Jamaica is an interesting over-performer in global music - things like reggae, ska, dub, early hip-hop, etc. all emerged there before taking over the world. Does this show up in any way in GDP? If not, is there any way it could be used to do so?
Interesting article about Jamaica, maybe cover kenya as your next country(pretty strong gdp per capita growth in the past decade, but mainly via an expansion in services not manufacturing).
My company has found a lot of oil in Guyana that is all getting ready to come online and make Guyana the new Angola (?). How they deal with the new money seems important to direction of country. Not sure any other country right now expecting such a massive haul from oil like Guyana is.
When visiting there for work I was surprised to find out that it’s the only non island Caribbean nation.
Maybe it's just me but I feel like land reform is under-discussed when it seems like it is the most important ingredient. I'm sure actual economists and economic historians write about land reform but I basically never see it mentioned in Twitter/blogosphere/Economist/Atlantic/etc as something that NGOs, UN, US government, and so on should be pushing for.
Maybe because the US (and the UK?) never really had to do it (which feel like major outliers?) so the Anglosphere commentariat doesn't talk about it much?
This would have been a stronger essay if you had explained why it is irrelevant that Barbados is an important international tax haven. A "tax haven" means: plutocrats hold international assets including personal assets like yachts and mansions but also just shares in the S&P 500 in a trust, company, or foundation established in Barbados. Barbados has tax treaties with jurisdictions like the U.S., so there is no double taxation, but Barbados taxes are low: 0-5% on profits, 0% on capital gains. Those gains are attributed to the nominally Barbados-based entities and count toward GDP, do they not?
I'm not complaining about the observations on Jamaica per se, so this doesn't vitiate them. But you did raise the comparison!
I'm just looking at some rough numbers but in dollar terms, Jamaica's largest export by far is tourism, not bauxite.
Tourist expenditures in 2019 came to $3.64 billion, whereas bauxite was something like $200 million. Noranda Bauxite, the sole exporter, shipped 3.8 million tonnes in 2019 and the price then was around $50 per tonne:
Very interesting piece; my impression was that Barbados' politics was better than Jamaica's at getting magnates collaboration so large projects served national as well as coporate interests. Noah's comments about terrible land tenure arrangements very well taken (see as a consequence exceptionally poor housing conditions for low income population). One major omission: export potential for Busha Brown's Burnt Orange Marmalade! Contender for best marmalade in known universe.
"Jamaican manufacturing of talent; a number of the country’s richest and most well-educated people are engaged in relatively unproductive landlording instead of starting the next Hyundai or Samsung."
I don't think random people just start Samsung or Hyundai without being connected at the highest levels of government.
This is a very interesting and balanced analysis. I think that the "help" from China is as suspect as that of the USA in the 1960s. Jamaica has lost control of the headwaters of important rivers by the previous govt offering China the land surrounding the toll road. Only intense lobbying by local environmental groups (and repeated robberies of imported Chinese workers) delayed the destruction of a very delicate ecological area which had been protected. At least under colonialism, it was clear that England was using its colonies for its own glory. Hopefully, Jamaica hasn't sold too much of itself to China and there will be a commitment by wealthy Jamaicans to new opportunities available through education, the environment and technology.
Why would Jamaicans give up comfortable middle incomes as you describe to suffer in the garment industry? To chase the dream of growth? They live in a tropical paradise with comfortable middle incomes as you say. That’s enough. Sounds like retirement to me. Regarding the poverty class the US, Canada, Europe we all have poverty people, Jamaica will too.
The thing about the bauxite is that if you wanted to try to process it locally instead of shipping it abroad, you'd need to come up with a massive energy source. Refining bauxite into aluminum is _hugely_ heat intensive. Iceland has solved this by tapping its immense geothermal resources. One would think Jamaica could do it with solar and wind, although unless they also had energy storage you'd then be subject to variable output. And you'd need to harden those resources against hurricanes, so they don't have to be rebuilt once a decade or more.
Let’s do African countries next. I would love to learn more about Ghana, Botswana, and Nigeria.
I am interested in countries I’ve worked in west Africa…Mauritania, Nigeria, Angola, EG, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Namibia.
Jamaica is an interesting over-performer in global music - things like reggae, ska, dub, early hip-hop, etc. all emerged there before taking over the world. Does this show up in any way in GDP? If not, is there any way it could be used to do so?
Interesting article about Jamaica, maybe cover kenya as your next country(pretty strong gdp per capita growth in the past decade, but mainly via an expansion in services not manufacturing).
Also seems to have a relatively high "human capital" level relative to it's gdp per capita (https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/human-capital), although there was a flynn effect relatively recently(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10764139_IQ_on_the_Rise_The_Flynn_Effect_in_Rural_Kenyan_Children this study found a flynn effect of about 11 points or so between 1984-1998(using western sd for the raven's matrices), and 26 points using the sd of results in kenya. Even using the western sd values, this is slightly higher than the highest flynn effect values found in an industrialising country to date, which was 1945-1960 in japan and 1970-1990 in south korea(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235327743_The_Flynn_effect_in_Korea_Large_gain). Also the data from the world bank doesn't include the SACMEQ IV data showing even higher results(did a quick conversion from SACMEQ to HLO to PISA using previous results, and the converted hlo score is close to the oecd average). Even assuming that the results for the total population would be way lower because of a low primary turnout rate, which seems to be pretty good for SSA (https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fourworldindata.org%2Fprimary-and-secondary-education&psig=AOvVaw2r3NFYH3McbzGpAYdndYwn&ust=1640176343406000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCIi5ipTz9PQCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAI), this is still a pretty high result.
Putting the bauxite royalties into a sovereign wealth fund could be good. Free press and democracy to keep ‘em honest.
I enjoyed reading this.
If you are taking suggestions for another country, I am biased in requesting Guyana. It’s kindof important to the health of my pension.
Interesting! Not gonna lie, it's not high on my list, but I will take a look!!
My company has found a lot of oil in Guyana that is all getting ready to come online and make Guyana the new Angola (?). How they deal with the new money seems important to direction of country. Not sure any other country right now expecting such a massive haul from oil like Guyana is.
When visiting there for work I was surprised to find out that it’s the only non island Caribbean nation.
Maybe it's just me but I feel like land reform is under-discussed when it seems like it is the most important ingredient. I'm sure actual economists and economic historians write about land reform but I basically never see it mentioned in Twitter/blogosphere/Economist/Atlantic/etc as something that NGOs, UN, US government, and so on should be pushing for.
Maybe because the US (and the UK?) never really had to do it (which feel like major outliers?) so the Anglosphere commentariat doesn't talk about it much?
Yep, plus it's politically unpopular with elites for obvious reasons.
This would have been a stronger essay if you had explained why it is irrelevant that Barbados is an important international tax haven. A "tax haven" means: plutocrats hold international assets including personal assets like yachts and mansions but also just shares in the S&P 500 in a trust, company, or foundation established in Barbados. Barbados has tax treaties with jurisdictions like the U.S., so there is no double taxation, but Barbados taxes are low: 0-5% on profits, 0% on capital gains. Those gains are attributed to the nominally Barbados-based entities and count toward GDP, do they not?
I'm not complaining about the observations on Jamaica per se, so this doesn't vitiate them. But you did raise the comparison!
I will talk about tax havens in a subsequent post! :-)
Actually Barbados' economy at present is in the decline. With over 140% debt to GDP.
Meanwhile Jamaica's, in the last few years, has brought down their debt ratio to GDP,from as high as a 150% to GDP to 93%ofGDP.
An economic miracle, if you ask me.
Barbados is now tightly entwined with the IMF, in a borrowing arrangement, that is sapping their cash flow.
I'm just looking at some rough numbers but in dollar terms, Jamaica's largest export by far is tourism, not bauxite.
Tourist expenditures in 2019 came to $3.64 billion, whereas bauxite was something like $200 million. Noranda Bauxite, the sole exporter, shipped 3.8 million tonnes in 2019 and the price then was around $50 per tonne:
https://jis.gov.jm/jamaica-earned-us3-64-billion-from-tourism-in-2019-welcomed-4-3-million-visitors/
https://www.alcircle.com/news/noranda-bauxite-confirms-3-8-million-tonnes-export-in-2019-showers-positive-update-50961
So the source of the Dutch disease is definitely tourism, not mining.
Very interesting piece; my impression was that Barbados' politics was better than Jamaica's at getting magnates collaboration so large projects served national as well as coporate interests. Noah's comments about terrible land tenure arrangements very well taken (see as a consequence exceptionally poor housing conditions for low income population). One major omission: export potential for Busha Brown's Burnt Orange Marmalade! Contender for best marmalade in known universe.
"Jamaican manufacturing of talent; a number of the country’s richest and most well-educated people are engaged in relatively unproductive landlording instead of starting the next Hyundai or Samsung."
I don't think random people just start Samsung or Hyundai without being connected at the highest levels of government.
😎$$GREATE.'S.,.$$SLAMME.'S $$DAMNE.'S $$JAMME.'S $$ALLE.'S $$GAME.'S $$EVERYE.'S $$GAME.'S $$TRUTHE.'S $$ISE.'S $$JUMPEBALLE.'S $$FUMBLE.'S $$THANKE.'S.,.©©©®®®.
Are you okay? Is there someone I can call to check on you?
This is a very interesting and balanced analysis. I think that the "help" from China is as suspect as that of the USA in the 1960s. Jamaica has lost control of the headwaters of important rivers by the previous govt offering China the land surrounding the toll road. Only intense lobbying by local environmental groups (and repeated robberies of imported Chinese workers) delayed the destruction of a very delicate ecological area which had been protected. At least under colonialism, it was clear that England was using its colonies for its own glory. Hopefully, Jamaica hasn't sold too much of itself to China and there will be a commitment by wealthy Jamaicans to new opportunities available through education, the environment and technology.
To my knowledge there was only 2 robberies on those projects.
Hardly enough to delay them.
What held up some of the work is China Habour's refusal to deal with the unions.
Why would Jamaicans give up comfortable middle incomes as you describe to suffer in the garment industry? To chase the dream of growth? They live in a tropical paradise with comfortable middle incomes as you say. That’s enough. Sounds like retirement to me. Regarding the poverty class the US, Canada, Europe we all have poverty people, Jamaica will too.
The thing about the bauxite is that if you wanted to try to process it locally instead of shipping it abroad, you'd need to come up with a massive energy source. Refining bauxite into aluminum is _hugely_ heat intensive. Iceland has solved this by tapping its immense geothermal resources. One would think Jamaica could do it with solar and wind, although unless they also had energy storage you'd then be subject to variable output. And you'd need to harden those resources against hurricanes, so they don't have to be rebuilt once a decade or more.
Well Jamaica has recently discovered, billions of barrels of oil.. Google it, if you want.
MattY chimes in to make the same point I made here, but suggests next-gen nuclear as the energy source.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/jamaica-and-the-case-for-energy-abundance
Please do the U.S. next. What worked for it and similarities of it with emerging economies.
The government needs to get with the program of land reform,!they just talk but not much action.