Don’t be too harsh on Trinidad; the U.S. is not doing much better

It’s tempting to dump on Trinidad for undergoing a resource boom that failed (AFAWK) to lift median incomes by any substantive amount. Nor did that boom go into an impressive increase in public infrastructure. In fact, most of what you can say about it is that it left the nation better-housed and with more cars.

Which does not really look all that different than the United States over the past four decades of economic growth:

In fact, there is some evidence that Trinidad has managed to reduce poverty substantially. As I mentioned, the shantytowns have disappeared. A more detailed study by Karl Theodore and Ewan Scott and the University of the West Indies shows poverty falling from 29% in 1997 to 23% in 2005 and 18% in 2008. (They checked their estimates using data from the Survey of Living Conditions, which showed a drop from 24% to 17% in 1997-2005.) The drop is due, in large part, to subsidies provided by the state: a household with two working adults and three children that earned less than TT$18,000 a year (poverty is defined as TT$9,780) would qualify for a bit more than TT$43,000 in subsidies. (The full paper is here.)

My son redistributed some wealth by winning at dominoes (somehow he won half the matches!) but that was regressive.

Trinidadian governments, in fact, have not done a terrible job of insuring that the poorest of the poor share in the boom, even if they have failed its middle class. And in that it does not look all that different from the United States under the Obama administration, despite the corruption and mismanagement.

So there is a case for not judging to harshly.

But judging harshly, of course, is what I fully intend to do as these posts continue! Any thoughts or requests for more information about T&T?

Comments

[J.H.]

Hmmm....Could the boom have gone into overseas investments? Into subsidies? the heritage and stabilization fund? into smoothing out currency fluctuations? All of that? Or maybe just some combination of those?

Where the money went seems truly puzzling.

As for further requests on information about T&T, nothing specific...looking forward to further posts on T&T generally. If you provide info on agriculture and the currency issues facing it today, that would be interesting, but no need to divert from planned posts otherwise.