RAJAWALI MUDA

I read a blog today, complaining that inequality is becoming higher and higher, seeing that all conglomerates got their cash increased 40 milliards dollars in one year. As Easterly will brilliantly say, that not only the poor trapped in poverty, the rich is being trapped to in wealthiness.

the blog mentioned some data, but kinda outdated, but whatever. she mentioned poverty rates in 2006, but accommodating Bakrie's richness in 2007 in comparison. First of all, those data is incomparable .Bad mistakes. if we see the newest data, indeed poverty decline as well, not very larged though. the idea is here, the growth has positive effect on everybody, notably the rich and the powerful though. In this I agree.

I don't see any problem with this, not that I'm pro-inequality, it is the fact that all nation is having, in all part of the world. As long as rich people got richer, and the poor people got less poorer, it's kinda OK for me, well better than poor people got poorer, no?
I mean, the very problem of inequality and poverty is that, we don't know exactly what are the determinants, in my opinion it's most likely social -interaction problem, rather than Macroeconomic problem, it's the information sharing, not the problem in growth. Off course inflation got higher effect in the short run, but really, access to credit, and information is kinda better in explaining long term poverty.

may be my post is kinda strange for one studying development, what I am saying is that it is normal that people get rich everyday, as long it doesn't take the proportion of the most poor people, in Aburizal bakrie's case I am not convinced enough the reasoning is, what's for sure, not because he has bakrie's plantation(the blog mentioned these reasons), it's more like better preferences in BUMI resource's stocks, keeping the price higher than ever. Complaining that these people got our natural resources depleted for their own wealth is kinda odd, let's say we'll give poor people couple of hectares of land in kalimantan, what would they do? -this is typically what Venezuela do-, their resources are now underutilized, not only the people got no knowledge to use it properly, but also when they want to sell it, no one will buy the land, so what's the use of having hectares of land, but unable to use it?

let's go back to bakries problem.I don't know whether his wealth won't come from poor farmer in papua back there, but what do I know is, when he got rich, he need to invest, meaning more jobs, so to measure the effect in bakries richness to the people, is how much real investment will come in the future?. indeed, Lapindo did take some people's home, but its (lapindo) loss is not to be neglected either. So while having devastated by the loss in lapindo's assets,it still gives him larger flow of money, meaning he got more gains in other investment (I do Pity the fact that the money comes from financial market) but it measured how this guy/company can handle unexpected shock, hopefully he will create more investment in the future, and more money to the poor. I believe it was called trickle down effects.

I praise the non-communist term, saying that free economy give people a relatively equal opportunity to be rich (and to be poor?), than Communist term. The whole idea of market economy is that all things are dynamic. Ones can sometimes moving out of poverty, and sometime moving in to poverty, the same case goes to wealthiness. People can be poor but in subsequent period got surprisingly rich, for randomized reasons. But in communist term, people should always be equal, should share the same burden in poverty, in their thinking, being poor together is better than having wealth gap, as poor people will always be victimized by the rich. so just eliminate the gap, so every people share the same despair. This is awfully wrong, in the sense that, it's true that most people got rich because their family had been rich for some time, but there are cases where, once poor people might in the future turned out to be one of the richest people in the country, these kind of people that will survive in this horrific competition world.

this guy is magnificent, this morning I read his 2006's Harvard mimeo paper this is one of the best paper I have ever read about Development policies..very smooth flow of writing, compact but very thoroughly in some details ,critical, but full of logic.

Wow. I was astonished with the paper, how it dismantled the augmented Washington consensus
at first, I think John williamson's revised WC would be good enough, but no, rodrik explains it better.. personally, i'll vote him for president of WB, or may be replacing monsieur Bourguignon?
Had I been Sby, I'll contact Rodrik first for suggestions, than fernando de soto..

or may be Rodrik for president in our republic? no..no...no I'm talking non-sense

hmm..did I?

update :
Arya gaduh post the much shorter resume of the paper

few days ago, a friend criticized lack of our country's labor absorbing power , blaming this as the source of the large flow of illegal Indonesian workers abroad. another friend, who's an expat here in france, was kinda saying the same thing couple of days back.

will never share the same idea with them, ever!
their deductions have lots of flaws everywhere, what were they thinking?

First, we need to see this world as a whole of opportunity, of working, socializing, getting higher salary, higher satisfaction in life, avoiding traffic-jam, etc, lots of incentive to move to other countries. we should not have limited the scope

Second, about people becoming illegal workers, what's the problem? do they want to be illegal workers in the first place? no, I don't think so, thus comparing it, or even worse,blaming it to the lack of job demand effect in home countries would be even more misleading. People goes abroad every day, people seek more appropriate job all the time, what's wrong with that? in this case, it happened to be that they are looking for it across countries. then what makes them ilegal?
what makes them illegal, is that something, or someone identify them as "unexpected workers"
or unidentified workers,who's to blame? the guy who got the power in extra-territorial authorization, why don't these guy's ability to move in labor market was -whatsoever the means-, happened to be somewhat undetected ?

Third,let's say, I'm rich, I work in highly reputable company with high salary, should I stop searching jobs?. well, could be, but if I'm trying to get more salary, with a more reputable company, should that considered to be wrong?.

Their conclusion seems to be kinda odd for me, since they are assuming as if the country is rich, people should not look for jobs somewhere else,I would say, mind you!, if people got richer than ever, they will look for something else..that's stated in qur'an, and as long as it's halal, nothing's wrong with it..even the first man on earth got the same problem, no? I mean,seeing that we all his descendents and all, that's probably human nature.

and so why blaming economist? should you blame the immigration people instead? having those actively demanded labor, constrained in the borders, forcing them to jump over the fence, without adequate papers on their hands

the sad thing is, the guy saying this hold an economist title in his e-mail, funny he?