There has been a lot of discussion in the past few days on a recent WSJ article on income mobility. I tend to agree with Krugman and Cook on their critical analysis of the articles findings, though I think income and it's distribution is only one factor of development which we should pay attention to. Amartya Sen's capabilities approach to development is a much more broad and rich view of human and welfare. We need to look at poverty not just as low income, but as "capability-deprivation" - the denial of substantial freedoms that people value.
Here is another WSJ article which may be just as controversial. It is quite coincidental that I stumbled upon this, as I was just reading another article about the black market in organs. It brings up interesting questions about how we define a commodity and what role government has in regulation. It should be noted that there is a huge black market in organs where sellers (usually from the Third World) can sell a kidney for about $2000, which are then bought by the buyers (usually rich Westerners) for anywhere from $100,000-500,000 (including procedure costs, transportation, etc.).
Sean
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4 comments:
I love the point about capability deprivation. I think might not even be necessary, however, to showing that income mobility is a problem. The WSJ's reported statistics are more a manipulation of mobility data, and I think Krugman is right to call them on that. Sadly, most of the people who read the WSJ will lap it right up and never read about the ensuing disagreement, just like most people will hear Guiliani's statement about prostate cancer and automatically believe it, never hearing about the blowback.
Can you fix the links? I don't see any.
Fix the links? Do the links not work for you? They work here, but I'll look into it...
Income is a means to attaining certain capabilities, but is not the only means. I think that is the point Sen tries to make. But, you are right that income mobility/distribution is a significant problem.
You might find my blog of interest. I'm not quick about posting about other blogs on my blog, but I might note this one sometime.
I noticed on some post that words with links here don't come out as a different color or anything else to distinguish them. If you happen to move your mouse over them, you can click on them.
Thanks, for tipping us to your blog, Robert- I'll add it to our list, let our small (but apparently growing) readership see what it thinks.
Also, I changed the way links show up- I like the unclicked ones as orange- seems spicy. I couldn't very well make a neat match for the clicked ones, but I went with blue. Feel free to change if anyone has better ideas.
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