Letters

On Amartya Sen, defence spending, Britain, Egypt, immigration, France, GDP, sailing

Amartya Sen responds

SIR – In complaining about your generous review of “An Uncertain Glory”, which I wrote with Jean Drèze, Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya have misdescribed my past work as well as the book itself (Letters, July 13th). I have resisted responding to Mr Bhagwati’s persistent, and unilateral, attacks in the past, but this outrageous distortion needs correction.

Their letter says that, “Mr Sen has belatedly learned to give lip service to growth.” On the contrary, the importance of economic growth as a means— not an end—has been one of the themes even in my earliest writings (including “Choice of Techniques” in 1960 and “Growth Economics” in 1970). The power of growth-mediated security outlined in another book I co-authored with Mr Drèze in 1989, “Hunger and Public Action”, is a big theme in the present book.

Economic growth is very important as a means for bettering people’s lives, but “to go much further, faster” (as your reviewer commented) it has to be combined with devoting resources to remove illiteracy, ill health, undernutrition and other deprivations. This is not to be confused with mere “redistribution” of incomes, on which Messrs Bhagwati and Panagariya choose to concentrate.

The understanding, which is central to our book, that economic growth is greatly helped by early public support for the education and health of the people draws on positive experiences from Japan, China, Korea, Singapore and many other countries. It can scarcely be like putting “the cart before the horse”.

Amartya Sen
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Fighting above their weight

SIR –You stated that the American defence budget is divided equally among the army, navy, air force and the marines (“Squeezing the Pentagon”, July 6th). This is not the case. The marines’ portion is rolled into the navy’s third of the budget, with the other two-thirds going to the army and air force. Money spent on the marines, including aircraft, sailors supporting marines and amphibious warships, comes to 8% of the entire defence budget. For this small percentage the marines supply 15% of active ground manoeuvre brigades, 11% of fighter and attack aircraft and 18% of attack aircraft, while maintaining seven marine expeditionary units for global crisis response.

Andrew Bergen
Stuttgart, Germany

Investment chronicles

SIR – Britain isn’t very good at investment (“Let’s try to catch up with Mali”, July 6th). So what’s new? Many economic historians have documented the lack of domestic investment in Britain since the decline of the first industrial revolution from the mid-19th century to the 20th. Imperial investment and investment in the second industrial revolution in the United States and elsewhere crowded out British investment at home and made Britain a laggard that really never caught up again.

Government economic policies from the 1940s to the 1980s, especially failed industrial policies, did little to change this. Attempts at quasi-corporatism in the 1970s only worsened the situation. This trend was paradoxically exacerbated from the 1980s onwards, when Britain was transformed into a finance-friendly economy, especially after the Big Bang in the financial markets. Money started chasing money as the City was revived as a global financial centre. This simply worsened the downward spiral of the real economy.

All of the political parties, including both factions of the New Labour government, saw finance as the answer, when indeed it has increasingly become the problem so far as domestic investment is concerned. The global financial crisis has intensified this divide between the financial economy and the real economy. The problem has become so entrenched that solutions today are few and far between.

Philip Cerny
Professor emeritus of international political economy
University of Manchester
York

Hoping Egypt gets it right

* SIR – What an excellent opening to your briefing on Egypt, with the Arabic phrases of “light” and “heavy blood” (ie, attitude) especially when Egyptian people, though not their leaders, are known throughout the Arab world as particularly “light-blooded” (“The second time around”, July 6th). Like The Economist, I too had hoped for a different outcome to last year’s run-off election, congratulating a citizen friend as she emerged from the voting booth with a blue thumbs up.

Meanwhile, I had been listening to opinions from various levels of society. A Muhammad Morsi supporter who had left his teaching career for the more lucrative post of driver, explained: “We Egyptians have woken up to our power, having got rid of Mubarak by coming into the streets.” This was evident, but then he went on: “And if Morsi wins but doesn’t fulfil our expectations, we will take to the streets again and replace him!” This prediction seemed born of an innocence of democratic process. But his paradigm had more validity than mine.

As for innocence and political process, tank artwork hints at how the army would like to be seen. Small paintings on tanks depict a soldier with outstretched arms helping a little girl and boy, a somewhat surreal but “light-blooded” touch for connecting with the people. May life follow art.

Annie Higgins
Assistant professor of Arabic
College of Charleston
Charleston, South Carolina

Immigration costs

SIR – Although the goal of providing a path to bring America’s estimated 11m illegal immigrants out of the shadows is laudable and sensible, it is not clear that the other consequences of the immigration bill are as positive as you think (“Of fences and good sense”, July 6th). There are different conclusions to be found in the Congressional Budget Office study that you quoted. GNP per person would increase only after 2031. Wages would be slightly lower until the end of 2024. And unemployment would increase until 2020.

With the unemployment rate at 14% today (using the alternative U6 government measure) these facts would make an already tenuous life for many Americans even less secure.

Paul Wehn
Dallas

Studying society in France

SIR – It is hardly surprising that the head of the main employers’ federation in France and the Institute of Fiscal and Economic Research (IREF) would criticise an exam paper in sociology where students had to “demonstrate that social conflict can be a factor behind social cohesion” (“Class struggle”, July 6th). But I thought your newspaper supported the idea that struggles against apartheid in South Africa, for civil rights in America and for gay and lesbian rights everywhere have made strides towards social justice.

Neither do I understand why you find it odd that in France the analysis of social structure starts with Karl Marx, as this is a widely accepted academic approach, also used in British textbooks. And I was stunned that you took for granted the IREF’s so-called “study” showing that in one textbook on economics “only 18” pages were devoted to business. The author of the study forgot to include several chapters on competitive markets and firms' decisions.

Stating that “globalisation and free trade are treated with distrust” in French education is simply wrong, as any glance at the economics syllabus, dealing with concepts such as competitive advantage and exchange gains, would show.

Erwan Le Nader
Vice-president of the Association for Teachers in Economics and Social Sciences
Paris

Comparisons with GDP

* SIR – I was surprised to read that the economic output of America’s hospitals would qualify them, if they were a country, as the world’s 16th largest economy (“Prescription for change”, June 29th). It is a common fallacy to take the total turnover of a large company or industry and compare it to a country’s GDP. This overlooks the fact that an industry rarely produces most of the value contained in the turnover’s headline number.

In the case of America’s hospitals, their $851 billion in revenue was produced, to a significant extent, by their suppliers of various goods and services. By contrast, a country’s GDP consists purely of value-added produced domestically, within its economy, and is calculated by subtracting the value of imports.

Milen Veltchev
Former Bulgarian minister of finance
Sofia

The winds of change

SIR – Roger Graves may well prefer politicians who have clear principles (Letters, July 6th). And he is right to note that such leaders do indeed “trim their sails” to the changing winds to steer a steady course. But shrewd sailors also know that if one is sailing too close to the wind, the ship will lose speed and may eventually become steerless. Hopefully this fact is not lost on shrewd leaders.

Tim G.A. Vink
The Hague

SIR – I used to agree with Mr Graves and also preferred leaders who knew their mind and did not trim their sails according to the wind. That changed on February 15th 2003, during the historic anti-war march in London, when I realised that Tony Blair would not feel the wind from the streets. Moreover, if Muhammad Morsi had adjusted his felucca to the prevailing conditions in Egypt, you would not now be writing rueful leaders about that country’s tragedy.

Fionnuala McHugh
Hong Kong

* Letter appears online only

This article appeared in the Letters section of the print edition under the headline "On Amartya Sen, defence spending, Britain, Egypt, immigration, France, GDP, sailing"

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Letters to the editor

A selection of correspondence

Letters to the editor

A selection of correspondence


Letters to the editor

A selection of correspondence