Stiglitz: The Mauritius Miracle

[ProSense]

The Mauritius Miracle

Joseph E. Stiglitz

NEW YORK – Suppose someone were to describe a small country that provided free education through university for all of its citizens, transportation for school children, and free health care – including heart surgery – for all. You might suspect that such a country is either phenomenally rich or on the fast track to fiscal crisis.

After all, rich countries in Europe have increasingly found that they cannot pay for university education, and are asking young people and their families to bear the costs. For its part, the United States has never attempted to give free college for all, and it took a bitter battle just to ensure that America’s poor get access to health care – a guarantee that the Republican Party is now working hard to repeal, claiming that the country cannot afford it.

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In a recent visit to this tropical archipelago of 1.3 million people, I had a chance to see some of the leaps Mauritius has taken – accomplishments that can seem bewildering in light of the debate in the US and elsewhere. Consider home ownership: while American conservatives say that the government’s attempt to extend home ownership to 70% of the US population was responsible for the financial meltdown, 87% of Mauritians own their own homes – without fueling a housing bubble.

Now comes the painful number: Mauritius’s GDP has grown faster than 5% annually for almost 30 years. Surely, this must be some “trick.” Mauritius must be rich in diamonds, oil, or some other valuable commodity. But Mauritius has no exploitable natural resources. Indeed, so dismal were its prospects as it approached independence from Britain, which came in 1968, that the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Meade wrote in 1961: “It is going to be a great achievement if can find productive employment for its population without a serious reduction in the existing standard of living….he outlook for peaceful development is weak.”

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[applegrove]

1. That was really interesting. Thanks for posting.

[ProSense]

2. It's fascinating. Consider, on the other hand,

the impact of rising inequality.

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There is an equivalent of a Laffer curve for inequality, but the variable of interest is economic growth rather than tax revenue. We know that a society with perfect equality does not grow at the fastest possible rate. When everyone gets an equal share of income, people lose the incentive to try and get ahead of others. We also know that a society where one person has almost everything while everyone else struggles to survive – the most unequal distribution of income imaginable – will not grow at the fastest possible rate either. Thus, the growth-maximizing level of inequality must lie somewhere between these two extremes.

We may be near or even past the level of inequality where growth begins falling. The evidence on this is highly uncertain, so it’s difficult to say. But a few more decades like the last few could make the difference, so why take a chance? I’d prefer to see policies implemented to reduce inequality – given the present, elevated level of inequality, a reduction is unlikely to have much of an impact on incentives. But at a minimum we should resist further increases. This will reduce the chance of crossing over the point where growth starts to diminish rapidly, and it also reduces the chance that we will surpass the point where inequality causes cracks in the social structure.

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Republicans want to destroy Americans' safety net, making the bogus argument that social programs are bringing the country down when it's actually greed that is killing opportunity and increasing poverty.