Liberty

Has Canada been Poorer than the US for so long?

Vincent Geloso Economics, History, Liberty , , , , , , ,

A standard stylized fact in Canada is that we are poorer, on average, than the average American. This has been presented as a fact that is as steady as the northern star. But our evidence on Canadian incomes is pretty shoddy prior to 1870 (here I praise M.C. Urquhart for having designed a GNP series that covers from 1870 to 1926 and links up with the official national accounts even if I think there are some improvements that can be brought to measuring output from some key industries and get the deflator right). But what about anything before 1870? There are some estimates for Ontario from 1826 to 1851 by Lewis and Urquhart (great stuff), but Ontario was pretty much the high-income of Canada.

So, can we go further back? This is what my work is about (partially), and I just made available my results on Canadian living standards (proxied by Quebec where the vast majority of the population was) from 1688 to 1775 as captured by welfare ratios. So that’s pretty much the closest we can get to the “founding”. Below are my results derived from this paper. They show that the colonists in Canada were not very much richer than their counterparts in France with the basket meant to capture the meanest of subsistence and roughly equal to their counterparts in France with a basket that includes more manufactured goods like clothing and more alcohol. This explains why most migrants from France to Canada were “volunteered” (in the sense that they were pretty much reluctant migrants) for migration. But the key interesting result is that relative to New England – the poorest of the American colonies – it is poorer regardless of the basket used. Thus, there seems to be truth to the common logic about Canadians being always poorer than the Americans.

comparingcanadane

However, I am not fully convinced of my own results. This may surprise some. The reason is not that I do not trust my data (in fact, I think it is superior to most of what exists for the time given that I will be able to proceed to tons of other data). The reason is simple (and rarely discussed): natives.

Natives are always omitted from the stories of living standards. But they existed nonetheless. In terms of national accounts, if the British and French settlers dispossessed and killed natives, their welfare losses are just not computed. But the welfare losses of a musket shot to the head are real. I have always been convinced that if we could correct estimates of living standards to account for the living standards of natives, the picture would change terribly. The reason is two-fold. The first reason is that the historiography is pretty clear that while they were obviously not nice, the French were nicer than the British towards the Natives (at least until 1763 when the British shifted strategy). In fact, trade between French and Natives was very frequent and so it might be that for the whole population (natives + settlers), the French-area peoples enjoyed more growth and higher average levels. In the British colony, if the settlers killed and dispossessed natives, this is basically the British turning native capital stocks into their own capital stock or into consumption (which would enter settlers GDP but not change total GDP). In essence, this is basically a variation on the arguments of Robert Higgs with regards to measuring the American GDP in World War Two and Albrecht Ritschl on the German interwar growth. I am pretty sure that adjusting for the lives of natives would show a greater level for Canada leading to rough equality between the two colonies. However, I am not sure if the argument would cut that way (my guts say yes) since in their conjectural growth estimates, Mancall and Weiss show that with the natives included, their zero rate of income per capita growth turns into a positive rate.

Nonetheless, I still think that knowing that the settlers were better off in the US as an improvement over the current state of knowledge. Until ways to impute the value of native output and production are found, my current estimates are only a step forward, not the whole nine yards.

Trump and Tillerson Could Save Our Bacon

Warren Gibson Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , ,

If Trump is anything like the deal-maker he claims to be, and if Tillerson can translate the expertise and connections he gained as CEO of a gigantic international corporation into diplomatic skills, we could be spared from a nasty confrontation with a nuclear-armed Russia.

Putin is not a nice man. His incursions into Crimea and Ukraine are inexcusable. But he does have a rationale for his claim of aggressive threats from NATO, and this has served hun well in diverting attention away from the drastic declines in liberty and prosperity in Russia. As this article indicates, the West promised not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe but did so anyway, even threatening to include Ukraine and Georgia, which are geographically Russia’s underbelly. How would we like it if the Soviet Union had proposed including Cuba in the Warsaw Pact?

Trump and Tillerson should make a deal with Putin. It must give Putin incentives to pull out of Ukraine and perhaps Crimea, although the latter was historically Russian and Tatar. It must give him something to brag about to his people.  This in contrast to Obama, who declared Russia to be merely a regional player.  Who could blame all Russians for taking this as an insult? He should have praised Russia as a major international player, capable of great contributions to world peace, while taking quiet steps to keep them from making trouble.

The Baltic states are indefensible. Neutralization has worked well for Finland and it ought to work well for the Baltics and Ukraine. Putin could be given a green light to take over Belarus, a socialist basket case that is ethnically very similar to Russia. He could even be invited to join NATO.  This may not be so crazy given that Russia and the West share Christian roots and a common threat from Islamo-fascists.

Some would bring up Chamberlain’s capitulation to Hitler. Skillful negotiations should be able to avoid that trap. The stakes are high, and right now Trump and Tillerson are our best hope of avoiding a possible catastrophe.

Does socialism need to be corrupt?

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , ,

Brazil is going through a deep crisis right now. It is tempting to say that this is the greatest crisis in the country’s history, but I am quite afraid to make this comment. Unlike England and the United States, which have experienced significant institutional stability in the past 200 or 300 years, Brazil has gone through several political breakdowns in its history, and the current economic crisis is far from the hyperinflation of the 1980s. But there is a characteristic that links the present crisis to the previous ones: the presence of a tendentially authoritarian state.

Although Brazil was governed by an openly socialist party only between 2003 and 2016, this does not mean that socialist characteristics were not present in the country much earlier. One of the central theses of F.A. Hayek in the Road to Serfdom is that the democratic socialist parties of Western Europe (notably the Labor Party in England) had more features in common with the Nazis and fascists than they would have liked to admit. In other words, the differences between left (even a moderate left) and extreme right were illusory: they both had the fundamental characteristic of trying to plan society centrally.

The opposition between spontaneous order and central planning was one of the central theses in Hayek’s career. In Fatal Conceit he develops this theme a lot, showing how the opposition between central planning and lack of planning is a fallacy: society will forcibly be planned. The question is by whom: for a small group of people on behalf of all the others, or for a large group of individuals, each with limited responsibilities? According to Hayek, this distinction between central planning and individual planning is one of the central separations between an authoritarian society (left or right) and a truly free society.

It is difficult to say if the PT (“worker’s party”) government between 2003 and 2016 was the most corrupt in Brazilian history. Homesick people can always claim that corruption was also present in previous governments (it was just not investigated), and possibly they would be right. Before becoming a country ruled by a socialist party, Brazil has always been a patrimonialist country. And this is a fundamental point that adherents of socialism cannot understand: Brazil has never been a capitalist country, at least not in the sense that the liberal tradition employs.

Starting from Hayek, we conclude that central planning is impossible. Planners do not have the information they need to make their plans. As Mises taught, without private property there is no price formation, and without price formation the economic calculation is impossible. This opens space for what Hayek calls a fatal conceit: the assumption that it is possible to run a country from a central body, a presupposition that not only fails to achieve its goals, but also leaves piles of corpses on the way.

The PT government was probably the most corrupt in Brazilian history because it was what most rejected capitalism. The opposite of the free market is the attempt to centrally plan the economy. To centrally plan the economy, an army of administrators is needed. To watch over these administrators, a host of supervisors is needed, and so on. Corruption is inevitable.

Socialist governments are always among the most corrupt, and the reason is simple: the more government, the more corruption. A simpler, more decentralized government is not perfect. But it’s the best we can wish for. It would certainly be a government with less control over money, and thus less likely to steal.

Wars and Presidents: Avoiding the Power-Display Bias

Vincent Geloso History, Liberty , , , , , , , , ,

This week on EconTalk, Russ Roberts interviewed Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on how presidents who took the United States to war find themselves higher in the rankings of “Great Presidents” (see this paper by Henderson and Gochenour on the issue)  For some time now, I have found myself in agreement with that contention as wars are generally momentous events that stand out in history. In contrast, the man who sits by and does nothing except preventing a war or making it easier for people to trade, that is harder to observe.  But why would evaluating Presidents be associated with such a premium? Individuals are aware that wars are bad, so why are they praising this? On other metrics, how do Presidents fare?

On the power-display bias 

In my forthcoming book on Canadian economic history (published by Palgrave McMillan as part of their Studies in Economic History), I reviewed some pantheons and counter-pantheons of Presidents (which I will present below) and I felt I had to offer my argument regarding these pantheons:

The established pantheon and the counter-pantheon differ mostly due to people’s bias towards positively assessing outward signs of power. When he wrote to one of his correspondents that “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” British historian Lord Acton was not only speaking of politicians, but also of those would retroactively judge them: Acton was referring to a general human tendency – accentuated amongst historians – to be more forgiving of those who hold power, because the powerful are judged by their actions. Indeed, it is easier to size up a politician who undertook significant reforms – regardless of the results obtained thereby – than to evaluate the achievements of one who passively held the line. If the reformer fails, it can be said that at least he tried. Moreover, a given president’s place in the pantheon is closely linked to how many Americans he killed during the military conflicts that defined his reign. The more Americans killed per capita overall, the higher a given president’s ranking in the list of “greats.”

Economic history teaches us, however, that the most proactive presidents may not be the most beneficial to their country, on the contrary. For several years now, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945) has been the subject of increased criticism in the economic literature for his interventionist economic policies between 1932 and 1939. Economists Albrecht Ritschl, Monique Ebell, Lee Ohanian and Harold Cole have determined that FDR’s interventionist policies in fact served to prolong the Great Depression.

In other words, the bias we have when evaluating men with power is that we evaluate based on the exercise of displaying the use of power. Those who refrain from using it are, properly, not recorded as historical events are conflicts/tensions/oppositions. This I think is generally a bias that is easily to fall prey to. I am not immune to that even if I happen to have libertarian leanings. I often see in one politician or another in history a man/woman that I wish would be here today to “save the day” (one of my childish belief). But each time I dig around that person, I am less enthused. For example, I used to be an admirer of William Pitt the Younger – a fierce one. After all, he had assisted Wilberforce in ending the slave trade, he had instituted a sinking fund to repay the British public debt (he had willfully tied his hands) and he he had been moderately sympathetic to the American revolution. I saw his role in the wars against France as a contest of circumstances. But, that was the point, I was ready to discount the war. In addition, as I read the work of Jane Humphries on child labor in industrializing Britain (here and here), I discovered more unsettling things.  During the French Wars, the build-up of the British state did lead to some crowding-out on factors markets, notably the labor market. Upon complaints of manufacturers, Pitt proposed to “Yoke Up the Children”. More precisely, he proposed the use of orphan in the public care to work as pauper apprentices to firms at pences on the shilling (bad pun of pennies on the dollar). He “lent” orphans to private firms and its hard to assume that they consented to work (as Humphries’s use of oral histories makes clear). If a person with libertarian leanings like me was willing to excuse such a man before, it is quite telling of how limited knowledge shores up the reputations of powerful men. This is because their use of power overshadows all the rest. Their use of power is like the joke about economists looking where the lamppost is: we evaluate them on what their use of power has illuminated.

Other Metrics

So, are there any other metrics that are less subjected to our inherent power-display bias? Obviously, anything that has a subjective element will be biased. However, evaluating the evolution of living standards under their rule is one way to go at it. Mark Zachary Taylor, in an article published in PS: Political Science and Politics, proposed an economic ranking of US Presidents since 1789. Whichever way you cut it, there is a weak rank correlation between the rankings of presidential greatness and the ranking of economic grades.

Ranking.png

There is another type of ranking, which is more subtle. It measures how much Presidents refrained from expanding federal power. This exercise was made by Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway (two great economic historians) who measured presidents based on their changes to the size of government and inflation. This measure alone (see table below) is not sufficient to be convincing, but taken as part of a constellation of rankings, it provides a key piece of evidence. This is really a counter-pantheon to the rankings of presidential greatness. In fact, one could see it as the cost for societies of presidential greatness.

presidentialgreatness

When comes the time to evaluate great rulers, being aware of our biases is crucial (as Lord Acton, I think they should rarely be excused based on flimsy excused like circumstances – the virtue of being an historian/economic historian is that we have enough hindsight to say how terrible certain choices were).  And that awareness should lead us to develop a “dashboard” of rankings to properly weigh the impact of such rulers.

How Well Has Cuba Managed To Improve Health Outcomes? (part 1)

Vincent Geloso Economics, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , , ,

Since the passing of Fidel Castro, I have devoted myself to researching a proper assessment of his regime’s achievements in matters of health care. The more I dig, the more I am convinced that his regime has basically been incredibly brilliant at presenting a favorable portrait. The tweaking of the statistics is not blatant or gigantic, it is sufficiently small to avoid alerting demographers (unlike when Davis and Feshbach, Eberstadt and Miller and Velkoff found considerable evidence of data tweaking in the USSR which raised a massive debate). Indeed, a re-computation of life expectancy based on life tables (which I will present in the new few weeks) to adjust for the false reclassification of early neonatal deaths as late fetal deaths (raising the low infant mortality rate by somewhere 28% and 96%) suggests that somewhere between 0.1 and 0.3 years must be knocked off the life expectancy figures. Given that the variations between different measurements available (WHO, World Bank, MINISAP, CIA, FAO) are roughly of that magnitude, it falls within a very reasonable range of errors. This statistical tweaking is combined with an over-dramatization of how terrible the situation was in 1959 (the life expectancy figures vary from 63.9 years to 65.4 years at the beggining of the Castrist regime). But that tweaking is not sufficient to invalidate the massive downward trend.  As a result, the majority of public health scholars seem confident in the overall level and trend (and I tend to concur with that statement even if I think things are worse than presented and the slope of the downward trend is too steep).

Those little tweaks have been combined with the use of massive coercive measures on the local population (beautifully described  by Katherine Hirschfeld in what should be an example of ethnographic work that economists and policy-makers should rely on because it goes behind the data – see her book Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba: 1898-2005) that go from using doctors as tools for political monitoring to the use of abortion against a mother’s will if it may hinder a physician’s chance of reaching the centrally-decided target without forgetting forced isolations for some infectious patients. Such methods are efficient at fighting some types of diseases, but they are associated with institutions that are unable to provide much economic growth which may act as a palliative counter-effects to how choices may make us less healthy (me having the freedom to eat too much salt means I can die earlier, but the type of institutions that let me eat that much salt also avoid infringing on my property rights thus allowing me to improve living standards which is the palliative counter-effect).  With such a trade-off, the issue becomes one of the ability of poor countries to improve in the absence of extreme violence as that applied by the Castrist regime.

Over the next few weeks, I will publish many re-computations of health statistics to sustain this argument as I write my article.  The first one I am doing is the evolution of life expectancy from 1960 to 2014. What I did is that I created comparatives for Cuba based on how much living standards (income per capita). Cuban living less than doubled over that 49 years period (82% increase) from 1959 to 2008 (the latest available data from the high-quality Maddison data).  Latin American and Carribean countries that saw their living standards less than double (or even decline) are Argentina (+90%), Bolivia (+87%), El Salvador (+68%), Haïti (-33%), Honduras (+71%), Jamaica (+51%), Nicaragua (-17%) and Venezuela (+7%). This forms the low income group. The remaining countries available are separated in two groups: those whose income increased between 100% and 200% (the mid-income group composed of Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama and Paraguay) and those whose incomes increased more than 300% (the high-income group composed Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Trinidad & Tobago).  I also compared Cuba with a group of countries that had incomes per capita within 20% of the income per capita of Cuba.  So, how did Cuba’s life expectancy increase?

Well, using only the official statistics (which I do not fully trust although they are from the World Bank Development Indicators Database), Cuba life expectancy (which was already pretty high by Latin American standards in 1959) increased 24%. However, all other countries – which were well below Cuba – saw faster increases. The countries that had the least growth in Latin America saw life expectancy increase 38% and the countries that were equally poor as Cuba saw life expectancy increase an impressive 42%. Chile, whose life expectancy was only 57.5 years against Cuba’s 63.9 in 1960, also increased more rapidly (also 42%) and it has now surpassed Cuba (81.5 years against 79.4 years) and what is more impressive is that this rate has increased in a monotonic fashion regardless of changes in political regimes (democracy, socialism, Pinochet, liberal democracy) while Cuba’s rate seems to accelerate and decelerate frequently. Now, this is assuming that the figures for 1960 are correct. I have surveyed the literature and it is hard to find a way to say which of the estimates is the best, but that of the World Bank for 1960 is the lowest. There are other rates, contained in McGuire and Frankel’s work – the highest stands at 65.4 years for 1960. That means that the range of increase of life expectancy in Cuba is between 21.4% and 24.2%. Its not earth-shattering, but it makes Cuba’s achievements less impressive (although it is impressive to keep increase life expectancy from an already-high level). But as you can see, more important improvements could have been generated without recourse to such violent means. In fact, as a post that I will publish this week shows, the decline in car ownership from 1959 to 1988 probably played moderately in favor of the increase in life expectancy while the massive increase in car ownership in all other countries played (all else being equal) in favor of slowing down the increases in life expectancy (but being too poor or making it illegal to import a foreign car is not health care and I deem it improper to consider that this accident from misfortune should be praised).

improvementslifeexpectancy

In a way, what I am saying is that the benefit is not as impressive as claimed. Given the costs that Cubans have to assume for such a policy, anything that makes the benefits look more modest should make more inclined to cast a damning judgment on Castro’s regime.

Coming up (I will add the links as they are published) :

  1. Life Expectancy Changes, 1960 to 2014
  2. Car ownership trends playing in favor of Cuba, but not a praiseworthy outcome
  3. Of Refugeees and Life Expectancy
  4. Changes in infant mortality
  5. Life expectancy at age 60-64
  6. Effect of recomputations of life expectancy
  7. Changes in net nutrition
  8. The evolution of stature
  9. Qualitative evidence on water access, sanitation, electricity and underground healthcare
  10. Human development as positive liberty (or why HDI is not a basic needs measure)

The most depressing thing with Chetty et al.

Vincent Geloso Economics, Liberty , , , , , , ,

The Chetty et al. paper has been on my mind over the weekend (see Saturday’s post). The one thing that has moved more or less in line with the absolute mobility measure of Chetty et al. has been…the size of government.

I know that as soon as some of you read the last four words on the previous paragraphs, your eyes rolled. However, even from a social-democratic perspective, it is depressing! It is not the first time I make this observation.   In the pages of Essays in Economic and Business History, I recently reviewed Unequal Gains (authored by Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson and published at Princeton University Press) and I observed that the “great leveling” they observed from the 1910s to the 1970s had a lot to do with the northward migration of American blacks, the closing of the gender wage gap and the convergence of the southern states. I also observed that the increase in inequality in the United States after 1970 occurred at the same time as an the state grew more in size and scope (see blog post here).

However, as I mentioned elsewhere, I am very skeptical of the tax-based data on inequality in the United States and I am afraid to push that point. However, the Chetty et al. data provides further confirmation: trends in inequality/social mobility deteriorates as the state becomes more active (see the graph below).

sizegov

Now, I am aware that the causality can cut both ways. It may be that inequality (economic mobility) is rising (falling) in spite of increasing state action, it may be that state action is fueling the the rise (reduction) of inequality (economic mobility) or it may be that the state has no effects whatsoever on the evolution. Regardless of which of the three viewpoints you tend to adopt (I lean towards a mixture the second option – see my paper with Steve Horwitz here which is under consideration for publication), the implications are immensely depressing with regards to social policy in the last 75 years.

Sons outearning Fathers in Chetty et al. : working hours should be considered

Vincent Geloso Economics, Liberty , , , , , , , , ,

In response to my post yesterday, my friend and economist/nuclear engineer (great mix) Laurent Béland pointed out that the Father-Sons mobility figures in Chetty et al. are depressing. Yes, at first glance, they are (see below – the red line). fathersons

But, at second glance, it is not as terrible. Think about family structures with the 1940 birth cohorts. The father works and, in most likelihood, the mother is a stay-at-home father. Most of the earnings come from the father who probably works 45 to 60 hours a week.  If my father earns 40,000$ at 60 hours a week or earn 40,000$ at 40 hours a week, the line remains at the same height, but we are not talking about the same living standard in reality. Chetty et al. do not account for hours worked to achieve income.  The steep decline – faster than the baseline of household-size adjusted decline – matches the steep increase in female labor force participation and the decline labor force participation of males (see graph here and Nicolas Eberstadt’s work here) as well as the decline in hours worked by males.

If the question had been “what are your chances of out-earning your father per hour worked”, then the red line would not have fallen like that. Income divided by labor supplied would probably bring the red-line back with the blue-line.

Note: Again, please note that I am not trying to rip apart Chetty et al. (as some have claimed elsewhere). Their work is great and as a guy who does all his research on providing data series regarding economic history, I am never going to rip on someone who does hard data work like Chetty et al. did ! My point is that I am not convinced that the decline is so big. And, in good faith, it seems that Chetty et al. do try to put the “caution” labels where its needed – and its important to discuss those caution labels before some politician or two-cents-pundit goes all Trump on us by saying stuff that this doesn’t say!

Cheap college: Ten Tips

Lucas G. Freire Liberty , , , , , , ,

If you’re about to embark on your undergraduate education in the US or Canada, you probably have a good chance of ending up owing some money to pay for your studies and expenses. Can you avoid financial disaster and still end up with a pretty good “education” section on your CV? I believe so, and I’d like to share with you a few tips on cheap college education. They might turn out to be useful, whether you want to go straight to the job market after graduation or whether you have further studies in mind.

I did my undergraduate degree in Brazil. Then, I moved to the UK and completed my graduate education there with a very generous stipend. I also taught in higher education in both countries, including two top universities in the UK. I worked part-time for an institute attached to a university in Europe. Now I work at a major university in South Africa. I know a few things about higher education, and here’s a list of tips for you.

1. Accept a full-tuition scholarship.
If you’ve received an offer of a full-tuition scholarship, go for it. As long as it’s not a loan. No brainer. You’re being subsidised to study full-time. This is your job now. Do a little bit of networking and career skills training, but focus on your degree. Try to do as well as you can. The problem with this strategy is that, quite frankly, the vast majority of students aren’t offered scholarships that get even close to covering full tuition costs.

2. Avoid the athletics trap.
Don’t count on your prowess in sports to put you in a position where you earn full tuition to study. Athletics scholarships cover at most a fraction of the college cost. At most, you’d be able to combine an athletics scholarship with some other source of funding, but even if you get to that stage, you’ll have to figure out a way of earning B+ or A on average with little time to study.

3. Split your degree.
This is the oldest trick in the book. Yet, not enough students seem to follow it. I didn’t know the North American system very well, and I owe this point to Gary North. He explains it on this video. In the US, you can save a lot of money by doing the first two years of your degree at a community college or some other low-cost higher education institution. You can earn an Associate degree and then transfer credits to a four-year college to complete your Bachelor’s degree. One advantage (apart from the financial factor) is that you could do it in the evenings, while you earn some money during the day. Another advantage is that permanent teaching staff in a small college or a community college are gifted teachers – that’s why they were given their jobs in the first place – whereas at a major university professors are rewarded according to their research achievements and teaching might not be terrible, but it’s not necessarily the best you can get either.

4. Try distance learning.
This is emerging as a major alternative to traditional university attendance. You can either earn credits (which you can, later, transfer) or a whole degree at a fraction of the normal cost of university attendance. You can also combine this with point (3) above.

5. Stay with your parents.
Okay, as a Brazilian I didn’t see any problem in staying home for another four years during my university education. There are advantages and disadvantages to this, and it’s up to you to decide if this strategy is worth it, depending on your family’s culture and habits. But the fact is that, even if your parents charge you some rent, they won’t charge as much as the average university dorm would. This means you can save. Plus there won’t be any learning curves related to living in a completely new locality. This strategy requires you to do either a distance-learning degree or to attend your local college, and you can combine this with points (3) and (4) above.

6. Distance learning abroad.
This can be combined with (3), (4) and (5) above. The truth is, most employers don’t care very much about where you got your undergraduate education, except if the place is one of the top five or ten universities in the country. Higher education in the UK is slightly cheaper (on average) than in the US, and often much cheaper if you’re doing it online. You can register at the Open University, or at the University of London’s international programmes. Depending on the area of study, you can even do a distance degree part-time while you work, paying for each course at a time. The University of Aberdeen, for example, offers a distance degree in Religious Studies along those lines. If you give up halfway, you can still earn a CHE degree after completing the first year, a HE Diploma after two years, and the undergraduate course in the UK normally lasts for three years (except, normally, for Scotland).

If you want to save even more money and benefit from favourable exchange rates, you could also apply to study at the University of South Africa (UNISA), one of the world’s largest universities. UNISA has a very good reputation. Remember Nelson Mandela? He earned a degree there. For South Africans, each year of study costs around 1,000 dollars, and if you live abroad, you need to pay extra, but not a whole lot more. There are no classes. Normally, you use multimedia material, lots of written material, and travel to some place in your country where you can do the exams. So you need to factor in the cost of travel, but it still might be worth it. Other South African universities, such as North-West University, also offer distance degrees for certain fields.

7. Move abroad.
This is also becoming more of an alternative for North Americans. In Germany, for example, you can register at a university, as long as you can prove you know the German language well, and get a degree from some of the top universities in the world. The downside is the learning curve of moving abroad, visa bureaucracy and, perhaps, the cost of living in Europe might not be worth it. For example, you could pay low tuition fees in Finland, but it’s not that cheap to live there. For a tuition fee of around 1,000 Euros per year you can also do a degree in Portugal or Spain. Tuition fees in France and Italy are also relatively cheap. All this assumes you can prove you know the local language well enough to register. Depending on where you go, the case for doing a degree abroad is even stronger. In Portugal and Spain, an undergraduate degree normally takes four years. In Italy and France, it depends. In Germany, it normally takes three. This means you save a whole year of expenses.

8. Erasmus+.
If you decide to do your degree in Europe, you can still end up experiencing campus life and networking in North America. The reason is that students at European universities can be selected to do a year abroad under the Erasmus+ programme, and some of the partner universities are from North America. This is not very easy, but what I mean to say is simply that going abroad doesn’t mean abandoning any hope of experiencing student life in North America.

9. Cut corners while still following the rules.
You should thank Gary North for pointing this out. In a North American degree, you must do a number of credits, including electives or credits you can choose, as part of the total number of credits you must earn to obtain the degree. You can cut corners and save time and money by learning independently and then doing a credit-awarding exam. Some of the exams you can do are for general courses you’d end up doing as an elective anyway.

10. Make sure you do French and German.
How does this relate to “cheap college”? I confess there’s no direct relation. But I’d still urge you to do French and German as electives, particularly if they’re “for reading knowledge“. Those are intensive courses that get you to be able to read scholarly work in French or German by the end of a semester. This might not in itself make your college life cheaper now, but it will get you some skills you can use in the future. It gives you a head start in applying for the top, well-funded, PhD programmes in the US and Canada, in case that’s what you’re planning to do. Most PhD courses require you to have reading knowledge of at least one, if not two, of these languages. You might as well do it now. Moreover, if you just want to go to the workplace after you graduate, this can also give you a little advantage over the competition. While it doesn’t necessarily make your college any cheaper, this strategy will make your life easier by adding another relevant item to your CV which might turn out to be very useful in the near future.

I hope those tips can be useful. Maybe you’re even reconsidering whether you should really get deep into debt in order to earn a degree. Well, here’s my appeal. Please reconsider. Student loans may be common. Some even call this kind of debt an investment. But it’s not healthy to owe tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars when you’re just 22 or 23 and under pressure to find a good job to pay that money back. You want to be free. Maybe you want to go to a well-funded graduate programme without that stress. Maybe you want to get married. Who knows? Before accepting a loan to finance your education, please consider these alternative options. I urge you.

Before concluding, a disclaimer. I’m not saying any of these tips will work in every case. Be responsible and make sure you understand the details and implications of any decisions you make. Check, for example, if your target university or college will accept credit transfers from the place where you obtained those credits. Read the small print. But this is more or less what you’d be doing if you accepted a loan – you’d read the small print, right?

Carta de Voltaire dirigida a Rousseau, em resposta a ele

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Liberty, Philosophy , ,

Um excelente texto mostrando o contraste entre dois conceitos de liberdade. Voltaire representa a liberdade do liberalismo clássico: o indivíduo deve ser livre de constrangimentos externos, ser livre para buscar sua concepção individual de felicidade. Rousseau representa outra concepção de liberdade: o indivíduo só será livre se acatar um conceito de felicidade que os demais irão lhe impor. Rousseau está por trás de basicamente todas a ditaduras estabelecidas desde então, principalmente as de esquerda, formadas por pessoas de bem que sabem o que é bom para os outros, que falam que o capitalismo só cria problemas e que deveríamos fazer um governo mais “democrático”. Em outras palavras, pessoas chatas, agressivas, que não respeitam as decisões alheias e sentem uma incontrolável vontade de ensinar para os outros o que é bom.

30 de Agosto de 1755

Recebi, senhor, vosso novo livro contra o gênero humano, e vos agradeço por isso. Vós agradareis aos homens, sobre quem fala vossas verdades, e não os emendará. Ninguém poderia pintar um quadro com cores mais fortes dos horrores da sociedade humana, para os quais nossa ignorância e debilidade tem tanta esperança de consolo. Ninguém jamais empregou tanta vivacidade em nos tornar novamente animais: pode-se querer andar com quatro patas, quando lemos vossa obra. Entretanto, como já faz mais de sessenta anos que perdi este costume, percebo, infelizmente, que é impossível recomeçar, e deixo essa maneira natural àqueles que são mais dignos que vós e eu. Já não posso mais embarcar para encontrar os selvagens do Canadá, em primeiro lugar, porque as doenças de que sofro me prendem ao redor do maior médico da Europa, e não encontraria a mesma assistência junto aos Missouris. Em segundo, porque a guerra está sendo travada lá naquele país, e o exemplo de nossas nações tornou os selvagens quase tão perigosos quanto nós. Devo me limitar a ser um selvagem pacífico, na solidão que escolhi, perto de vossa pátria, onde vós devíeis estar.

Concordo convosco que a literatura e as ciências causaram ocasionalmente muitos danos. Os inimigos de Tasso fizeram de sua vida uma longa série de infortúnios. Os de Galileu fizeram-no gemer dentro da prisão, aos setenta anos de idade, por haver entendido como a Terra se movimenta; e o que é ainda mais desonroso, obrigaram-no a desdizer-se. Desde que vossos amigos começaram a publicar o Dicionário Enciclopédico, os rivais os desafiam com o tratamento de deístas, ateus e mesmo de jansenistas.

Se porventura eu puder me incluir entre aqueles cujos trabalhos não trouxeram mais do que a perseguição como única recompensa, poderei mostrar-vos o tipo de gente perseguidora que me prejudica desde que produzi minha tragédia Édipo; uma biblioteca de calúnias ridículas impressas contra mim. Um ex-padre jesuíta, que salvei da desgraça total, me pagou o serviço que lhe prestei com um libelo difamatório; um homem, ainda mais culpado, imprimiu minha própria obra sobre o século de Luís XIV com notas nas quais a mais crassa ignorância vomitou as mais baixas imposturas; um outro, que vendeu a um editor, usando meu nome, alguns capítulos de uma pretensa História Universal; o editor, ávido o suficiente para imprimir esse amontoado de erros crassos, datas erradas, fatos e nomes mutilados; e, finalmente, os homens covardes e vis o suficiente para me responsabilizar pela publicação desta rapsódia. Eu mostrar-vos-ei a sociedade contaminada por este tipo de homens – desconhecido em toda a antiguidade – que, não podendo abraçar uma profissão honesta, seja de trabalho manual ou de serviço, e desafortunadamente sabendo ler e escrever, se tornam agentes literários, vivem de nossas obras, roubam os manuscritos, alteram-nos, vendem-nos. Eu poderia lamentar-me porque fragmentos de uma zombaria, feitos há pelo menos trinta anos, sobre o mesmo sujeito que Chapelain foi burro o bastante para tratar seriamente, circulam hoje pelo mundo, graças à traição e avareza desses infelizes, que misturaram suas grosserias às minhas pilhérias, e preencheram as lacunas com uma estupidez equiparada somente à sua malícia e que, ao cabo de 30 anos, vendem por toda parte um manuscrito que é apenas deles, e digno tão somente deles.

Eu poderia acrescentar, em último lugar, que roubaram uma parte do material que eu juntei nos arquivos públicos para usar na História da Guerra de 1741, quando era historiador da França; que venderam a uma livraria de Paris esse fruto de meu trabalho; que nessa época invejaram minhas posses, como se eu estivesse morto e pudessem colocá-las à venda. Eu poderia mostrar a ingratidão, a impostura e o roubo me perseguindo por quarenta anos, do pé dos Alpes ao pé do meu túmulo. Mas o que eu concluiria de todos esses tormentos? Que não tenho o direito de reclamar; que o Papa, Descartes, Bayle, Camões e centenas de outros sofreram injustiças iguais, ou ainda maiores; que este destino é o de quase todos daqueles que foram inteiramente seduzidos pelo amor às letras.

Admita, senhor, que estas coisas são pequenas desgraças particulares de que a sociedade pouco se apercebe. Que importa para a humanidade que alguns zangões roubem o mel de poucas abelhas? Os homens das letras fazem grande estardalhaço de todas estas pequenas querelas, enquanto o resto do mundo ou os ignora ou disso gargalha.

De todos os desgostos afetando a vida humana, esses são os menos graves. Os espinhos ligados à literatura, ou um pouco menos de reputação, são flores quando comparados aos outros males que a todo momento inundam a terra. Admita que Cícero, Varrão, Lucrécio ou Virgílio não tiveram a menor culpa nas proscrições. Mário era um ignorante, Sila, um bárbaro, Antônio, um crápula, o imbecil Lépido leu um pouco de Platão e Sófocles; enquanto Otávio César, covardemente apelidado de Augusto, esse tirano sem coragem, agiu apenas como um assassino detestável no momento em que privou a sociedade dos homens de letras.

Admita que Petrarca e Boccaccio não fizeram nascer os problemas da Itália; que as brincadeiras de Marot não produziram São Bartolomeu, e que a tragédia de Cid não produziu a guerra da Fronde. Os grandes crimes são cometidos apenas pelos grandes ignorantes. O que faz e fará sempre deste mundo um vale de lágrimas é a avidez e o indomável orgulho dos homens, desde Thamas-Kouli-Kan, que não sabia nem ler, até um oficial de alfândega, que não sabe nem contar. As letras alimentam, endireitam e consolam a alma; elas vos servem, senhor, durante o tempo que escreveis contra elas. Vós sois como Aquiles, que se encolerizava contra a glória, e como o padre Malebranche, que, com sua imaginação brilhante, escrevia contra a imaginação.

Se alguém tem o direito de queixar-se da literatura, sou eu, porque em todos os momentos e em todos os lugares ela serviu à minha perseguição; mas deve-se amá-la, não obstante o mau uso que dela fazem; como deve-se amar a sociedade na qual tantos homens maldosos corrompem os suscetíveis; como deve-se amar a sua pátria, mesmo que ela nos trate com alguma injustiça; como se deve amar o Ser Supremo, apesar das superstições e do fanatismo que desonram tão freqüentemente o seu culto.

M. Chappuis disse-me que vossa saúde anda muito mal, deveis restabelecê-la na terra natal, aproveitando junto à sua liberdade, beber comigo o leite de nossas vacas, e passear em seus campos.

Muito filosoficamente e com a mais alta estima, etc

Has there been any improvements in the relative economic conditions of American blacks?

Vincent Geloso Economics, Liberty , , ,

A few years ago, I was teaching at HEC Montréal and I explained that putting people in prison – by statistical definition – did reduce unemployment. My students were shocked that I would say that. I told them that it was important to know definitions like that because you can then analyze the BS that politicians and pundits can spew.

And the case of Black-Americans is the best example, especially with regards to the wage gap. In recent years, I have seen pundits (left and right) use the slightly increasing ratio of black-to-white wages as a tool to promote their favored political narrative (i.e. the BS that I am referring to).

But, at the same time, the incarceration rates of Blacks has increased dramatically. Tell me, do you think that the socio-economic features of blacks in jail are distributed the same way as the socio-economic features of blacks not in jail? Of course not, criminals tend to be clustered disproportionately at the bottom of the income ladder. However, when its time to collect the wage statistics for blacks and whites, you are basically considering only the wages of blacks not in jail (i.e. blacks who are in the top centiles of the wage distribution). So, you’re basically committing a sin of statistical composition.

Some bloggers have caught on to that – the wage ratio is going up at the same pace as the incarceration rate for blacks. But they caught on after the work of scholars like Becky Pettit and Bruce Western came along (here and here and see graph below that illustrates the effect of correcting for incarceration on the employment rate of blacks).

pettit

When I look at this evidence, I understand why some people are pissed off at the conditions of Black Americans. It throws in doubt the contention that there has been racial convergence in America. At the same time, I wonder if the lack of recognition given to this statistical issue is a form of cognitive dissonance. If you claim that the convergence is mostly an artifice of composition fallacies, then what does it say about the policies of the last 30-40 years?

On the trade off between the rule of law and lower taxes

Lode Cossaer Current Events, Liberty, Philosophy , , , ,

The recent Carrier deal has caused some controversies in liberty-oriented circles. For example, The Mises Institute published a defense of the deal, arguing (along other lines, please read the article yourself):

there is nothing inherently wrong with an administration focused on keeping jobs in America — especially if this is accomplished by relieving tax and regulatory burdens.

The point I wish to make here is a general point, so I won’t go into the specifics of the Carrier deal. Among other reasons: I don’t know the specifics of the deal (I don’t know the content and I don’t know how the deal came to pass.) What I wish to do here is to argue the general case on how to view these kinds of tax exceptions.

The point we ought to remember, I think, is that there are a trade offs between two important liberal values, although they are important in different ways. On the one hand, we have the idea of rule of law, the idea that the law is general, not specific, applies to everyone rather than some, and that it’s not designed to favor some because it should serve an open-ended order. Things that contribute to such a legal order are ipso facto prima facie good, things that take away from such a legal order are ipso facto prima facie bad.

On the other hand we have the idea that taxes are bad. Things that lower taxes are prima facie good, things that increase taxes are prima facie bad.

But neither of these things trump all other considerations. Let me give you two examples.

  • Suppose there was a law that said that the taxes on, for example, business started by family members of politicians are automatically exempted from taxes. Would this be a good law?
  • Suppose there was a law that said that everyone has to be drafted and has to serve mandatory military service overseas, except the family members of politicians. Again: would this be a good law?

In both of these questions, the answer depends on the liberty-inspired framework you use to answer the question. If you think the value of the rule of law outweighs the value of individual liberty of those family members (who are, after all, not responsible for the actions of their political family members) than you think these are bad laws. If you think the increase in individual liberty for those family members is more important than the violation of a rule of law principle, than you think these are good laws. My point is not to say how one should determine this, my point is that there are two liberty-inspired frameworks that can justify an outcome, and both of these frameworks are relevant in determining what kind of laws we ought to support.

To make the issue slightly more applicable: is the increased damage on the rule of law (created by allowing a specific exception on the general laws on taxes) larger or smaller than the benefits that allow a company to have less taxes?

Some people have tried to argue by analogy – for example, comparing it to the draft. The problem is that analogies quickly run into the problem of changing the relative values of the two important concepts. For example: is it a good thing that women are exempted from the draft? Yes, this seems like obviously a good thing. Would it be a good thing that male children of politicians would be automatically exempted from the draft? This seems like less obviously a good thing.

Would it be a good thing if white people were automatically exempted from the draconian drug laws? Maybe it would, but maybe that also lowers the chance of getting rid of the drug laws altogether. Different margins matter in these kinds of evaluations.

The wrong thing to think is that all policies are pro tanto good just because they increase liberty on some margin for some people, especially if this allows for the prolonging of bad policies by the current ruling class. Some policies can be bad on some margins and good on others and reasonable people can disagree whether the complete net effect of this is good for all.

Maybe it’s a good thing that some people are exempted from evil laws (such as taxes), but it’s not good that the political class gets to choose who does so. Because those who will be exempted will be those who are connected to the political class. So one can absolutely like lower taxes, oppose politicians’ power to choose who is exempted and oppose that, and still be happy for a company that they got a tax cut. (Unless, of course, the company itself is evil. This is certainly possible if they are partners in, for example, the wars that the USA commits.)

So tl;dr. As I posted somewhere on facebook:

Rule of law and lower taxes are two good things. A president (or important person connected to the ruling class such as the president elect) getting to pick and choose winners isn’t desirable, but a tax break is. A higher tax isn’t desirable, but a rule of law is.

Trying to argue the case based on principle seems wrong. It depends on the margins. In the case of the draft, the margin *against* rule of law seems important enough to say it’s a clear victory for liberty to not have women included.

In the case of tax breaks, this is less obvious and reasonable people can come out on different sides of this, I think.

What if fake news was merely an attempt at political entrepreneurship?

Vincent Geloso Culture, Current Events, Economics, Liberty , , , , , ,

Fake news! The new plague that besets mankind! That is largely the new name given to what 19th century folks would have called “yellow journalism“.

Yellow journalism was sensationalist to the point of distorting the news in order to carry a very emotional message. Generally embedded in that message was a political narrative supporting progressive reforms (not all yellow journalists were progressive but it seems that most were).

The aim of many progressives was to design a new society, to reform the old society by getting rid of old institutions. In many cases, economic historians have documented that these reforms (like with prohibition, workers compensation, antitrust) ended up serving very narrow interest groups who either allied themselves with reforming zealots (as in bootleggers helping baptists pass Sunday sales bans), gained through the restriction of competition or gained at the expense of future workers and minorities. But it is not as if the “previous” order was paradise. The postbellum era prior to the progressive era was highly protectionist, used public funds to bailout poorly performing railways and solicited the federal army to deal with natives rather than peacefully deal with them.  Basically, both eras had their political entrepreneurs who found their way in the political process to obtain favors.

Progressives who indulged in yellow journalism merely wanted to replace one set of political entrepreneurs with another. Just like the Alt-Right, from which emanates most of the fake news. In a way, both are exactly the same. Many members of the Alt-Right are not interested in restraining government abuses, they’re in favor of redirecting government indulgences towards them (Trump did promise less immigration with paid maternity leaves and no reduction in social transfers). Some are well-meaning like the baptists of lore. But there are still bootleggers (example: Steven Mnuchin from Goldman Sachs) who co-opt the process in order to continue indulging in rent-seeking just as they did before.

Are we about to swap one bad set of institutions for another? Given that all I see is the same type of political entrepreneurs (after all, Bannon from the flagship of the fake news alt-right outlet Breitbart is now a member of the government) as those we saw during the progressive era, I am inclined to respond “yes”.

Socialism is just a new form of slavery

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Liberty, Philosophy, Politics , , , , , ,

When Fidel Castro died he was totally alone. It doesn’t matter if relatives or friends were standing beside him: in the end, we are all alone. We experience the world through our sense of perception. Of the things themselves we have no experience. On the other hand, all humans have perception of themselves. We just know that we are. This self awareness is a fundamental aspect of what it is to be human. Castro’s death already received a lot of attention, but I believe it is a moment really worthy of reflection. Under his half-century regime millions died or suffered, and it’s always important to remember that we are talking about a little country, an island in the Caribbean. Cuba was one of the most prosperous nations in the Americas, and today it is one of the most miserable.

It is really sad to see that most of my colleagues are unable to call evil by its name. In the mid-nineteenth century Karl Marx predicted that capitalism was going to collapse because of its internal contradictions. He was not saying that he wanted capitalism to collapse. He was saying that this was a scientific fact, as sure as the next eclipse predicted by an astronomer. Capitalism, of course, didn’t collapse. Marx’s economic theory was simply nonsensical, and was contradicted by logic and facts. But Marxists couldn’t admit it. Instead they replaced economics with culture, and the working class with Others as the oppressed. Blacks, women, Native Americans, underdeveloped countries and many others became the new oppressed class. Fidel Castro fit beautifully in the Marxism of the New Left. He was the charismatic dictator of the charming island nation of Cuba. The US, ruled by leftists in the 1960s and 1970s, was unable to give a consistent answer to it. Latin America, ruled by dictatorships that the left called “right” (no one wants to take their dictators home), was also not in place to contrast the evils of the Castro regime. A perfect storm.

Castro, for all we know, died with no regrets for the evils he committed in life. Political commentators say that history will judge him. But this is a lie. History can’t judge anyone. Only people can judge people. And it is fundamental that political commentators today judge Castro for all the evil he has done. Castro didn’t kill people in Cuba only. He supported, in one way or another, brutal regimes all over the world, mostly in Latin America. To this day he is partly responsible for the evils of Foro de São Paulo. But many political commentators insist in the lie that in Cuba there’s true freedom: they have enough to eat, universal healthcare and universal education. Why would they want freedom?

Freedom is the fundamental state of human beings. We are, in the end, all alone. Of what goes in our hearts, only we are aware of. Sometimes not even us. All of us make choices based on knowledge that’s unique. Circumstances of time and space shape the choices that we make. And life is made of choices. Marxism, socialism, and all forms of statism go against these fundamental truths.

People in Cuba are not free. They are all slaves to the Castro family. Some people want to have life in a cage, as long as they receive food every day. Of course this is a lie. In order to live in a cage you need to have someone outside the cage bringing the food. Someone has to be free. This person becomes your slave as well, and this constitutes a fundamental contradiction of socialism: Alexis de Tocqueville mentioned that socialism is just a new form of slavery. In slavery someone is forced to work for somebody else under the threat of physical violence. Under socialism everybody is forced to work for everybody else. Let’s hope that Castro’s death may help put socialism in the past, where slavery is, and that Latin America may finally see the light of freedom.

The ugliness of international politics

Edwin van de Haar Comments, Liberty , , ,

What has been widely feared is about the happen, it seems. President Assad’s troops, supported by the Russians, are winning the battle over Aleppo. That is not great from a lot of perspectives. To name just a few: first of all for the civilians, who are killed and bombed continuously. Secondly, the crushing of the rebel forces there means the further weakening of what are ‘natural’ allies of the West, as they are against Assad and against ISIS. Thirdly, this victory (if it all continues this way, of course) strengthens Assad’s position, making it even more unlikely that he will disappear from the scene anytime soon. The only good thing seems to be the further weakening of ISIS.

Like many others, I do not like this development at all. I think Assad is a ruthless murderer of his own people and should therefore be taken to justice, preferably in its most definitive form. I wish the Syrian people all the best and would like them to decide over their own fate in liberty. I also deeply hate ISIS and all that it stands for. And the interference of foreign powers (either Russian, Turkish, Iranian, Western) certainly does not do much good either, although I also think it has been inevitable. Public opinion, perceived and real interests, and the defence of allies all foster these kind of interventions. These are of course just a few of the important variables in an enormously complex war.

So what to do, or aim for, as Western countries? Obviously, most Syrians are better off in a stable situation without war, than with any currently viable alternative. This means that negotiations about cease fires should commence, or at least be fostered, which will then hopefully lead to a permanent settlement. I do not dare to predict how long it will take for this approach to be successful. Yet any alternative is worse. These negotiations, whenever feasible, should have all parties at the table, Assad included. No vetoes against him being part of future talks, as has previously been the case. The man will stay around for a while, and we better get used to the idea. This is surely deplorable, yet inevitable. The situation in Syria shows once again the ugliness of international politics, with very limited roles for international law and justice.

Let it be a lesson for those within the liberal tradition who still think differently.

Castro: Coercing Cubans into Health

Vincent Geloso Economics, History, Law, Liberty , , , , , , ,

On Black Friday, one of the few remaining tyrants in the world passed away (see the great spread of democracy in the world since 1988). Fidel Castro is a man that I will not mourn nor will I celebrate his passing. What I mourn are the lives he destroyed, the men and women he impoverished, the dreams he crushed and the suffering he inflicted on the innocents. When I state this feeling to others, I am told that he improved life expectancy in Cuba and reduced infant mortality.

To which I reply: why are you proving my point?

The reality that few people understand is that even poor countries can easily reduce mortality with the use of coercive measures available to a centralized dictatorship. There are many diseases (like smallpox) that spread because individuals have a hard time coordinating their actions and cannot prevent free riders (if 90% of people get vaccinated, the 10% remaining gets the protection without having to endure the cost). This type of disease is very easy to fight for a state: force people to get vaccinated.

However, there is a tradeoff to this. The type of institutions that can use violence so cheaply and so efficiently is also the type of institutions that has a hard time creating economic growth and development. Countries with “unfree” institutions are generally poor and grow slowly. Thus, these countries can fight some diseases efficiently (like smallpox and yellow fever), but not other diseases that are related to individual well-being (i.e. poverty diseases). This implies that you get unfree institutions and low rates of epidemics but high levels of poverty and high rates of mortality from tuberculosis, diarrhea, typhoid fever, heart diseases, nephritis.

This argument is basically the argument of Werner Troesken in his great book, The Pox of Liberty.  How does it apply to Cuba?

First of all, by 1959, Cuba was already in the top of development indexes for the Americas – a very rich and healthy place by Latin American standards. A large part of the high levels of health indicators were actually the result of coercion. Cuba actually got its very low levels of mortality as a result of the Spanish-American war when the island was occupied by American invaders. They fought yellow fever and other diseases with impressive levels of violence. As Troesken mentions, the rate of mortality fell dramatically in Cuba as a result of this coercion.

Upon taking power in 1959, Castro did exactly the same thing as the Americans. From a public choice perspective, he needed something to shore up support.  His policies were not geared towards wealth creation, but they were geared towards the efficient use of violence. As Linda Whiteford and Laurence Branch point out, personal choices are heavily controlled in Cuba in order to achieve these outcomes. Heavy restrictions exist on what Cubans can eat, drink and do. When pregnancies are deemed risky, doctors have to coerce women to undergo abortion in spite of their wishes. Some women are incarcerated in the Casas de Maternidad in spite of their wishes. On top of this, forced sterilization in some cases are an actually documented policy tool.   These restrictions do reduce mortality, but they feel like a heavy price for the people. On the other hand, the Castrist regime did get something to brag about and it got international support.

However, when you look at the other side of the tradeoff, you see that death rates from “poverty diseases” don’t seem to have dropped (while they did elsewhere in Latin America).  In fact, there are signs that the aggregate infant mortality rates of many other Latin Americans countries collapsed toward the low-levels seen in Cuba when Castro took over in 1959  (here too). Moreover, the crude mortality rate is increasing while infant mortality is decreasing (which is a strong indictment about how much shorter adult lives are in Cuba).

So, yes, Cuba has been very good at reducing mortality from communicable diseases and choice-based outcomes (like how to give birth) that can be reduced by the extreme use of violence. The cost of that use of violence is a low level of development that allows preventable diseases and poverty diseases to remain rampant. Hardly something to celebrate!

Finally, it is also worth pointing two other facts. First of all, economic growth in Cuba has taken place since the 1990s (after decades of stagnation in absolute terms and decline in relative terms). This is the result of the very modest forms of liberalization that were adopted by the Cuban dictatorship as a result of the end of Soviet subsidies. Thus, what little improvements we can see can be largely attributed to those. Secondly, the level of living standards prior to 1990 was largely boosted by the Soviet subsidies but we can doubt how much of it actually went into the hands of the population given that Fidel Castro is worth 900$ million according to Forbes. Thus, yes, Cubans did remain dirt poor during Castro’s reign up to 1990. Thirdly, doctors are penalized for “not meeting quotas” and thus they do lie about the statistics. One thing that is done by the regime is to categorize “infant deaths” as “late fetal deaths” – its basically extending the definition in order to conceal a poorer performance.

Overall, there is nothing to celebrate about Castro’s dictatorship. What some do celebrate is something that was a deliberate political action on the part of Castro to gain support and it came at the cost of personal freedom and higher deaths from preventable diseases and poverty diseases.

H/T : The great (and French-speaking – which is a plus in my eyes because there is so much unexploited content in French) Pseudoerasmus gave me many ideas – see his great discussion here.