World Misery Index is In... Venezuela Wins in a Landslide

So what do our resident Chavez fan(s) have to say?

 

lol Veneuela and Argentina are more miserable than Sudan where folks are starving and they have an active civil war. More miserable than Afghanistan and Rawanda.

My immediate common sense conclusion in light of the obvious cases I mentioned above was the author is some sort of ideologue.

A Quick google yielded

Steve H. Hanke (/ˈhæŋki/) is an American applied economist at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. He is also a Senior Fellow and Director of the Troubled Currencies Project at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC,[1] and Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise.[2]

For those who don't know the Koch Bros are the founders of CATO and are "libertarians" I wouldn't be surprised if he also has one of the endowned chairs of economics the Kochs like to fund at universities.

Hey the Kochs got their money's worth with the guy.

Not surprised at the Veneuelan jab but Argentina

The author probably bet wrong on their currency or perhaps is invested in the vulture capital company whose claim Argentina is refusing to pay

 

This table seems to be a bit out of whack. Spain at no. 16, Pakistan at no. 33, I don't think so...

 

It's a purely economic misery index so Venezuela's 60%+ and Argentina's 40%+ inflation rate drive this more than the evil Koch ideology.

Unless we think the Koch's are now big fans of Brunei, Switzerland and China.

(and to think the Venezuelan data was before the Oil crash).

 

The Koch brothers and the Cato Institute can suck it.... but a jab at Venezuela?

Do you have any idea how terrible it is in Venezula? The crime is ungodly bad, indeed the cops are purposely not reporting homicides to keep the numbers lower than reality. The poverty is horrendous and there is a complete lack of hope.

 

Probably just reacting to your headline Hey Veneuela has its economic problems and is the whipping boy for conservatives, but do you actually think Venezuela and Argentina are more miserable from an economic perspective than Sudan?

 

The index this guy created is just a chart of 4 different values: inflation, GDP per capita, lending rates and unemployment. He then calls it the 'misery' index. The result is that a country like Pakistan or Sudan is less miserable than countries which are no where close to as terrible like Argentina or Venezuela. The problem with his 'misery' index isn't that he is some right wing economist but that his index doesn't take into account any of the other factors which matter to quality of life. It's a typical mistake for right wingers to boil down happiness and misery to just a few economic variables and then act like that's all that matters.

The only thing this 'misery' index tells anyone is that the top 5 have faltering economies. Anyone could tell you that but not everyone would have the hubris or myopia to call that 'misery.'

 

an old co-worker and friend of mine was married to a venezuelan baseball player and she told me a few horrible Horrible stories about that country.

one example out of about 5 was, they were picked up by a taxi and the guy refused to drop them off at the hotel. she did not say a word for 45 minutes, while the driver picked up a friend and drove around through bad neighborhoods. they pretty much thought they were dead.

 

This measure is terrible:


Every country aims to lower inflation, unemployment and lending rates, while increasing gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Through a simple sum of the former three rates, minus year-on-year per capita GDP growth, I constructed a misery index that comprehensively ranks 108 countries based on "misery."


Basically, if you have a $50,000 per capita GDP that stays flat, you're more miserable than you if you had a $10,000 per capita GDP that went up to $10,050.

Beyond that, inflation and lending rates are correlated, so you're valuing that more than anything else, which seems odd.

 

There's no doubt that Venezuela is in terrible shape and has all sorts of problems, but do you think UNEMP + LENDING + INFLATION - GDPGROWTH is really a good formula to measure anything?

Does a 1% increase in lending rates have the same value as 1% growth in per capita GDP? Is a 1% increase in unemployment valued the same as 1% inflation? Why is unemployment an absolute measure and GDP is year-over-year growth? None of it makes any sense.

If the goal is to measure how many people are crossing into poverty, why not just look at year-over-year changes in poverty rates?

 

Are you arguing that Venezuela and Argentina are doing well despite high inflation and unemployment?

This Koch obsession on the left is nuts.

 

You know how I felt about Chavez, but both you and ATW make an excellent point. Spain far worse off than Pakistan? Venezuela and Argentina worse off than either one of the Sudans? (don't know which awful place the guy was referring to) It's absurdity writ large!

 

Oh yea... That's way more miserable than being in the middle of a war. You know, with tanks, bombs, and machine guns.

But I don't think a index can be made for misery. Because I know I would be equally miserable in any of those situations... And I'm sure you would be as well.

 

This is just an adjusted version of the Misery Index created by Arthur Okun.

Not of a rightwing organization but of The liberal Brookings Institution.

His original version had inflation and the unemployment rate.

It is not meant to literally add up all the misery of each individual person. That is impossible to measure.

 

I think he's arguing they are doing better than places like Afghanistan and Sudan.

 

Well he didn't say. He just went on a big koch rant.


This index isn't supposed to be about overall economic performance or where you would rather live. That's a more complicated question.

It's one indicator to take into account.

I believe inflation started being associated with misery for Americans in the 70s.