코키리 그래프(elephant graph) 와 그 정치적 함의

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코키리 그래프(elephant graph) 와 그 정치적 함의

1.코키리 그래프

Using World Bank data from researchers Christoph Lakner and Branko Milanovic, the chart shows how each part of the world’s income distribution fared from 1988 to 2008. There are two big winners: the global middle class, in particular people in East Asia (especially China) and South Asia (especially India), and some parts of sub-Saharan Africa who’ve escaped extreme poverty in recent decades; and the ultrarich, who are overwhelmingly concentrated in rich countries in Europe or North America.

By contrast, people from the 80th-90th percentiles of the distribution experienced sluggish growth, if any, and the absolute poorest people didn’t see incomes grow as fast as their slightly richer neighbors.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/2/16868838/elephant-graph-chart-global-inequality-economic-growth


2. 정치적 함의
"The temporal coincidence of the two developments and the plausible narratives linking them - whether made by economists or by politicians - make the correlation in many people's mind appear real."
Those "plausible narratives" include the idea that some workers have lost jobs or seen their incomes fail to rise because of low-wage competition in emerging economies, or at home in the shape of immigrant labour.

Many countries have seen a globalisation backlash and the rise of protest parties such as Italy's Five Star movement
We have certainly seen significant political developments that you could characterise as, in part, a backlash against globalisation and the increased flows of goods and workers across borders.
It was a factor in the British vote to leave the EU, the rise of anti-establishment political parties across Europe (Podemos in Spain, the Five Star movement in Italy and more) and in Donald Trump's criticism of American trade agreements in the US election campaign.
Of course, it's important not to forget the very large gains made by a substantial swathe of the population in the developing and emerging economies.
Globalisation has surely got a good deal to do with that, as jobs in exporting industries in China, for example, have helped to drive rising living standards.

Liberalisation brake

The perception that has gained strength in the rich world is that this improvement is driven by trade relations that are in some way unfair: workers in emerging economies are exploited, firms are subsidised, or that improved access to rich countries' markets is not adequately reciprocated.
That in turn underpins pressure on governments to rethink trade agreements and to impose new barriers to imports


https://www.bbc.com/news/business-37542494


3.코키리그래프가 숨기고 있은 것 - 심화되는 불평등

This graph, however, is virtually meaningless because it calculates growth rates as a percent of widely divergent income levels. Compare a Silicon Valley executive earning $200,000/year with one of the three billion people currently living on $2.50 per day or less. If the executive gets a 10% pay hike, she can use the $20,000 to buy a new compact car for her teenage daughter. Meanwhile, that same 10% increase would add, at most, a measly 25 cents per day to each of those three billion. In Graph 4, Oxfam economist Mujeed Jamaldeen shows the original “Elephant Graph” (blue line) contrasted with changes in absolute income levels (green line). The difference is stark.

Figure 4: “Elephant Graph” versus absolute income growth levels. Source: “From Poverty to Power,” Muheed Jamaldeen.

The “Elephant Graph” elegantly conceals the fact that the wealthiest 1% experienced nearly 65 times the absolute income growth as the poorest half of the world’s population. Inequality isn’t, in fact, decreasing at all, but going extremely rapidly the other way. Jamaldeen has calculated that, at the current rate, it would take over 250 years for the income of the poorest 10% to merely reach the global average income of $11/day. By that time, at the current rate of consumption by wealthy nations, it’s safe to say there would be nothing left for them to spend their lucrative earnings on. In fact, the “rising tide” for some barely equates to a drop in the bucket for billions of others.