribution profiteers... let's diminish their franchise value with a Universal Basic Income

The World Bank and the Outliers of Civil Society

It is hard to explain Civil Society, since much more than something physical it represents something spiritual; the will of an individual to participate in making our governments govern better and to make the world of his grandchildren a better place.

But, that said, it is also very easy to ascertain that some of the multinational corporate NGOs currently active in the name of the civil society, are absolutely not the same as that individual who, acting on his own or in a group, with little or no recourses, feels an urge to have his voice heard, convinced that he has something important to say.

For the sake of simplicity let us divide civil society in an organized strong civil society with voice, most of them originating in the developed countries, and the rest, quite unorganized, weak, with little international voice, most of them belonging to the developing countries. In this respect, the first question the World Bank must answer is whether it wants to be able to listen to the latter or not.

This is an issue because the truth is that the more attention is given to the voice of the strong developed-world-civil-society establishment, the harder it will be for the weak and outliers to have their voice heard, as the former could, would and will, tend to monopolize, hijack and direct the debate on development issues.

As an example of how civil-society might be captured answer the following: When the natural-resource-curse issue is discussed, how many resource-cursed-civil-society voices are effectively present, compared to the number of experts from natural-resource-consuming countries?

And, might the unrepresented-civil-society not have more voice at the Board of the World Bank, than what it has when it is represented by civil-society-with-voice?

And, who responds the best to the issue of genuine representation in a transparent an effective way, the World Bank or civil society?

And, the current financial crisis, specifically the fact that the IMF did not alert to it, is most often and best explained as a result of groupthink within the IMF. This is also evidenced by the fact that the simple truth of the crisis, is not allowed to surface, because it would so embarrass the Group. But, in this respect, does not the strong and represented developed-world-civil-society establishment act just like another mean and lean group-thinking machine?

I do not advance any answers, but those questions need to be raised, over and over again

In a closely related context, I am currently arguing for the need of a totally randomized web search engine, which could permit that the odd and unsupported opinions can now and again float to the surface of the web. As is, in the world of the Google and the Yahoos, the outliers are effectively drowned in the millions of sponsored-hits, or in the so many well intentioned most-probably-looked-for-by-the-searcher hits. I sincerely hope the World Bank does its best to keep a line open so as to at least give the outliers of civil society a chance to be heard.

Besides the alternative of the weak-unrepresented-civil-society organizing itself in the Group of The Outliers, how could World Bank help to establish any meaningful communications with it?

Again this is not an easy issue but, given the constraints, it probably must start by somehow limiting the current preferential access given to the communications with the organized civil-society establishment.

Any claim to transparency would for instance require that the World Bank posts a list of all the NGOs and persons who have been present during spring-and-fall-meetings over the last decade, indicating how many times and how many presentations they have hosted or co-hosted.

Modern communications could also be more intensively exploited. For instance there could be a website where all civil society participants around the world would know that they can post a question or give an opinion, and someone from the WBG will at least look at it. Those questions should be answered; or, if already answered, it should indicate where; or, if it cannot be currently answered, it should say so and preferably explain the reason why.

A group of WB professionals should then periodically prepare a summary of the opinions posted on the site above and present these to the Executive Directors. That summary should give special emphasis to the opinions considered as outliers, especially if substantially argued.

In conclusion what we least need if for the Global Partnership for Enhanced Social Accountability to end up like just another small and exclusive mutual admiration group, like the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision and the Financial Stability Board.

I do not wish to extend more this comment but I should perhaps explain that it is based on my experience as an Executive Director at the World Bank 2002-2004, and on my intensive participation as part of civil society thereafter… thanks to the support of a quite eclectic and thankfully not too bureaucratic organized civil-society NGO.

http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/how-should-world-bank-support-social-accountability-share-your-views#comment-5175 

Young unemployed … forever?

Again, as part of the “Civil Society”, whatever that means, I am not too sure about that, I was present during the meetings last week in Washington of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. One of the most important issues discussed there, were the frightening figures of the huge youth unemployment in the world and that, from what I gathered, no one is really sure on how to solve. My comments on the issue, made in representation of my yet unborn grandchildren, were:

If youth wants to get employment they need to start demanding it more strongly. I am sure that if there was a law that established that once the unemployment rate of youth exceeded a certain level there would be a lottery among all government bureaucrats aged for instance fifty and more, to make a large percentage of these have to resign so as to give the young some opportunities, that would certainly energize the government's attention to this problem. Inside me I was hearing a little voice reminding me of that not fully confirmed Viking tradition of their elderly jumping voluntarily from a cliff, ättestupa, when not being any longer useful to society.

In the world the regulators have imposed on banks some capital requirements based on the risks of default of their clients, as perceived by the credit rating agencies. Since banks and markets have already incorporated that information when setting their interest rates, that means the same information gets considered twice, resulting in that the banks are excessively pushed towards what is officially perceived as being less riskier, the triple-A and some sovereigns, and away from what is considered as more “risky” like the small businesses and entrepreneurs, precisely those who have more chance of creating the future generation of jobs. The young should oppose this and require that the capital requirements of banks are better aligned with the potential of creating the jobs they need.

If a young person (or an old) have interests that keep them busy when they are without jobs, giving them some food and clothing might suffice, but, if they do not possess any “healthy” interest and could therefore be tempted by something bad, you would also need to place expensive policemen next to them. In this respect I asked: “If we know that hundreds of thousands or millions of youth will find themselves without employment perhaps for life, what education can we give them?” A Master in Unemployment? In some respect this relates closely to the writings of Thorstein Veblen about the leisure class.

I also heard a very good debate about the recent incidents in some Arab countries. Most of the panelists held that what caused the explosions were not so much the existent inequalities, but the fact that these were perceived as being unjust. Absolutely, the young of nations where their governments have generation after generation wasted the revenues derived from valuable natural resources, like from oil, should demand these be paid out directly to them so as to have the opportunity of putting these to better use.

Something dramatic has to be done, NOW! As otherwise it would seem that the only opportunity many young unemployed will be able to get out of it, is when they move up, or down, to the group of unemployed old.

Translated from: El Universal

PS. We need worthy and decent unemployments
PS. An ättestupa for the baby boomers?
PS. The violated holy intergenerational bond

The world is in dire need of randomness

We need a totally random search engine to be used to find the small irrelevant voices that could posses the most relevant ideas in our ever more crony interconnected world

PS. A blast from the past: "A mixture of thousand solutions, many of them inadequate, may lead to a flexible world that can bend with the storms. A world obsessed with Best Practices may calcify its structure and break with any small wind.”

On broken donor promises

Promises by donor countries should be rated by credit rating agencies, to shame those who promise lightly; and the poor countries should be able to hedge these promises in the IMF.

This way, a broken promise will not fall on the shoulders of the poor countries least able to afford it, but on the shoulders of the IMF and this way, presumably, the possibilities of the promises being broken will also be reduced.

Sunshine should not blind us.

March 19 ending “Sunshine Week” I attended the forum “Building Transparency” organized by Openthegovernment.org. There I stated the following:

As it is not the natural thing for governments to give out the public information data we would really want to have access to when we need it, they could perhaps respond by, unwittingly, trying to drown us in data, or blind us with too much sunshine.

Therefore we should request that all public information data should carry appended to it a link that would lead us to all others who, voluntarily, want to disclose they are massaging precisely that same data, and so that all interested in precisely that same data, do not have to waste their time unnecessarily massaging all over again precisely the same data and, most importantly, so that we can all know all other citizens who belong to precisely the same network of interest.

Another 'worst': Faulty bank regulation

Another 'worst': Faulty bank regulation 

The Dec. 20 Outlook compilation of the decade’s worst ideas did not include the one most to blame for the loss of most of the past decade’s growth: regulations that allowed banks to hold absolute minimums of capital as long as they lent to clients or invested in instruments rated AAA, for having no risk. This launched a frantic race to find AAA-rated investments wherever and finally took the markets over the cliff of the subprime mortgages. 

The most horrific part is that it seems likely to endure because regulators can’t seem to let go of this utterly faulty regulatory paradigm. Let me remind you that banks are allowed to hold zero capital when lending to sovereign countries rated AAA and that there are already many reasons to think that the credit quality of many sovereign states has been more than a bit overrated.

https://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2010/05/letter-in-washington-post.html

Do developing countries have a real voice in the developed Civil Society Community?

As a former Executive Director of the World Bank (2002-2004) and who since my term ended have been in very close contact with many ONGs or Civil Society Organizations, and have even acted as part of the Civil Society, I must say I am not so sure of how to answer the question made in the title... of course making the caveat that neither am I so sure about what Civil Society really means.

As a citizen I have seen many extremely good NGOs that I have nothing to complain about and much to thank for, but, then again I have also seen some multinational ONG corporations that arrogantly want to impose their agendas and their world views on us… and that we should not let them! No ONG, much less an international, should ever be able to completely substitute for the voice of an individual citizen.

For instance on a somewhat personal note, I am an oil-cursed citizen, I have seen some ONGs taking the side of governments defending their right to manage the oil-revenues on behalf of the (incapable) citizens, and even recommending that this be done through a tripartite arrangement between governments, oil-companies and civil society, presumably their civil society. This is totally unacceptable for a citizen that has seen immense non renewable oil richness being wasted forever and good governance made impossible by the extreme powers vested into any government which receives the oil income.

In other cases I have seen small local NGOs while trying to find real life solutions to their urgent day to day problems, like for instance those derived from bad public services resulting from badly executed privatizations, seeing their agendas completely and unduly taken over for the internationally seemingly more “interesting” quest of “getting back at those bastard multinational corporations”.

I had the opportunity of participating in many debates on the voice and governance issues at the World Bank, and I do think the bank is well served of reaching out very often to the civil society in search of the-other-side-of-the-story but, in doing so, it should first always make clear that in the final count it works for governments, so as not to create false expectations, and secondly to always be really sure of what civil society is represented by which civil society and that each civil society is duly connected to a real life citizen.