Ter Ou Não Ter

by Branko Milanović

Quem foi a pessoas mais rica do mundo? O local onde nascemos afeta a quantidade de dinheiro que teremos ao longo da vida? Como o podemos saber? Por que, além de mera curiosidade, interessam estas questões? Em Ter ou Não Ter, Branko Milanovic, um dos especialistas mundiais em questões centradas na riqueza, pobreza e no fosso que as separa, explica estes e outros mistérios acerca do modo como a riqueza está mal distribuída pelo mundo, desde os tempos mais remotos.

Através da História, Literatura e notícias retiradas dos jornais atuais, Milanovic explora uma das maiores divisões nas nossas vidas sociais: a linha que separa aqueles que têm daqueles que não tem. Ter ou Não Ter revela:

- quão rico era o pretendente de Elizabeth Bennet, o Sr. Darcy;
- quanto lucrou Anna Karenina por se ter apaixonado;
- quão ricos eram os romanos comparados com os mais ricos da atualidade;
- como devemos encarar o marxismo no mundo moderno;
- como o local em que se nasce determina o grau de riqueza futura.

Ultrapassando o mero entretenimento, é aqui explicado por que motivo a desigualdade tem importância, o modo como prejudica o nosso futuro económico e como pode ameaçar as fundações da ordem social que tomamos como garantidas.

Ousado, fascinante e lúcido, Ter ou Não Ter ensina-nos não só o modo como devemos pensar a desigualdade, mas por que o deveremos fazer.

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, History, Politics, Sociology, Travel, Poverty

216 pages, Paperback

First published December 28, 2010

About the author

Branko Milanović (Serbian Cyrillic: Бранко Милановић, IPA: [brǎːŋko mǐlanoʋitɕ; milǎːn-]) is a Serbian-American economist. He is most known for his work on income distribution and inequality. Since January 2014, he is a visiting presidential professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and an affiliated senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). He also teaches at the London School of Economics and the Barcelona Institute for International Studies. In 2019 he has been appointed the honorary Maddison Chair at the University of Groningen.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring, rambling, and without much of a point. To me, the following snippet neatly encapsulates the kinds of truisms you will get from reading this book:

"Even if we agree on the role that globalization plays with respect to each channel whereby it affects global inequality, the contextual, historical shapes of things (where in the income distribution of nations the populous countries are) will determine the ultimate answer. There cannot be a general answer to the question "How does globalization affect global inequality?"; there can at best be only contextual answers" (p 156).

Wow, how fascinating. Two hundred fifteen pages to tell me there are no easy answers?

In addition, the whole book is spent detailing the differing income distributions among individuals and among countries--but not looking at actual quality of life. He makes some adjustments for purchasing power by country but does not consider rising luxury in any detail. He briefly mentions the middle class but gives little analysis of it.

To be fair, I learned a little about measures of inequality and how in-country inequality as well as global inequality have risen sharply at different periods to very high levels today. What I didn't learn was the significance of this, or what this inequality means to quality of life, or what to do about it. The best chapter is Income Inequality and the Global Financial Crisis, which actually does give some opinions and analysis.

Also, unforgivable mutilation and misuse of a quotation: "To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports about the rise of the global median, and even more so the global middle, class, have been greatly exaggerated" (p. 172). This is in no way paraphrasing Mark Twain. This is taking six words from a famous statement Mark Twain made about false rumors of his death, inserting them into a bland statement you want to make, and using it in a context that has absolutely no relevance to the original quip.

[Jason Furman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most delightful short economics books I have read--and certainly the most delightful on the topic of inequality. The book covers three types of inequality: inequality of people within a country (e.g., Brazil is more unequal than Japan); inequality between countries (e.g., Asia is more unequal than Latin America, because countries in Asia range from very rich to very poor); and inequality of people across countries (e.g., Asia and Latin America are about as unequal, because of the combination of the two previous points). This last concept is the one that Branko Milanović pioneered and it provides a fascinating window into inequality, including the observation that inequality of people across the USA and EU are roughly the same (because the EU has more equality within countries but lots of income differences between those countries).

The book is organized in three chapters that each explain one of the inequality concepts followed by about 10 vignettes per chapter. The vignettes are delightful and range from questions like why Elizabeth Bennett got married in Pride and Prejudice and who was the world's richest man to more serious topics like the role that inequality across regions played in the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

Very highly recommended.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book about global inequality. Unlike Piketty's Capitalism in the 21st Century, this book explains more about global than national inequality. Take home point: most of the global inequality is based on the difference between the countries (80%), and not which is inside the countries. As long as this inequality is not tackled, we will continue to see waves after waves of migrant crises in Europe, and both legal and illegal immigration to the rich world.

[کافه ادبیات · Rating 4 out of 5]

این کتاب نشان می دهد که چگونه نابرابری در طول تاریخ اثر خود را بر جامعه به طور کلی گذاشته است. سه نوع نابرابری را بررسی می‌کنند:
نابرابری بین افراد در یک کشور.
نابرابری بین کشورها؛
و نابرابری جهانی یا نابرابری در بین همه شهروندان جهان.

[Petar · Rating 2 out of 5]

unc je svoje meljenje za ruckom s obitelji pretvorio u knjigu di yappa i pobjedjuje

shit je ok overview stvari ali niposto ispitna literatura level shit

[Ob-jonny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great analysis of income inequality and how it helps or hurts an economy. Judging from historical examples, there is a certain level of inequality that is ideal for maximizing work incentives and maximize the size of the middle class. This balance has been optimized in places like Norway while the high levels of inequality in the US are depressing its economy. The book describes how income inequality has changed over time and about how it as increased over the last 150 years in violation with the standard Kuznets model. There are two models of inequality. The Kuznets model says that there is an inverted U which describes income inequality vs. the level of modernization for an economy. When we were hunter/gatherers, everybody was equal. The formation of city states, empires, and the industrial revolution increased inequality. And then modern societies decreased inequality through progressive economic programs. The Pareto model says that there is always an aristocracy and it just changes names. The monarchs were replaced by corrupt governments and dictators which were replaced by a plutocracy of bankers and CEOs. The reality is a mix between the two because inequality has been increasing rapidly over the last 40 years. The richest countries are 100 times richer than the poorest now while in 1850 the ratio was 6 to 1. This is a fascinating book.

[Diego · Rating 5 out of 5]

Branko Milanovic ha estudiado la desigualdad en el mundo por más de 25 años, desde la academia y desde el Banco Mundial, en The Have and the Have Nots esta experiencia es notoria y produce al mismo tiempo un análisis poderoso sobre la desigualdad, introduce conceptos y mediciones novedosas como la "frontera de posibilidades de desigualdad" y "la tasa de extracción" que permiten tener un mejor entendimiento de la evolución histórica de la desigualdad.

El libro de Branko Milanovic es fantástico por la sencillez con la que explica la desigualdad económica y lo entretenido que logra ser al leerlo. Es un libro ideal para los lectores no familiarizados con la desigualdad y sus métodos de estudio y medición. Es una muestra de que el análisis económico puede ser al mismo tiempo útil y divertido.

[Tarek Amer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Your country of birth has the largest impact on your individual income.

[Aisha Bowen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The point was made early on and what repeated over and over for the rest of the book. Reminds me of a college essay that has a page requirement that you need to fill.

[Charis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good book by Branko. He writes succinctly about inequality in various societies, and his short essays are uniquely titled “vignettes”. In each vignette he explores a dimension of inequality, weaving in contemporary economics with the classical, and philosophical views on inequality. Expect to find great explanations and insights into inequality that you never thought of before, e.g. in Asia, the country that you are born into almost guarantees your per capita income; whereas in Latin & South America, your class determines your income regardless of country. Hence in some cases, it is almost paramount that you are born in the right society. as an extension of this argument? He explores illegal immigration to Europe from North Africa.

A point to drive home is that inequality matters from a political and economic point of view. It drives instability within and between nations, unsustainable immigration, undesired utilitarian and humanitarian outcomes. Quite a fantastic book.

---

Therefore, income inequality increases both because of the growing gap in average earnings between industry and agriculture and because of rising inequality among industrial workers.

-

But “bad” inequality starts at a point—one not easy to define—where, rather than providing the motivation to excel, inequality provides the means to preserve acquired positions. This happens when inequality in wealth or income is used to forestall an economically positive political change for the society (e.g., agrarian reform or abolition of slavery), or to allow only the rich to get education, or to ensure that the rich keep the best jobs.

-

Notice a following fact. Socialist economies, in their fifty to seventy years of existence, have never produced a single consumer-good product that was exportable and successful internationally.

-

think there are fewer things that contributed more to the disenchantment of the population in communism than the ostentatious consumption patterns of their leaders.

-

The poor person will tend to prefer high tax rates and a lot of government spending because he is likely to benefit from it. For exactly the opposite reason, the rich person will prefer low tax rates. Then the pivotal vote is held by the person in the middle. With whomever he aligns, that side wins two to one. The median voter, or what we may call “the middle-class voter,” becomes the decisive voter. We would in principle expect him to gain through the process of redistribution.

-

Because “my” concern with the poverty of some people actually projects me in a very nice, warm glow: I am ready to use my money to help them. Charity is a good thing; a lot of egos are boosted by it and many ethical points earned even when only tiny amounts are given to the poor. But inequality is different: Every mention of it raises in fact the issue of the appropriateness or legitamacy of my income.

-

This is why the issue of intellectual property rights has acquired such a huge importance today: Rich countries want to make sure they get money for their inventions. Poor countries see it as just another obstacle to their development.

-

Citizenship is fate in the sense that it guarantees a person either a high or a low income.

-

The argument in favor of giving aid to India will not be based solely on the fact that its average income is lower. It will be based also, and perhaps more importantly, on a very low probability that such aid would entail a “regressive” transfer, that is, a transfer that would flow from a relatively poor American taxpayer to a richer Indian recipient of aid. With countries such as India, regressive transfers are practically ruled out.

-

But this cannot, from a global perspective, play a large role because more than 80 percent of variability in income globally is due to circumstances given at birth.

-

migration is not a fluke, accident, anomaly, or curiosity. It is simply a rational response to the large differences in the standard of living.

-

We may regard inequality instrumentally. Large income gaps between countries are driving socially unsustainable international migration flows. Locally, high inequality among communities and individuals is associated with political instability. These national political instabilities tend to spill over to neighboring countries and even to the rest of the world. For instability in that sentence, read chaos. Recent examples, as diverse as piracy near the shores of Somalia and the Mexican flu, illustrate how local poverty (which is just a different word for global inequality) easily affects the rest of the world. In one case, poverty and anarchy in Somalia threatened to bring to a standstill international shipments of oil in one of the most sensitive areas of the world; in the other case, poverty and bad sanitary conditions within Mexico led to the flu epidemic that quickly spread to the four corners of the world, infected thousands, and killed several hundred people. In other words, high levels of global inequality make global chaos more likely. Second, we can also adduce ethical arguments for lowering global inequality. We do not need to limit the domain of our concern with justice and duty of assistance only to the people with whom we share political institutions—that is, those in the same country.

-

we can say that the cause of inequality in Latin America is “class,” and the cause of inequality in Asia is “location.”

-

Our world today is still a world in which the place where we were born or where we live matters enormously, determining perhaps as much as two-thirds of our lifetime income.

[Alexandre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a few months ago, I read “The Great Leveler”, by Walter Scheidel, published in 2017. “The Haves and the Have-Nots” was published seven years before. Both deal with inequality through time and space. While the first fell short of my expectations as a consequence of too many reiterations of the same and, in the end, faulty argument, the last one succeeds in combining conciseness with a broad and nuanced view of the same topic.

Milanović writes with easy about a very complex subject, clarifying important concepts and presenting several relevant illustrations of his main arguments. Moreover, he is not shy of confronting a few sacred cows, like criticizing Piketty’s reliance on taxable income, arguing that disposable incomes are better suited to measure inequality. Besides, as he also stresses, data based on income will show greater inequality than one based on consumption.

A distinctive aspect of this book is its emphasis on the dual nature of inequality. There are both a “good” and a “bad” one. The first is needed to incentivize people toward studying, hardworking and/or starting risky projects. The last provides the means to preserve acquired positions. Whether the societal outcome of inequality will be, on average, beneficial or harmful will depend on the balance between these two tendencies.

As an example on how the lack of proper incentives harms economic development, the author reminds that, under socialism, the income of households can be predicted from their demographic characteristics alone. In other words, individual education, effort and skill are immaterial. Therefore, socialist leveling takes away all, or almost all, incentive to work harder, to learn more.

Paradoxically, the socialist regimes are far from free of inequality. It just changes its nature, becoming political. Benefits start being linked to particular jobs (“ex officio” benefits). Those at the top of the political hierarchy have access to goods in short supply. The pernicious consequences of such centralization of the access to privileges could not be overstated. In the end, [p]ersonal wealth serves (…) as a bulwark against government arbitrariness and provides the means to exert personal freedom.

Milanović also highlights the particularity of the second wave of globalization, which started after WWII. Unlike the first one, at the end of the XIX century, the new wave has capital mostly going from one rich country to another. More recently, it even started flowing “upward”, from poor to rich countries, as rich people from poor countries, fearful for their money and lives, invest abroad – a phenomenon termed the “Lucas Paradox”, where capital does not flow toward where it is scarcer and with a potentially higher rate of return. In response to such a paradox, technology is now regarded as “embedded” in a given institutional and cultural setup and subject to incentives.

Another major difference between the two waves of globalization lies less on the overall magnitude of inequality and more on how its composition changed. From being predominantly driven by class, it has changed to being almost entirely driven by location. In fact, the citizenship and the income class of someone’s parents explain more than 80% of a person’s income. The role played by a person’s effort is small. In accordance, since he cannot influence his country’s growth rate, his best alternative is migration. Shockingly, countries that have done poorly economically would remain, according to the author, with only half or even less of their populations if free migration were allowed.

The author also places inequality at the center of the financial crisis of 2007-2008, because huge inequalities in income distribution generated investable funds much larger than could be profitably employed. The political problem of insufficient economic growth of the middle class was then “solved” by opening the floodgates of cheap credit. A lesson well-worth remembering is that, in a democratic system, any excessively unequal model of development cannot coexist with political stability.

Understandably, the author misses three key phenomena of the following years:

(i) The populist upheaval of the second half of the 2010s, which brought globalization to a standstill;
(ii) The more forceful projection of Chinese power in the international setting, in spite of the non-reproducibility of its economic model; and
(iv) The shrinking of the “pink” wave in Latin America, with Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela now facing economic stagnation or even collapse as a result of their unique way of conducting economic policies.

Still, the challenges of the XXI century summarized by Milanović remain valid: how to bring Africa up, how to peacefully bring China in, and how to wean Latin America off of its self-obsession and bring it into the real world.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am, alas, statistically challenged. It is rather like a form of narcolepsy in which a sighting of statistics sends me into an immediate but temporary state of unconsciousness. So I cannot say I understood all of this book but I found what I did understand fascinating. Milanovic is focused not so much on the "how" of inequality but the "what." He demonstrates inequality within countries, between countries, and globally (i.e. treating the world as if it were one large country). He explains how to turn the numbers all into "apples" so you are not comparing apples and oranges. The numbers he comes up with are devastating. here is a sampling:

We can explain “a person’s income in the world by only two factors, both of which are given at birth: his citizenship and the income class of his parents. These two factors explain more than 80 percent of a person’s income.” 121

Global inequality “is higher than inequality in any single country in the world, even in such paragons of inequality like South Africa and Brazil. . . . Today’s Globa Distribution of income is such that the richest 10 percent of income recipients receive 56 percent of the global income, while the poorest 10 percent receive only 0.7 percent of the global income.” 151-2

“Then the top 10 percent receive more than two-thirds of the total world income, while the top 5 percent get 45 percent. The shares of the bottom 5 and 10 percent of people are almost negligible.” 152-3

He also has a very different theory than most economists on what caused the recent financial crisis--at least a theory I'd never heard before:

“The real cause of the [financial] crisis lies in huge inequalities in income distribution that generated much larger investable funds than could be profitably employed. The political problem of insufficient economic growth of the middle class was then ‘solved’ by opening the floodgates of cheap credit. And the opening of the credit floodgates, to placate the middle class, was needed because in a democratic system, an excessively unequal model of development cannot coexist with political stability.” 196

[Chris Clevenger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially when I saw the title I thought this book was going to be some pro Saul Alinsky dribble, but I saw my Economics professor reading while I was taking a test. Due to my respect for him as a teacher and how much I enjoyed his class, I decided to check it out.

First, it's nothing like I thought it would be. It's quite refreshing to read something like this that presents facts and research in a straightforward method. After reading this I couldn't tell you exactly what side of the political spectrum Milanovic falls on and I like that. He gives you his findings and its up to you the reader to draw your own conclusions.

If you like economics and you like history than you will probably like this book. There is a wide array of vignettes that cover topics that range from capitalism vs socialism all the way to soccer. And for the most part it is written in a way that is readable to the layman. Mostly. At least in the beginning and middle. Toward the end I felt my brain beginning to melt and that may be because I tried to read too much at once or because it just seemed less interesting toward the end. That's why I gave it 3 stars instead of 4. If I could have given it 3.5 I would have.

[Luis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mi parecer, este es el mejor texto para entrar al tema de la desigualdad en el mundo. Escrito de forma brillante y de fácil lectura, el libro explica la magnitud de la desigualdad mundial, que peso tienen en ella las desigualdades al interior de los países y que peso tienen las desigualdades entre países. Lo mejor, es que esas explicaciones las ilustra con breves "viñetas" que de forma creativa ilustran los temas más técnicos. Cada una de las viñetas es una joya en si misma pues haciendo uso de temas como la literatura, la historia y el fútbol Milanovic logra hacer patente la magnitud de la desigualdad, los efectos que esta tiene en la vida diaria y sobre la formulación de políticas públicas. Es una gran introducción al tema para los no especialistas mientras que para quienes ya nos hemos adentrado en la temática se trata de un libro provocador por la forma tan creativa de Milanovic para estudiar el tema y presentar sus datos y por las preguntas que se plantea. Lo recomiendo ampliamente.

[John Mihelic]

Milanovic has a book coming out, another one on inequality.



But he was writing about inequality before Piketty made it cool.



I read his blog posts because Thoma points them my way some time, but I thought before engaging with the more current work, I would read this one, intriguingly subtitled “A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality”. The book is set up as three essays that are more wonkish and each essay is filled with some more detailed stories to support the larger ideas behind the essays.



He looks at three different kinds of inequality – that between people in the same nation; that between individual nations; and that between all the world’s citizens. I think that as a popular book about economics it works very well. The vignettes are enough that they can be accessible to someone with little background and they do help explain the more technical aspects of the larger essays. I wish more scientists wrote with the skill Milanovic does here. I am eagerly awaiting that new book, but I’m glad I read up on the background info.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Have and the Have-Nots is an excellent, if occasionally uneven, history of global inequality and globalization.

With the rise of the popular right and the more extreme versions in the alt right it has become necessary to understand the origins of the lower-classes/working classes/working poor's rage. Make no mistake about, Brexit, Trump, and the European Popular Right are expressions of a deep-seated rage. This type of anger stops at the ballot box first before continuing on to civil disobedience; then insurrection.

Political leaders, elites, and technocrats need to start listening to the people or they will destroy democracy where it has achieved its fullest expression. Would the world long survive with it core constituency? Probably not.

Mr. Milanovic examines the issue of global inequality and how it came about...but not so much about what can be done about.

A very useful book

4 out of 5 stars

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps a little too idiosyncratic for my purposes and knowledge level, alas.

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essays are too much dry macroeconomics but the vignettes add a lot of character to the book.

[Misha · Rating 5 out of 5]

My reading has been somewhat protracted as I got the silly idea of
working at work. Anyhoo, I am on page 105 in "The Haves and the Have
Nots" by Branko Milanovic and wanted to share my impressions. This is
one of those books that are useful but annoying to read. M. is
naturally fond of the subject of inequality but to him inequality is
the major if not the sole source of all his theorizing. This is like
trying figure out why the cars run by listening to the sound of the
engine but not caring to look under the hood. Milanovic's theories and
explanations are shallow and naive at best.

But let us start with the interesting and useful things first. Naah,
what's the fun in that? M. thinks that the reader would not be able to
handle tables and graphs. There are none in the book. It gets
annoying. For example, he discusses the Gini coefficient, yet he
mentions the coefficients of various countries, occasionally multiple
times, across several pages pages without bothering to provide a simple
table. I had to look up the coefficients table on the web.

One of the sidebars (he cutely calls them vignettes) is fun. He
compares the riches of the famously rich people in history. As a basis
for comparison he uses the number of workers (of that country) the
person would be able to afford on the interest of off his
fortune. This is almost Marxian. So, Marcus Crassus (of Spartacus
Fame) - 32K people; Andrew Carnegie - 48K; Rockefeller - 116K, (poor)
Bill Gates - 75,000; Mikhail Khodorkovsky of Russia almost took the
cake with 250K people but was upstaged by Mexican Carlos Slim with
$440K Mexicans. Milanovic surmises that Khodorkovsky is a lot more
dangerous to the powers that be than US moguls and thus he sits in
jail.

Another one of his vignettes talks about inequality of the roman
empire compared to the inequality of the US. M. says that the top to
bottom was about as unequal yet most people in Rome lived at or just
above the subsistence level so there were no "middle class".

The vignette on egalitarianism of the Soviet Union and shadowy income
and privilege distribution is annoying. He might be even right in his
statements, but with his hatchet job of approach to history and society
I still want to kick him in the face.

There was a vignette of comparison of arrondissement (districts) of
Paris and their migration through history. There was no rhyme or
reason to it that I can discern.

There was an interesting discussion of income redistribution through
taxation. There was *gasp* a graph: the bottom decile gains slightly
less than 4% of income in the US and over 6% in Germany. It turns out
that the middle class deciles (5th and 6th) actually lose through the
redistribution yet consistently vote for it. M. is puzzled by it but
says that the middle class gains some security that way (in case of
injury or for retirement).

Then comes the chapter with one of the major theses of the
book. M. compares the breakups of Yugoslavia, USSR and the current
situation in China. It turns out in the USSR the gap between the GDP
between the poorest republic and the richest was 6 to 1 (compared to
US' states 1.5 to 1) and Yugoslavia's was 8 to 1. He claims this
inequality was the major reason for these countries' collapse. He then
talks about China where the per capita GDP difference between
provinces is 10 to 1. On the basis of this M. predicts the breakup and
dissolution of mainland China. No never mind the differences in ethnic
makeup, historical circumstance and whatever not between his examples.

Presently, M. described Pareto's "law" of income distribution (there
is always about the same proportion of rich people, Pareto calls them
aristocracies, regardless of the particular political or economic
system of the society) and Kuznets' curve (primitive societies were
about equal of the subsistence level then became more unequal and
then, as modern democracies developed, became more equal again). It is
amazing as all this (which is essentially glorified listening to the
car's engine without bothering to explain how it works) is taken
seriously as science. Naturally, Marx is roundly dismissed in a couple
of sentences.

Now M. introduced purchasing power dollars (PPP$) which is often used
and always puzzled me (the money is indexed by the basket of goods and
services they can buy). The Japanese earn more money than the
Americans yet, their goods are more expensive so the Americans come
out ahead in PPP$.

Milosevic, I mean Milanovic, improves significantly once he gives up
his meager attempts at trying to provide any kind of serious analysis
of the causes of inequality and just starts to slice and dice the data
to paint a rather grim picture of this unequal world.

And M. is actually decent at it. By using the data he thoroughly
debunks the neoclassical myths that are often stuck in people's heads.
The main thesis of what he calls globalization is that the countries'
incomes would converge since poor countries' income would grow faster
than the rich ones. The reasons are:

- Poor countries would get most direct foreign investments because
they have lower wages and higher return on investments. It turns out
the opposite is true. The capital mostly flows from rich countries
to other rich countries. China does quite well as far as third world
countries go $138 bls in direct foreign investments (DFI) in
2007. Meantime, the US got $240 bls. Actually, China gets about the
same as the Netherlands and worse than France and Great Britain.

China is, however, an exception. 2007 was a breakout year for India:
it attracted $23 bls, half as much as Australia. Before it averaged
$4-6 bls. The capitalists of rich countries tend to lend money to
each other afraid of the risks associated with investing in the
third world. What's worse, for the same reason, the investments are
actually flowing upwards from the poor to the rich countries.

- Poor countries can have access to technologies already developed in
the first world: it is easier to copy than to design anew. Aha, as
soon as microsofts and the pharmaceuticals stop charging for
licensing everything would be peachy.

- The poor countries would "borrow" the ideas as far as governance and
economic policies that work. Yeah right, every country would just
adopt the american-style bourgeois democracy as soon as they get rid
of their dictators.

Then, Milanovic kicks Marx again for a chapter. I just ignored him for
he knows not what he does.

Thankfully, Milanovic started using graphs. He breaks up the
populations of different incomes into ventiles (one-twentieths),
averages their income and compares those. The results are
striking. The poorest ventile in the US is richer than the richest in
India. And that is with US being rather unequal (Gini is in mid-40ies)

Speaking of Gini-s. Milanovic calculates that world's total Gini
coefficient is between 70 and 80. For comparison, Brazil is a very
unequal country where some of the world's poorest and richest people
live. Its Gini is in the 60-ies. M. talks about the dynamics of
inequality. It actually stayed about the same since 1980. However,
that masks the fact that most of the third world countries are getting
comparatively poorer while China and India are getting richer.

You'd think if you save and work hard, you'll make it in the world,
right? It turns out that statistically, 80% of your income is
determined by your citizenship and your strata of birth. The other 20%
goes to for such factors as gender, race, age, luck and, oh, yeah,
work ethics. Naturally, the best way to improve your economic lot is
to immigrate to rich country. Hmm, that sounds familiar, I think
somebody I know has done that. M. talks about the plight of "haraga" -
Africans dying to make it to Europe on makeshift boats.

M. talks about World's "middle class" - people within 25% of the world
median income. In 2005, the median yearly income was PPP $1,225. Also,
turns out the world does not have much of a middle class: only 14% are
within the bracket. For comparison, the figure is about 40% for
developed countries.

M. compares inequality of Europe and the US. The US is a lot more
unequal to any of the european countries. However, the states within
the Union are relatively homogeneous. The ratio between per capita
income in the richest and poorest state is 1.5. The ratio in Europe is
7 to 1. The ventiles of the richest (Luxembourg) and the poorest
(Romania) countries do not overlap. That is, statistically, all
Luxembourgers are richer than all Romanians.

Another interesting chapter is on colonies. The idea is that the
maximum amount that can be extracted from the country is when all the
population is kept at the subsistence level while a tiny
(statistically negligible) elite appropriates all the
surplus. Naturally, the larger the GDP per capita in a country, the
more can be appropriated. They draw a curve call Inequality Possibility
Frontier for countries with different GDP per capita. Colonies such as
India, Nuevo Espana (Mexico), Kenya lie neatly near this curve. The
colonizers sucked these countries dry.

[Guillaume Renard · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main problem of this book is given by it's very author : There really isn't much to say on the subject of wealth distribution, taken as a scientific topic.
Therefore the book cycles pretty quickly on what it has to say, even though the little it has is quite interesting. The way it is structured is fine, having little vignettes on a variety of situations is a good thing, it compensates the inherent monotony of the subject.

[Zee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good primer on national and international inequality told in vignettes that make for quick (if disjointed and simplified) reading.

[Peter Moy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Very Insightful Book on the Hot Topic Global Inequality.

This short book of has a very interesting structure. It contains sections discussing respectively, inequality within nations (Unequal People), inequality between countries (Unequal countries) and finally the combination of the two (Unequal World). Each section contains an main essay followed by a series of Vignettes which highlight issues raised in the essay and interesting consequences. For example Vignettes of the “Unequal People” essay have topics such “Who was the richest Person Ever?”, “Was Socialism Egalitarian?” and “Who gains from Fiscal Redistribution?”.

I found the wide varieties of topics covered in the Vignettes fascinating as these covered aspects of inequality that I have never previously been aware of. For a short read, this book covers a lot of ground.

The author does not take any particular point of view and just states the facts. I feel the most controversial vignette is the one titled “Why Was Rawls Indifferent to Global Inequality?”. Johns Rawls was one of the leading moral philosophers of the late 20th Century and produced two landmark books, “Theory of Justice” and “Law of Peoples”. This Vignettes analyses Rawls's position of illegal migration from the second these books. This is:

“The asset is people’s territory and its capacity to support them in perpetuity and the agent is the people themselves as politically organised… They [the people who are poor] are to recognize that they cannot make up for their irresponsibility in caring for their land and its natural resources by conquest in war or by migrating into other people’s territory without their consent. ”

Rawls’s position will no doubt have the middle class liberals who advocate open borders spluttering into their coffee-lattes. The vignette does a good job of explaining why Rawls came to this position. However, the author points out that brutal hard facts of global inequality were not widely appreciated when he wrote the “The Law of Peoples” and Rawls may have accepted that the “well-ordered” rich societies have some responsibility for helping the poorest “burdened” societies if he were still alive.

If you don’t like the idiosyncratic nature of the book, the author has cover the same ground in a more recent traditional Economic text book. But personally, I prefer this book and recommend it to anyone who wishes to inform themselves on the issues associated with economic inequality.

[Pieter · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading the author's more recent book 'Global Inequality' I was eager to read this one. Reviews told this book to lay the foundations for his later works.

The book consists of three parts of which the chapters are set more like capita selecta and cover a wide range of (historical) topics.

The first part focuses on the inequalities within a nation. Were communist countries more equal? How about the Roman Empire and what about China's future? There is also some interesting political rationale: at what level can countries exist or will they split up and who gains from fiscal redistribution? The author even touches upon literature, both Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Did both female protagonists eventually choose money before their inner feelings? At least that was not how I read the book and I think not how Austen and Tolstoy intended it to be.

The second part shows the inequality between countries. Was Marx right about the path to proletarian dictatorship? What is the impact of globalisation? And how is mass immigration linked to the growing inequality?

The last part is about global inequality. Where are you positioned from rich to poor on a global scale? Is there a global middle class?

In some continents, inequality is high on the level of the nation (Latin America, US), while in others its more between nations (Asia, EU).

The book offers several curious insights. Although Milanovic was not sure at the time whether recent globalisation caused growing global inequality, he confirmed the latter in his later work 'Global inequality'.

In order to set stable countries near American and European borders (to counteract mass immigration from Africa and the Middle East), the author urges to do something about the current economic situation, particularly in Africa. But given the trillions of dollars spent on development aid, it is hard to see how things can change in Africa for the better. It may be out of scope, but I am always interested to read how these differences occurred and how they expect to evolve. Maybe a hint for a new book?

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The key to getting this valuable book is paying attention to the word "idiosyncratic" in the title. Three essays on the economics of inequality are followed by a crazy random collection of vignettes that illustrate concepts in those essays. You have to be ready for the idiosyncratic arrangement of the vignettes or you'll sit there scratching your head and asking, "Whaaaa?"

It's important in this day and age to quantify terms the media throws around like "middle class" and "the 1%." It's also important to ordinary lay people to distinguish between inequality in the US and global inequality. The author articulates a theory that I thought I invented--That being born in the US means that you've won the statistical lottery. Our poorest people are better off that 68% of the world population.

After reading The Haves and the Have-Nots, I probably comprehended 20% of the contents, the best 20%. As a non-economist, I would have to re-read the essays several times to thoroughly appreciate the author's message. I can see that selected vignettes would be useful in the classroom setting. Each vignette is interesting and illustrative as a stand-alone, but the odd arrangement makes it difficult to tie things together.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed it, but it was a bit too globalist for my liking. I am also skeptical of how he defines income and GDP--are they ACTUALLY affecting quality of life? Sorry, but I just don't think his PPP thing is realistic... I have a feeling he is trying to measure PPP based on a global scale rather than local context--i.e. why would someone living in Zambia need to buy tomatoes grown in Iceland?

Consider it this way. If someone is earning $20,000 a year in the US, and their rent is $1000/mo ($12,000) a year in a 800 sqft apt, they are actually not richer than someone living in Morocco earning $2000 a year who pays $100/mo for a comparable apartment. It seems Milanovic's findings don't account for this... because if someone is 10 times poorer than the low-income $20,000 American, which is basically subsistence already, it's literally not possible to survive on $2000/yr in the US and there's something seriously wrong with the metric.

I would have liked to see more actual discussion of how his data is calculated because it's often brushed over, as are definitions of economic terminologies he employs.

Nonettheless, I respect it, and I appreciate the book on inequality--lots of unique scenarios he talks about and I still learned a lot.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three sections: inequality within a country, inequality between countries as wholes, and inequalities between the richest in one country and the poorest in another.

Each section has a slightly more economically-technical 'essay' at the beginning that explains the economic concepts, followed by a couple of 'vignettes' that use well-known characters or historical figures to illustrate the points made.

The essays were fairly academic, both in content and in the unfortunate style of 'the more obtuse the is the smarter I appear' writing. The entire book could have been written in a far more accessible way - and I think if it has issues garnering a wide readership that will likely be why. (Seriously, 'Moreover, this quantum embodies improvements in productivity and welfare over time, since the income of somebody like Bill Gates today will be measured against the average incomes of people who presently live in the United Stats.' is not 'accessible' writing, no matter what you're used to seeing in what you read.

[Mark Lisac · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well informed and entertaining high-level survey of income inequality, seen globally and through large stretches of history. You know from the first page that you're being treated to a book by someone who knows his way around a complex subject and is capable of explaining it simply to non-experts. The result is both useful and great fun. The only slight disappointment is the number of occasions on which Milanovic has to say evidence is inconclusive.
One of the most disturbing points is a short digression on Pgs. 84-85 in which he cites his experience that just talking about "inequality" is unwelcome in some major institutions.
His strongest conclusion: the financial crisis of 2007-08 was caused by inequality. People and businesses with enormous wealth had little way to invest it other than lending to borrowers who had very little prospect of being able to repay the loans. That simple analysis apparently needs authoritative voices to point out that it is compelling. Adam Smith would have supported Milanovic's view.

[Hester · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book has an interesting format and explains its concepts well. It consists of three essays on three topics(inequality within nations, inequality among nations, and inequality between humans), with vignettes that follow. They consist of the light(exactly how rich was Mr. Darcy?) and the serious(how inequality led to the most recent global crisis). He explains concepts very clearly; I remember seeing one of his graphs out of context on a NYtimes blog and the post made me so angry. In the book, however, the graph is enlightening. I wish, however, that he stuck to percentiles rather than ventiles.
Economics is not my bag, so the author must be really fantastic for me to have found parts of it enjoyable.

[Kaethe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't have an economics shelf; I don't anticipate that I'll ever have two books to put on it. Milanovic does a great job of explaining how we determine relative income and wealth across hundreds of very different nations, and the history of the field. That's all fascinating and readable, with lots of good, concrete explanations along the way. I'd have given it a four, maybe even a five. And then, at the end, once he's explained why thirty years of increasing global inequality is A VERY BAD THING, he didn't offer any specific solutions or even point at where solutions might be found. I found that damn frustrating. While I appreciate the background, I'm only reading this to understand the way forward.

Library copy.

[Divya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable read, would recommend! It was an easy and light introduction to the world of economic inequalities around the world for me. I like the way the author has written in-depth essays to express the key ideas of how he categorizes the different types of inequalities (inequality within countries, between countries and globally) followed by vignettes that are catchy and convey one key idea each to support the overall arguments made. It comes as no surprise that Branko has spent a lifetime studying inequality, it reflects in his writing, arguments and crisp compartmentalization of ideas. He's certainly an academic writer, but one that has been able to convey complex ideas in simple language.