Populist Nationalism And Crony-Capitalism
September 1, 2017 Leave a comment
I love elite theories. Ultimately we all have to deal with the power structures in society, even as we try to make a living.
Raghuram Rajan is always fun to follow and leaves you with penetrating insights. Let him help you understand the world, then decide what you wish to do with your understanding.
The following is reconstructed from a speech he gave at the Stigler Centre. Unfortunately I can’t find the full text anywhere online.
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A well-kept open secret: Washington is behind India’s brutal experiment of abolishing most cash – Norbert Häring
“In the past demonetisation has been thought off as a way of getting black money out of circulation. Because people then have to come and say “how do I have this ten crores in cash sitting in my safe” and they have to explain where they got the money from. It is often cited as a solution. Unfortunately, my sense is the clever find ways around it.They find ways to divide up their hoard in to many smaller pieces. You do find that people who haven’t thought of a way to convert black to white, throw it into the Hundi in some temples. I think there are ways around demonetization. It is not that easy to flush out the black money. Of course, a fair amount may be in the form of gold, therefore even harder to catch. I would focus more on the incentives to generate and retain black money. A lot of the incentives are on taxes.”
“One widely held hypothesis is that our country suffers from want of a “few good men” in politics. This view is unfair to the many upstanding people in politics. But even assuming it is true, every so often we see the emergence of a group, usually upper middle class professionals, who want to clean up politics. But when these “good” people stand for election, they tend to lose their deposits. Does the electorate really not want squeaky clean government?
Raghuram Rajan: Democracy, inclusion, and prosperity
wealthymatters 