This is an issue that I really don't understand, politically.
I know what I want, reform-wise: something pretty close to open borders. I don't have any objection to keep identified people out for reasons, but I'd like the number of people allowed to become citizens to track the number of people who want to immigrate to within a couple of percent.
This is obviously far enough out there that it's not even a starting point for political discussion.
But what's the principled left-wing alternative? What am I hoping Obama introduces?
I don't think the left even pretends to have a working platform. They're just hoping to go through the motions to opiate the brown masses and radicalize the nutwing masses.
I should say "Democrats" in 2, not left.
even pretends to have a working platform.
This is sort of my impression. There are little discrete defined issues like the DREAM Act where the left-wing idea is easy to spot, and I'll start rooting for it. But I don't know what 'immigration reform' means that's even remotely plausible that I should be happy about.
The liberal/left thing to hope for is for a general simplification of the system, so that you don't 37 kinds of immigration status, each requiring a million different documents and a bunch of intrusive questions from La Migra.
If I wanted to immigrate to Canada, I'd just need to show up at the border with my advanced degree and a letter saying I had a job, and I'd automatically be given landed immigrant status.
The question of whether it is appropriate to say "emigrate to Canada" or "immigrate to Canada" is one regarding which much dispute is possible.
That I can certainly root for, as well as increased funding/responsiveness for people trying to make it through the process. But while that's general good-government reform, it doesn't really seem to address the bulk of what people are talking about when they talk about immigration.
6: Either, surely, depending on whether you were focusing on leaving the US or on entering Canada.
Precisely why it admits of so much dispute, provided that no one comes up with the irenic response.
7: the bulk of what people are talking about when they talk about immigration
Keeping the Mexicans out?
I mean, seriously, people don't even seem to care about South and Central American undocumented immigrants (or, perhaps they are simply ignorant of the existence of those lands). It's all about hatred for Mexicans.
It was interesting to go to the big May 1st march in St. Paul last week. There were about 850 people there, with a slight majority from the secular immigration reform movement, and the rest from a Catholic group. Not nearly the number that were out in 2006, but of course it was like 35 degrees that day. Anyhow, many people, who I infer were undocumented immigrants, were wearing shirts, the front of which read "I AM A SLAVE", with "EMANCIPATION" on the back. That is powerful imagery to conjure with, of course, but it certainly spoke to the depth of feeling in the Latino community around this issue. A turning point? Until now, especially here in the north, it's seemed like the immigrant community has been willing to bear these latest series of assaults fairly peaceably, demanding justice only quietly, if at all. But how many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free?
10: You're the sort of person, in terms of political affiliation, I'd want to hear from on these issues. Do you have any kind of global sense of what good immigration reform would be that would address the status of undocumented immigrants?
I'm not crazy about the position I stated in 1 -- it's off-the-wall enough that it's not plausibly going to happen, and I'd like to find something that someone's actually advocating for. But I don't know what that is.
But what's the principled left-wing alternative?
Amnesty for all undocumented immigrants currently in the country, an obtainable path to citizenship available to everyone, and a new law that says all Bibles have to be printed in both English and Spanish.
That last one is in there mostly as a negotiating point. I'd be willing to give it up, in exchange for the other two.
an obtainable path to citizenship available to everyone,
Everyone worldwide, or everyone currently physically in the country? If it's the first, then you and I are in agreement. If it's the second, while I suppose it's the best we can get, I find it kind of embarrassing -- enforcing inhumane immigration laws most of the time, and then handing out citizenship to the survivors who've made it through a couple of decades of harassment, seems like a really unprincipled way of determining who's allowed to be a US citizen and who isn't.
an obtainable path to citizenship available to everyone
Everyone worldwide. We are in agreement.
I would like the US to preferentially allow immigration of high skilled immigrants like Canada does. The current high immigration levels of low skill immigrants is concerning to me.
11, 12: Amnesty for all undocumented immigrants currently in the country, an obtainable path to citizenship available to everyone,
I think Spike's got a good start there. Certainly streamlining ICE procedures would make a lot of people a lot happier. The thing that seems to really upset people is the utter insanity of dealing with ICE, even if you have a really good claim to citizenship/legal residency. Why should it be easier to reunify families if the non-citizens are in another country? Why be so draconian about minor criminal offenses barring people from the country? Why not have a simple appeals process that doesn't take 5 years to complete?
Personally, of course, I'm of the no tienes fronteras persuasion, but, assuming for the purposes of discussion here, as I often do, that certain legal distinctions are going to remain in force for the forseeable future, I think a big amnesty, plus an overhaul of the entire system, would do a lot of good. One of the things that was pointed out to me by an anarchist acquaintance who works with No More Deaths in Arizona, is that a big proportion of illegal "immigration" was, in the past, not permanent. That is, people were running their own individualized Bracero programs, coming north to work for a season or two, then returning to their families south of the border for a big part of the year. The militarization of the border has made this nearly impossible at this point. So now you've got a lot of people who basically consider themselves stuck here. I think some kind of normalization of that process could do a lot of good. With the additional stipulation that if you'd worked in the US for a total of 4 years or whatever, without committing any serious crimes, you could be on a fast-track to citizenship if you so desired.
But how many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free?
The answer, my friend, is "several hundred, at least."
15: The U.S. does preferentially allow immigration of people with high skills, as far as the law goes.
So now you've got a lot of people who basically consider themselves stuck here.
Really? I can see that w/r/t crossing the border on foot, but surely trucks and boats and so forth would be much more laxly inspected leavingthe county.
If I wanted to immigrate to Canada, I'd just need to show up at the border with my advanced degree and a letter saying I had a job, and I'd automatically be given landed immigrant status.
Unless your kid needed special ed. Then you'd have to go to court about it.
19: Well, they're stuck here if they ever want to work in the US again. Most people could indeed probably get back, but the point is the risk of crossing again is so much higher now.
I would totally support giving Arizona back to Mexico though. Maybe not Flagstaff, but definitely everything from Phoenix south.
I mean, seriously, people don't even seem to care about South and Central American undocumented immigrants (or, perhaps they are simply ignorant of the existence of those lands). It's all about hatred for Mexicans.
To be fair, most racists aren't sufficiently bright or thoughtful to draw a distinction. To them, anyone past a certain degree of tan is "IranianMexican". My mother falls into this camp, bless her insufferably aged heart.
As a total aside, my sister wanted to meet Rah and engineered a circumstance in which most of my family would be present when she did so. This means my parents have now met him, which is something I thought would never happen. My father was genuinely nice to him; my mother was polite and later told me, on the phone, that she enjoyed meeting him which is as open a peace offering as she could ever make. Now all bets are off, and the elder generation has lost the war. My sister is a genius. (She is also, as of this weekend, a college graduate at age 44, thus the occasion to meet Rah without any room for interference or weaseling by my relations.)
Of course, the fact that my parents preferred to deny the fact of my having come out to them repeatedly over the last 20 years had long since stopped having an influence on my life; I started the work of giving up that weight in 1993 or thereabouts and wrapped it up a few years ago when I simply stopped caring about any degree of relationship with them regardless of topic. Still, it's nice to have something approaching normal. It's nice not to leave a family gathering feeling somewhere between annoyed and angry for once.
Congratulations on disentangling yourself from such noxious bullshit back in '93, and glad to hear you're getting some "I win" satisfaction now.
One left perspective, as embodied by Matt Yglesias, is that the goal is to encourage globalization so that people in poor countries can become slightly richer and people in rich countries can become much, much poorer. If we don't agree with that, we have to admit some degree of nationalism.
It's nice not to leave a family gathering feeling somewhere between annoyed and angry for once.
We drink enough that we're pretty much always well to one side or the other of that range.
24: Oh, that sounds great. Kudos to your sister, and minimal kudos to your parents for behaving better than they have in the past.
26: slightly richer... much, much poorer
I think the adjectives here beg the question. I do, mostly believe that nationalism is wrong -- impossibly to completely opt out of unilaterally, but wrong. And I do believe that resources should be redistributed from the global rich to the global poor, until the range of inequality in the world is much, much smaller than it is now.
I don't think that necessarily requires immiserating people in the currently rich countries while not improving matters significantly for people now living in poverty. That's not an impossible outcome, but I don't think it's inevitable.
This is obviously far enough out there that it's not even a starting point for political discussion.
But what's the principled left-wing alternative? What am I hoping Obama introduces?
A suggestion I'd make is that if you take the view that national unity - defined primarily as a common culture - gives a firm footing to a political order that's liberal, respects rights and the rule of law, then you have an instrumental justification for restricting immigration. It takes time for people to learn the common language, customs, way of life, etc.: this sets a limit to the rate of immigration. There might even be an upper bound to a common culture (I don't pretend to know what this is: there might be other bounds that come into play earlier, such as a tendency for very large nations to experience political corruption).
I do believe that resources should be redistributed from the global rich to the global poor, until the range of inequality in the world is much, much smaller than it is now.
The averaged yearly income worldwide, total world income/population, is about $7000 from what I can find. 80% of the population lives in countries that have a per capita income lower than that.
LB's comment reminds me of something I wanted to post.
There are plenty of pragmatic "left" activist immigration reformers with an agenda. Here's one group. Basically, the goals are: register and create a path to citizenship for currently existing illegal immigrants, restore and strengthen family preservation as a principle, increase the visa quota to a substantially larger (but non-infinite) number that comes closer to reflecting demand, especially from Mexico, simplify the system, and strictly enforce the more simplified system. Sounds good to me.
total world income/population, is about $7000
That's a huge improvement since the last time I hear that number. Or the last time it registered in my brain.
30: The averaged yearly income worldwide, total world income/population, is about $7000 from what I can find
I'm not saying that I have a better number, but in terms of resources, that number has to be misleading. Someone living off of $5/day in a developing country is living better than they would be in the US on $5/day, because the purchasing power of that income is different. Again, I don't know how to correct for that, but I think you have to in order to do cross-national averages of that sort and have them mean much of anything.
Don't forget when you think about equalizing wealth (and income and such) that a slight economic improvement for those at the bottom brings with it great improvement in overall well being, while even major economic losses for those at the top make very little difference in overall well being.
32: increase the visa quota to a substantially larger (but non-infinite) number that comes closer to reflecting demand, especially from Mexico
This sounds pretty good -- I'm not committed to absolutely open immigration, so long as the number of slots open is at least comparable to the demand.
I don't know how to correct for that, but I think you have to in order to do cross-national averages of that sort and have them mean much of anything.
I agree and don't know how to fix it either. I assume there are some kind of price indexes that you could use, but I don't know where to find them nor do I really want to put the effort in to do the work if I did.
Not to mention that I assume if you started to equalize income those price disparities would all start to shift as well.
This the point of the Big Mac index, right? An item that's prepared virtually identically everywhere, so that you can account for cost of living across different currencies and cultures.
Well, right. In principle, I could figure out what the income of anyone in a different country meant in terms of US purchasing power. But I'm not sure that I could reasonably use that calculation to figure out what level we could all live at if global inequality were eliminated, which is sort of the impression a stat like 'average global income' gives.
39: Except that a Big Mac fills different roles in the consumption basket of different countries.
That's just because average global income doesn't have much meaning, though. The pie is not finite for people living in relative wealth or poverty.
36: I doubt that even susbtantially increased visa totals that the reform groups are proposing would get you to anything like "open borders" but the current numbers are ridiculously low. Here is a breakdown: 140,000 employment related green cards worldwide per year, plus 55,000 from the green card lottery. I'd think a world in which we said openly that we were going to admit 800,000 people a year from Mexico, and then actually enforced labor and employment law w/r/t those people, and strictly enforced the rest of the system, would be a huge improvement over the current system.
41: But largely because of its cost. You can compare someone's daily income to the cost of the Big Mac in that country, and easily estimate their level of poverty.
The pie is not finite of a fixed size
I know what you meant, you just hit a pet peeve there.
Why isn't the pie infinite, in theory, if we were living sustainably, etc?
Not that I was being that clever. I meant fixed size, of course.
Why isn't the pie infinite, in theory, if we were living sustainably, etc?
And you're a math professor.
My sense is that the number cases in which one could map a real world entity (of any sort) to an infinite set is extremely small.
I was thinking that the pie would extend for infinitely many generations forever and ever.
38:
PPP (purchasing power parity). You could just take a weighted average of PPP adjusted GDP per capita.
My sense is that the number cases in which one could map a real world entity (of any sort) to an infinite set is extremely small.
Well, now here we should chat! There are infinitely many points on your ordinary ruler. I know! It's boggling!
50: That would get you a more meaningful number, but I still think it wouldn't mean much -- isn't it a fairly safe assumption that decreasing global inequality would 'make the pie higher'? Currently very poor countries are economically unproductive, and they'd become more productive if they were richer?
World GDP (PPP adjusted) per capita: ~ $11,000
Roughly the same as Brazil, Iran, Serbia, and South Africa.
I was thinking that the pie would extend for infinitely many generations forever and ever.
After approximately 250 million generations that will have to happen off-planet.
My sense is that the number cases in which one could map a real world entity (of any sort) to an infinite set is extremely small.
Well, now here we should chat! There are infinitely many points on your ordinary ruler. I know! It's boggling!
Yeah, yeah, I do know that, but I think it's debatable whether a mathematical "point" maps to a real word entity. It certainly doesn't map to an atom (or quark, etc . . .).
But to re-phrase that more precisely, there are very few cases in which the same entity can map to a finite set and an infinite set (and, despite feeling like your last response was pedantic, I'd be curious for counter-examples to that one).
Speaking of racism, this morning I was trying to seach for images of a particular kind of hairstyle I'm considering, for which I'd bleach my hair white and wear it short and curly, but I was trying to find images that wouldn't make me look like a Golden Girl. So I'm (unwisely) Googling "white curly hair" and come across this Stormfront page which, God help me, I just had to read, in which various men are asking if maybe it's OK to have a leetle sexual confusion about a REALLY very white-looking woman (white kind of nose, mouth, eyes, etc.) if she has dark curly hair. Because she looks so white in SOME ways... and then various women inform them that they would personally never ever have sex with a guy who'd ever had sex with a woman with dark curly hair, and so forth.
Ah, the internet!
The idea that the solution to global poverty is to redistribute wealth from the global rich to the global poor strikes me as kinda crazy. By and large rich countries aren't rich because they're sitting on vast piles of wealth, but because collectively the people of that country know how to create wealth. And it's not because we're such super-geniuses. If we can do it, they can do it too.
Well, now here we should chat! There are infinitely many points on your ordinary ruler. I know! It's boggling!
Let me ask the question this way: how should I distinguish between two of those infinite points, with reference to the physical object.
I can figure out how to distinguish between big macs or generations. Talking about the (hypothetical) 500,000th generation of Geebies following Heebie-Geebie makes sense. Talking about the 500,000th point past the 2 inch mark on a ruler doesn't make any sense.
I know of a way to distinguish points on a number line, but I'm still getting stuck on the "maps to a real world entity" part of your claim.
Walt, I'm pretty sure that's exactly why the new world countries are rich, especially North America. Because of two centuries of mining and extracting a ton of natural resources. And many poor countries are poor because their natural resources, including their labor, was stolen from them during colonization.
57: Think of it in terms of distance from a fixed point.
By and large rich countries aren't rich because they're sitting on vast piles of wealth, but because collectively the people of that country know how to create wealth. And it's not because we're such super-geniuses. If we can do it, they can do it too.
I'm not saying that what I'm about to suggest is remotely practical, or would n its specifics be anything like a good idea. But try this on for size:
We tax ourselves to the bone to increase our foreign aid budget. We then spend that money in Developing Country X on a free school system maintained to US standards, with local teachers paid at a US level where they can be found with sufficient skills to teach the necessary classes, foreign teachers imported where domestic teachers are unavailable. We supplement with health clinics and nutritional programs so every child in the country is well nourished and has access to medical treatment where necessary. We do this for thirty years.
At the end of that time, we've given them a whole lot of wealth. They now have a generation of healthy, well educated, well nourished young adults. Don't you think that would be likely to have a substantial ongoing effect in terms of the inequalities between the US and the Developing Country in question?
57: Think of it in terms of distance from a fixed point.
Sure, that makes sense. Certainly for the standards of blog comments.
If you're willing to indulge me, however, let me walk through the analogy to a Dedekind Cut. I can define the point at sqrt(3) inches but saying that there are two ordered sets of points, one that are less than sqrt(3) inches from the base of the ruler, an one that is greater than sqrt(3) inches from the base of the ruler.
That works as long as the "point' which is an element in the sets is a mathematical abstraction. I can't create a unique cut using two sets of atoms, one containing all atoms that are less than . . . and greater than . . .
If you work with sets of atoms then sqrt(3) in and (sqrt(3) + 10^-40) inches will likely produce the same sets despite being different points.
58: Clearly stealing was an important part of what made the United States a comparatively rich country in the 19th century, but I think for the 20th century it's almost completely wrong. It helps explain why poor countries are poor, but it doesn't explain why rich countries are so rich. And it's critically wrong, because it leads to the wrong policies. China and India kicked out the colonials in the 40s, but didn't start developing rapidly until much more recently. And they're not developing rapidly because we in the West are so enlightened that we're giving them hand outs to make up for colonialism. They are developing rapidly because they are growing their own productive capacity.
Too attempt to answer my own question, it really depends on what you mean my the term "map".
You could map the real numbers to the atoms and each real number would unambiguously map to a single atom (at a given point in time), but you would have an infinite set of numbers mapping to each atom.
I'm not sure, whether it makes sense, in that case, to say that the inverse is true -- that this constitutes a mapping of atoms onto real numbers, since I don't see a way to have an unambiguous mapping.
But I'm not sure if my intuition in this case matches the appropriate usage.
They are developing rapidly because they are growing their own productive capacity.
Laydeez.
Maybe the argument I'm trying to make isn't coming out quite right. Colonialism in Africa had a crippling impact on that continent, which explains why Africa is so poor. But an attempted solution where we take half of the per-capita GDP of the US and send it to Africa would be a disaster. And also completely unnecessary. The way forward is for per-capita GDP in Africa to simply rise to the US level.
China most certainly did not kick out the colonials in the 1940's. Economically, politically, and militarily, Mao's China was a colony of the USSR.
Wealthier countries leasing huge tracts of farmland in poorer ones, often in exchange for roads and other infrastructure and the promise of local jobs (which usually don't appear) is worth following. Google turned up this blog:
http://farmlandgrab.org/
You could map the real numbers to the atoms and each real number would unambiguously map to a single atom (at a given point in time), but you would have an infinite set of numbers mapping to each atom.
It's a convention when comparing cardinalities to use one-to-one maps.
It's a convention when comparing cardinalities to use one-to-one maps.
Which is exactly why I was skeptical of mapping real world entities to an infinite set.
There are infinite sets in the real world, was my point.
There are infinite sets in the real world, was my point.
Define, "in the real world" in that sentence.
I agree that we can describe the real world using infinite sets; but by that standard the pie is always and already infinite.
66: an attempted solution where we take half of the per-capita GDP of the US and send it to Africa would be a disaster
Well, but, in what form? Like a check for every person? That would have some logistical problems. Or maybe the kind of NGO-led development that's been going on for the last 50 years? That also has logistical problems, plus some failures of imagination.
The thing is, right now, we are sending lots of things to Africa -- money, in the form of foreign aid and remittances and trade; materiel in the form of consumer products, arms, charitable donations; people in the form of tourists, aid workers, military advisers, engineers, sales people; cultural product in the form of movies and music and fashions -- and some of it has positive effects and some doesn't. The question is not "should we send stuff to Africa", but rather how much stuff, to whom, how, why and what for? Some of that is controllable at the level of national and international policy, some isn't.
I can't tell if I'm trolling or being trolled, but it's the same kind of focus I use when arguing with my two year old.
Yeah, that doesn't really narrow it down. I'm pretty sure my two-year-old and I alternate between trolling each other all the time.
I can't tell if I'm trolling or being trolled, but it's the same kind of focus I use when arguing with my two year old.
I did concede, in 62, that I'm asking you to indulge me.
I'm mostly digging my heals in because I thought I'd made an obviously true statement and then you disagreed with it.
So I'm trying to figure out how I should have worded my statement to prevent, "infinitely many points on your ordinary ruler." from qualifying as a counter-example (while still hoping, on some level, that my original statement does, in fact, exclude that).
I believe the children are our future.
Distances smaller than the Planck scale aren't currently meaningful. The real numbers are an abstraction, not something actually physically meaningful.
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I am sorry for killing the thread. I will mention, in an attempt to provide useful content, that I liked this FSP post (hat tip to LB, I think, for first recommending her blog).
That's fine, but my point is that you can't extend your preference to every family, just like I can't say that it is best for all families, including the kids, if both parents work, even though that is what is best for my family.
...
Mostly, I think that this man was doing what so many people do -- trying to justify or feel good about his own personal decisions by trying to convince others that this is the best way to be. Why not just be happy with your choices? Perhaps he has issues, and these issues came to his mind when he found himself in conversation with a Female Scientist.
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A dead cat can only bounce so high, Nick.
Indeed: infinitely high, as it happens, each height increment on the way up being exactly half of the distance between the cat's position at that point and the top of the bounce.
1: whatever Ted Kennedy was trying to do when he was able.
And they're not developing rapidly because we in the West are so enlightened that we're giving them hand outs to make up for colonialism. They are developing rapidly because they are growing their own productive capacity.
hmmm...
"Hand-out" - net in-flows of capital (loans, include from Japan, include to tiger cubs) (include some ME recently)
"make up for colonialism"
they are a profitable place to send capital because they are underdeveloped etc
That this is not intentional, was not the plan, may make it even more interesting.
Clearly stealing was an important part of what made the United States a comparatively rich country in the 19th century
Can't overestimate the importance of foreign investment in US late 19th development. But investment opportunities in Britain were so good.
I see a pattern here, of exploitation of colonies, overdevelopment (& capture? more) in colonialist nations leading to declining domestic profits, leading to outflows of capital (including human capital, abstracted? back to the subaltern
This is a job for a Marxist! Harvey Hilferding Luxenburg
83 s/b "in Britain were not so good."
more 83:T Cowen has an assorted link today:"Why does no one one want to live in the ten most livable cities?"
Because Vancouver is so fucking expensive, his commenters answer
Cycle of urbanization might be another example
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So depressing I cannot read to the end.
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My preference would be amnesty for those in the country now, increased immigration quotas for skilled people, the creation of a significant scale program for unskilled immigrants, and, once this stuff gets implemented, stiff financial penalties on all those who employ illegal immigrants. As all this indicates I emphatically don't favor open borders. I don't believe it could work in practice and I think it is quite proper for a national government to act in the interest of its own citizens rather than that of foreign ones. The fact that I would like Sweden's welfare state in the US does not mean I think everybody should have the right to move to Sweden and get the same benefits that Swedes do.
Economically, politically, and militarily, Mao's China was a colony of the USSR
I am unsure how true this is.
Depends when. In the early years I think you can make a case for it, just as you can make a case for even the stronger NATO states in the same period being colonies of the US, though I think I'd use 'client state' since unlike the Warsaw Pact countries we're not talking anything resembling direct rule.
60
At the end of that time, we've given them a whole lot of wealth. They now have a generation of healthy, well educated, well nourished young adults. Don't you think that would be likely to have a substantial ongoing effect in terms of the inequalities between the US and the Developing Country in question?
If things were that simple there wouldn't be any poor people in the United States.
Not that I have any inclination to make serious sacrifices to benefit other countries in any case.
56, 63: really? You actually believe that? You really have no clue whatsoever about how much and how long the west collectively stole from the rest of the world? How e.g. India had a higher per capita income than England before it was taken over and a much lower one afterwards? How this exploitation didn't end with decolonalisation at all, as e.g. a brief look at the history of Guatamala or El Salvador might show?
No, you must be trolling. Nice one.
I see you have completely failed to understand my point, Martin. But I'm sure that that the people of India are very excited to be on the receiving end of your pity. I'm sure that adds 1% to Indian GDP right there.
91
... How e.g. India had a higher per capita income than England before it was taken over and a much lower one afterwards? ...
If this is true, it was really rather careless of them to get taken over by inferiors who were far from home.
Per capita GDP today in India is around $4,000, while per capita GDP in the UK is around $36,000. Do you think if colonialism never happened, per capita GDP in both countries would be somewhere in between, like $6,000? Every single dollar that people in the UK have today they got by taking it out of the mouths of somebody in India? How the fuck do you think the world works? Without colonialism, the UK would have half of a microprocessor and India has half of a microprocessor, but thanks to colonialism the UK gets the whole thing?
If colonialism had never happened, then per capita GDP in India and would indeed be equal today, but at around $36,000, not around $6,000.
I think that perhaps a more realistic short term objective might be for developed countries to stop taking money from the developing world; when one considers interest and principal on debt, repatriation of profits of extractive industries and capital flight, Africa is still a net provider of funds to the West. The old proverb is true; you have to stop shitting before you can start shovelling.
btw, a Big Mac is not a homogeneous item worldwide. It is extensively customised to local tastes and budgets and differs in weight, fat content and so on. The sauce is the same worldwide, but you can't buy that separately. I have been writing letters to the Economist about this for ten years without effect.
How e.g. India had a higher per capita income than England before it was taken over and a much lower one afterwards?
But both nations had higher per-capita incomes post-Raj than pre-Raj, which suggests there's something else going on here other than just looting.
If colonialism had never happened, then per capita GDP in India and would indeed be equal today, but at around $36,000, not around $6,000.
Why would you think that? It's not borne out by the actual, real-life experiences of a lot of non-colonised countries. Sure, some of them turned out to be Japan. Then again, some of them turned out to be Afghanistan and Ethiopia. Meanwhile, some colonised countries have turned out very well. America, for example. Canada. Korea.
Distances smaller than the Planck scale aren't currently meaningful.
If you have a lower bound on sizes given by the Planck scale, and an upper bound on sizes given by "in the real world", and things can't overlap, and we can't use time as an axis, and we can't use new axes I haven't thought of, then we do not have a real world example of infinity.
There isn't really a sharp lower bound on distances, but notions of geometry get fuzzy at the Planck length. (Fuzzy in the non-technical sense.) Holographic entropy bounds suggest you can describe our universe with a finite-dimensional Hilbert space. But, it's still a Hilbert space, so if you want examples of continuous real (complex, really) numbers in physics, I would look to wavefunctions, probability amplitudes, etc.
The sauce is the same worldwide, but you can't buy that separately.
Isn't the sauce basically 1,000 island dressing?
Isn't the sauce basically 1,000 island dressing?
It depends. In Luzon, it's 7,107 island dressing.
Lunch time. I'll probably get a McDouble because it is cheaper and doesn't have salad dressing on it.
Isn't the sauce basically 1,000 island dressing?
And 1000 Island dressing is basically tartar sauce and ketchup. Now on to the Colonel's secret blend of herbs and spices!
Salt, pepper, and pot.
To avoid being busted for growing the pot, they get it from very special dogs.