Don Boudreaux has an interesting explanation :

Women are more decent than men.

Fewer women than men itch to lord it over others. Also, women are less willing than men to perform the countless asinine stunts and soul-shriveling pandering necessary to win political office. [link]

Hmm. It's a question I've often thought about, why is it that men vastly outnumber women in politics almost everywhere in the world? frankly, I don't know for sure. But I'll try..

It could be that the conventional wisdom is right. The world is less cosmopolitan than we comspolitians think and women in most societies are expected to stay at home, and therefore there's less of them in most professions. Political representation works on a regional basis, where there's a greater likelihood of people getting into the politics (running for public office) from non-urbanized, more traditional areas than any other profession. More traditional means, there's more of a chance that women are expected to stay home or be in more "acceptable" women-roles rather than running for public office. This results in fewer women getting into politics overall, lowering aggregates significantly.

Note that Hillary Clinton is a senator from New York, not Texas. Although Mayawati, the Chief Minister of India's Uttar Pradesh, who is also from a lower caste, is probably a counter example.

I guess it's a question for the freakonomists.

Dinidu has a post on a certain somebody who's been stealing posts off this blog and putting them up as his own. I don't quite know whether to be flattered or mad. I guess I'm leaning on the latter. The plagiarizer is so pathetic that he not only copied the posts, but the name of the blog as well as my "about me" section, including my favorite book list!

I mean, even I don't particularly like the name "Deane's Dimension". It's the 8th grade science geek side of me, which normally is not on display here. (Once upon a time, I was really into "time travel" stuff.)

Anyways, More at Din's : the bugger even refuses to take them down!

Karu Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka's Minister of public administration has confirmed something I've been saying for a while on this blog : Sri Lanka has the world's largest government. That's in addition to having the largest cabinet (literally) and having an enormous legislature.

Here's an LBO report on what Karu said at a Sri Lanka Administrative Services Association meeting:

"From our population (21 million), there is one public servant for every 17 citizens and that is the world biggest public service sector," public administration minister Karu Jayasuriya said. [..]

The island's public servant to citizen ratio is larger than India's ratio of one to 80 citizens and USA's ratio of one to 240, he said.

"The state sector is too big for a poor country like ours… Some sectors are filled from various appointments given at various instances and for different reasons."

Last year Sri Lanka earned 508 billion rupees in taxes, but 282 billion went for the salaries and pensions of state workers, indicating that 55 cents out of every tax rupee collected went to state workers. [..]

The public sector expenses grew mainly because of hiring of unemployed graduates, new recruitments to the public sector, including the security forces, and payment of allowances.

Sri Lanka also has more than 100 ministers. Jayasuriya himself crossed over from the opposition and helped make the magic number.

Jayasuriya says that despite the overstaffing, the administrative sector in the public service has a dearth of 1,600 employees. [link]

Now read that last line again, there's a dearth of employees despite overstaffing? are you kidding me?! Sigh. This sort of nonsensical situation is only possible in governments.

But despite correctly identifying Sri Lanka's Mega Government as a problem, Minister Jayasuriya goes on to "appeal to public sector employees to provide a responsible and productive service". Right. Were they really waiting around for Karu Jayasuriya to come and tell them to be "responsible and productive" ? This patronizing has to stop, policy makers need to come to their senses and start cutting down on this massive government, that's the need of the hour. Public sector won't become productive if their overstaffed. That defies logic. If they do this, if we decide cut down the size of government, then our taxes can be lowered or put to better use, instead of being eaten up to pay salaries of bureaucrats.

Like I've said before, this is not a debate between Big-government Vs. Small government. This is a debate between Mega Government Vs. Biggish government and on this, there's only one reasonable side.

Related posts on Deaned : Where your taxes Go, The myth of the open economy, obstacles to growth

• There are lot of problems in the world - commutable diseases, AIDS, malaria, climate change - it would be great if we can solve all those problems. But we don’t.
  
  
• contrary to the practice many development forums, there should be a focus on solutions to problems, rather than problems themselves. Because at the end of the day it's solutions that matter no matter how grave the problem is.

Read the whole thing at BB.

Ajay Shah points me to this article on this economist article on Inflation on emerging economies, arguing it bare resembles to the great inflation of developed countries in the 1970s. With inflation of about 25% in Sri Lanka and with the Central Bank more or less claiming that inflation is a petroleum/agricultural phenomenon (as opposed to monetary) it's an article well worth a read.

Here's a few key paragraphs,

Many policymakers in emerging economies argue that serious monetary tightening is not warranted: higher inflation, they say, is due solely to spikes in food and energy prices, caused by temporary supply shocks and speculation. Higher interest rates cannot call forth more pigs or grain. They expect inflation to ease later this year as higher prices prompt an increase in supply (food prices have started to edge down over the past month) and as sharp rises in commodity prices drop out of year-on-year comparisons.

Yes, food inflation is likely to slow later this year; but that does not mean rising headline inflation can be ignored. The synchronised jump in global food prices suggests that there is more to the story than disruptions to supply. Prices are also rising partly because loose monetary conditions in emerging economies have boosted domestic demand. These economies have accounted for over 90% of the increase in global consumption of oil and metals since 2002 and for 80% of the rise in demand for grain. This partly reflects long-term structural forces, but it is also the product of a money-fuelled cyclical boom. Peter Morgan, of HSBC, says that the initial shock to food prices may have come from the supply side, but the strength of income and money growth helps to validate higher prices. Were monetary conditions tighter, rises in food prices might be offset by declines elsewhere, keeping inflation under control. [..]

According to conventional wisdom, the monetary-policy mistakes that caused the Great Inflation are much less likely today because central banks are independent of politicians. But unlike the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB), many central banks in emerging economies (notably China, India and Russia) are not fully independent. In another echo of the 1970s, they often face intense political pressure to hold rates low to boost growth and jobs.

Emerging economies are also in danger of repeating the blunder of central bankers in the rich world in the 1970s: they focus on core inflation as a reason for holding interest rates below the headline inflation rate. But negative real interest rates then further boost demand, while rising inflation expectations trigger bigger pay claims. Unless central banks tighten their grip soon, inflationary expectations could surge. [link]

"Core Inflation" has recently become a pet-word for Central Bank Governor, Ajit Nivard Cabraal, and forget "fully independence", Cabraal was one of the key campaign figures in the incumbent president's election in 2005 before being appointed as the Governor of the CB.

So if anyone's serious about CB Independence, then Cabraal needs to be fired. That's a pipe dream, at least until Mahinda Rajapakse remains the president.