My Recent Piece in Inside Iran
I have a new piece on the debate over poverty in the online analysis site Inside Iran - read it here. Most discussions of Iran’s economy make it sound like the place is falling apart. I’ve never seen a good comparison of Iran with other middle income states on basic indicators of welfare, industry, education, etc. Instead we hear a lot of catastrophic language. Critique is fine, and should be encouraged, but it has to be grounded in an understanding of the constraints and challenges that middle income states have faced over the last sixty years. Iran falls in the middle range of middle income country performance on a lot of indicators, including inequality. Yet I have a sinking feeling that people who want to discuss Iran only like to say that everything is going horribly, or everything is going great. Thus, one needs to clear some ideological brush before building a new comparative understanding of Iran in the world economy.
