The Uncounted

Оглавление

Alex Cobham. The Uncounted

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Guide

Pages

Dedication

The Uncounted

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction

Notes

Part IUncounted and Excluded: The Unpeople Hidden at the Bottom

Notes

1 Development’s Data Problem

GDP: Global Data Problem

Developing Thought

Bad Incentives, Bad Data

‘Leave No One Behind’

Notes

2 The ‘Data Revolution’

Technical Challenges

Power Concedes Nothing

Notes

3 We the People – But Only Some of Them

Life and Death, Uncounted

Uncountable?

Disenfranchised

Uncounted at the Bottom

Notes

Part IIUncounted and Illicit: The Unmoney Hiding at the Top

Notes

4 Uncounted at the Top

Profit Shifting and Undeclared Ownership

Financial Secrecy Jurisdictions

The ABC of Tax Transparency

Notes

5 Tax and Illicit Financial Flows in the Sustainable Development Goals

Tax in the Sustainable Development Goals

Illicit Financial Flows in the Sustainable Development Goals

Notes

6 Inequality, Understated

Distribution Data: The Missing Top

Misleading Metrics: Gini vs Palma

Inequality in the SDGs

Notes

Part IIIThe Uncounted Manifesto

Uncounted at the Bottom

A ‘World We Are’ commission

Uncounted at the Top

UN Centre for Monitoring Taxing Rights

Financial transparency convention: deliver the ABC of tax transparency

Global asset registry: reveal world wealth distribution

Unitary taxation: end profit shifting

Notes

Index

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

Y

Z

POLITY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

Отрывок из книги

For MAP – without whom I would, of course, be lost

The uncounted is the kind of idea that, once it’s in your head, you find yourself seeing everywhere. At least I did. And so this book is a distillation of much of the work I’ve been lucky enough to be part of since that QEH interview. I am grateful to each of the organizations that have given me the chance, and each of the people who supported it, facilitated it, tolerated it, inspired it, turned a blind eye to it …

.....

The choice of who and what go uncounted, excluded either from the gathered statistics or from the chosen metrics, is equally a question of power. And the roles of power and social construction in counting are not optional. There is no ‘neutral’ option in which counting decisions are taken in a vacuum, free from political concerns. And there are no meaningful counting decisions that do not have political implications.

We cannot design a system that inoculates societies from these core characteristics of counting. But we can inoculate ourselves to a degree, from the ‘seduction of quantification’, by opening our eyes to it: by understanding the central dynamics, and the possible nature and extent of the biases that result. We can count better. And if we do, the world can be better.

.....