Welcome to this policy dialogue on SDG 10. How can we make the world more equal? Here we invited a panel of distinguished speakers with extensive experience in academia, decision making or international organization to give us their views on how to reduce inequality in this very difficult context dominated by the dramatic effects of the pandemic, all the new conflicts, the climate emergency or the energy and food crisis among other challenges. For that, we will have Charangit Layle, a broadcaster with more than 20 years of experience covering international business, finance, and politics, anchoring several BBC news programs who came all the way from Singapore to moderate this event. Before starting with the dialogue, I wanted to set the scene highlighting a few facts about the current trends on global inequality using the World Income and Equality Database hosted at Unwider, The Weed. So considering the distribution of income among all citizens in the world, regardless of where they live, the country of residence, what we know as global inequality, we can say that the income share of the world's richest 10% has been declining since around 2000. While the share of the rest of the population, here the poorest 40% and the middle 50%, so between the percentized 41 and 90, have increased. Therefore, the ratio between the income held by the top 10% and the bottom 40%, a measure of inequality known as Palma ratio, has been declining over this period. This decline, however, shows a decelerating rate in most recent years, and the pandemic implied a serious setback. Using IMF projections for GDP per capita between 2021 and 2027, and in the scenario of stable country-level inequality, which might not be the case, the declining trend might still continue in the next years. The Gini and other measures of inequality show a similar trend. They also show that the decline was entirely driven by declining inequality between countries. When you take the average income of each country and we compute, we estimate the inequality among people in the world where everybody has the income of their country. While inequality within countries has been more persistent or increased. It's also very clear that the declining inequality between countries was due to China and to a much lesser extent India and other developing countries growing faster than most advanced economies. This may raise the question about its continuity since China has already reached the global mean and will no longer contribute to this reducing inequality, and eventually will contribute to increase it. Based on the mentioned projections, it seems that the process would continue at least until 2027, sustained by the strong growth expected by India. But there is an obvious risk that the trend is later reversed, what Ravi Kanpur and co-authors called the global inequality boomerang in a wider working paper that you can check. If growth is not strong enough in the rest of the developing world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, all the expectations for these projections of growth are not fully met. At the same time, the persistent inequality or increasing inequality within countries reflects a quite heterogeneous situation in which we have evidence of increasing inequality in some countries and decreasing inequality in others. With a net effect, depending on where China and India stand, and what's the period of reference. For example, here you have, that with available evidence since around 2015, inequality increased for 54 countries, representing more than half of the world population, 55%, which included two most popular China and India. While inequality improved in other 74 countries, so a larger number of countries, but representing a smaller proportion of population, 29%. Similar results can be appreciated with the income share of the bottom 40%, which is the official measure adopted in SDG 10, since its changes are highly correlated with the Gini index. But what brought us here today is to ask our panel of experts, what can be done to make the world more equal, both between and within countries, and what are the main challenges to reducing inequality in the years to come. So I'm calling Saranjit Leil to the stage. Thank you, Carlos. What a great and engaging introduction that was, and how wonderful to be here in Bogota at this extraordinary institution and be part of this very important discussion on how to make the world more equal. It's a real privilege to be amongst all of you here, all of you development economists, students, at this incredible institution of learning. Now, as you heard Carlos say, despite some strides in recent years, global inequality is actually increasing. This has exacerbated the risks of divisions, its hampered economic and social development around the world. Meanwhile, of course, we've had the COVID-19 pandemic, and that has caused the first rise in between-country income inequality in a generation. Imagine that, the first rise. And it has hit the poorest and the most vulnerable communities the hardest, significantly increasing global unemployment and dramatically slashing workers' incomes. The pandemic has put a big spotlight on the fragile social safety nets that leave vulnerable communities to bear the brunt of the crisis. We're seeing it everywhere. So in this session, we're asking how we can make the world more equal. What stands in the way of reducing inequalities? What needs to be done to achieve this crucial global goal? And by whom, and once achieved, how do we sustain this reduced inequalities? Can we achieve SDG 10, which calls for the reduction of inequality within and among countries by the 2030 deadline? Well, in this policy dialogue, a panel of distinguished speakers with long experience in academia, decision-making, and government will join me to answer these questions. And of course, I'm going to invite them up on stage right now. And we'd love to hear from all of you at the end of the discussion as well. Lots of questions, please. So let me introduce Santiago Levy, the Brookings Institution and former Mexican Deputy Finance Minister. He was also the president of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association and vice president of Inter-American Development Bank. A round of applause, please. Thank you, Santiago. We also have Anilde Sarmanto. She's the national director at the Mozambique Ministry of Economy and Finance. Anilde, come and join us here on stage. Take a seat. And of course, no stranger to all of you. You just heard her up here on stage in the last hour. It's Marcella Eslava, professor of economics and dean of the School of Economics right here at this university in Bogota. Thank you, Marcella. Join us here on stage. And we're also very excited to have your finance minister at any moment. Of course, this is none other than José Antonio Ocampo. He is slightly delayed, but we are hoping he will be able to join us in this discussion. This is a very important discussion at some point. So let us begin. It's great to see all of you. We've got this extra seat here for the finance minister when he arrives. Of course, he's got a very important job. He's currently in government right now, and we're hoping to see him very soon. But let's start off this conversation first, which is, of course, it's possibly one of the greatest challenges of our time, how to reduce inequality. It's right there. Big words on the screen there. So let's hear from each of you and what you bring to this conversation in terms of, of course, your extraordinary expertise. How have you tackled the seemingly intractable problem of inequalities in your countries and institutions? And are you optimistic it can be fixed? Let's start with you, Santiago. You can grab a mic there. Thank you. And let me first begin by thanking Marcialo Sández, Marcella, and Kunal Sen. Oh, over here. Thank you, Kunal, for inviting me to be part of this conference. And lovely to be in this panel, lovely. So the question is very complex, and the short answer would be piece by piece. This is not a problem for which there's a magic wand. This is not a problem for which a single policy is actually going to provide the kind of equal or inclusive societies that we want. You want to move on various fronts, and you can make a very long list. Many of the people that are here have worked on all these dimensions, try to improve the pre-market distribution of income by investing in education, try to improve the post-market distribution of income through taxes and transfers. One bit, when you asked me what have I done, when I was in government, was to try to transfer resources to people at the lowest part of the distribution, people that we think of in extreme poverty through mechanisms that are more efficient than in the past. This helps to reduce inequality. It's far from what needs to be done to do inequality, but it's part of the piece. That said, Latin America has been doing that for the last two decades, and it's a good time for Latin America to move beyond that and start thinking that if they really want to make a dent in inequality, we can no longer rely only on this set of programs, we really have to think much more ambitiously of transforming particularly the structure of social protection. I don't want to take much time, we can come back to this. Absolutely, we'll get into that in the discussion. Marcela. Also, let me talk about my own emphasis in my work, which has been on, what I would say, two main issues that many people miss when we think about inequality, particularly in the discussions within countries. One of those is the huge inequalities across countries that Carlos was talking about a minute ago. Of course, as Carlos was showing, those have been decreasing, but still we have incredibly large gaps in incomes across countries with the richest country in the world having around 20 times the income of the poorest country in the world. And if we think of the economies of Latin America, given where we are and from where Santiago and I are talking, you're talking about countries with a fourth, a fifth of the income of the richer countries. So that's one issue that is crucial. Then there is a second issue that tends to bring tensions and that is the potential conflict between growth and inequality. For instance, with the focus in the global debate about potentially curbing the growth of some superstar firms, which has been proven to lead to greater inequality in some of the richer countries in the world. And I would say, again, speaking from the region, I think one crucial thing to bring to the table is the lack of that tension in our economies, or that's at least my conclusion from the analysis of the data and the need for the debate to bring in the specificities of inequalities in different countries and for Latin America in particular, the fact that inequality in our region is so inextricably linked to poverty, to vulnerability, and the fact that people in those conditions tends to be out of a formalized, organized business sector, which is very much linked, again, to a very poor growth in the past few years. So I would bring those two issues to the table, which, by the way, are very related to the social protection issue that Santiago was talking about. Absolutely, yeah, we'll get into that discussion in a little bit. And Anilde, we're interested in your perspective from an African viewpoint. Thank you. Yes, we can hear you. Thank you for this opportunity to share what we are trying to do in these times to make the world more equal. For countries like Mozambique, that was facing several shocks, Mozambique, for example, faced several shocks in short term. We had to deal with the cyclones, we had to deal with the debt crisis, internal conflicts, and now with pandemic and these days with energy and food crisis. In fact, what we saw in terms of results is inequality increasing and poverty increasing. And the challenge is, in fact, how to fix this in the context that we have to find the fiscal space to deal with this challenge. The governments in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Mozambique, are trying to work in the short term policies and look for the other that it is a long term policy. Because in our countries with a large informal sectors, a lack of diversities, in fact, is a challenge. But I think that we can fix. We have to work in the short term policies, as I said, to look for these vulnerability families that are living near to the poverty line. We have to adjust our social programs. We have, in the short terms, we have to look for the families. How can we design policies to solve their challenge to be able to deal with, for example, the increasing of the prices of the food, these kind of issues. But I think that it's possible. And that's what we're here to discuss. The kind of policies needed so desperately required to address a lot of those challenges you mentioned. Well, let's continue talking about those challenges because today we're facing the context of a post-pandemic situation. It's been aggravated by an energy and food crisis. Of course, this is against the backdrop of global warming. So, yeah, it doesn't sound great, does it? There's a lot of problems out there. So, to what extent have these challenges made reducing inequalities even harder? Is it tough as a result, because of all of this incredibly bad news we've had in recent years, is it tough as a result to get people, whether it's the government, academia, the media, the population at large, to pay attention to this crucial problem of trying to reduce inequality? Who'd like to take that question, that answer? I'll try that one. Hello? Yes, we hear you, perfect. Thank you. I don't think the problem makes publicity. I mean, at least in Latin America, the issue of inequality is keenly and deeply felt by everybody. Now, what COVID did is it showed how unprepared most countries in the region were to protect population from shocks, and as a result of that, you get increases in inequality. Now, if you want to see the silver lining on that, hopefully, maybe not, hopefully, governments will learn that there is no substitute for having insurance. The real reason that COVID created so much pain is because insurance mechanisms that are deployed by governments in Latin America in most places are very incomplete, very erratic, very inefficient. So we have households that, if they had had insurance against the shock, could have avoided falling into poverty. We don't have that insurance. So what we do is we wait for them to be poor, and then once they're poor, yeah, okay, we'll help you. It'd be much better, of course, if you prevented a lot of this from happening. Insurance would only be to shocks like income that was associated with COVID, low preservation rate, but also many other shocks that families are continuously experiencing because of disability, because of health, because of illness, because of many other things. Half of the population broadly for Latin America as a whole, but 60% in Colombia, 60% in Mexico, 80% in Peru and Bolivia, is continuously exposed to shocks, and they have no protection. We have the finance minister himself. Thank you so much for making time for us this afternoon in this crucial conversation. Jose Antonio Compo, lovely to meet you. Thank you. Please come and join us. Yes, a round of applause, please. Yes, so we've started the conversation without you, but of course you are an expert. You are having to deal with this on a daily basis in your job. But let's hear from you about some of the challenges that Colombia is facing, because I started off asking everyone, you know, what is the situation we're in right now? How do you describe this current situation, this post-pandemic context, and what are some of the serious issues that you're trying to get to? Well, thank you very much. And let me, of course, welcome all of those who have come from abroad to this conference. Let me say that wider has been particularly important in my life. Since the very beginning, I was one of the first researchers of wider. So for me, it has been very important. And on top of that, publishing my books. The last book on the... Yes. The last book on the International Monetary System was a joint edition. Fortunately, also, actually a free access book. So I can send it to anywhere. I think that's one of the greatest innovations. But of course, someone has to pay for those books. Why they pay for mine? Excellent. The International Monetary System. And of course, and this is, of course, my university. This is where I started my career. I continue to be a professor when I can. Anyway, thank you. Well, let me perhaps say that the challenges of Colombia are, you know, there are some good things that have been happening, notably the recovery of the economy after the pandemic and the social protests of last year have been quite striking. Unfortunately, that has finished. We are now in a period of in which growth is slowing down significantly. And let me say that the expectation for next year is relatively weak. Yes. Less than one percent according to the last estimates of the central bank. I think we're a bit more optimistic in the government. And that's because mainly of international shocks. The international shocks of which I would say in order, the most important is the high interest rates associated to the fight against inflation. Because that has implied that Colombia has basically no... Well, the cost of financing in international private markets is too expensive. So it doesn't make sense for the government to issue bonds in international markets. And of course, that translates into decisions on trans-interest rate domestically. That's right. And that's just happened recently to 10 percent, I believe, your benchmark interest rate. Yeah, the central bank, the last decision was 10 percent. We have this phony system with the finance minister. It's probably one of the few... Actually, the share of the work but it has only one vote out of seven. So it's not very powerful position. But as you say, it is a tough situation. So trying to handle it with policy, particularly with interest rates is a real issue, isn't it? And that's one of the ways to tackle some of these problems we're facing. The big question mark in Colombia as worldwide is to what extent interest rates actually help to reduce inflation? Yeah. Because this is truly a supply shock internationally which had started actually at the end of last year in commodity prices, but of course was speeded up by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February. And then the prices of foods of course of energy, oil and coal and fertilizers which of course as I said, the gas prices they have skyrocketed everywhere throughout the world. And they actually have also had a negative effect on production worldwide because of the high fertilizer prices. So it's a big problem to what extent the central banks so everything I think depends on international trends. I'm hopeful that particularly the U.S. inflation rate has fallen last month. I guess we know the number in the next few days because I think that would have a significant effect. So I would say interest rates because of high inflation is the toughest thing to manage. Now, on the other hand we have the fiscal situation which is the one issue that I have to manage. Yes, we'll be talking about that further into the discussion. So I will just jump in there. Anilde, it's very interesting you were nodding your head in agreement with the finance minister. Let's hear about the Mozambique perspective because external shocks is something that impacts your country in a great way as well. Yes. Thank you. So, in terms of external shocks it's impacted the interest rate and I was agreed here because I don't know in Mozambique the central bank is increasing the rate interest rate to control the inflation but we are not quite sure if this is the way this will solve this problem on the other hand we have this household that are facing this challenge to buy food and increasing the interest rate for example, for countries like Mozambique that have a high internal debt it will impact in the debt too and activity for the investors so it's a challenge in fact it's a challenge this is what I can say. So we're definitely all agreed that there are vast challenges out there that need to be tackled but let's hear from some of the kind of policy that has gone in play in the past and of course Santiago you're a real expert at that having dealt with the situation in Mexico putting in place social safety debts and policies that made a vast difference for Mexico. Tell us a little bit about what you did at the time a progressor and whether it could still work to some extent today trying to work out which mics work I always get the the lemon microphone very briefly because this is something that many many people in the audience are fairly familiar with but what we had is a major crisis in 94-95 large fall in GDP about 6% it was evident that this was going to have a large impact on the incomes of people increased poverty the central problem we face is that the government had no instruments to help the poor whatever instruments were there were extremely inefficient so the thought was to try to provide income to households in a much direct way literally by handing out money however the thought was also that you don't want to do this forever so let's do something at the same time that you do that to try to ensure that in the future they won't need this income transfers by investing in their human capital and that was the birth of CCTs in which you transfer cash conditional upon people making investments in the human capital of households on the expectations that later on that would happen. Now more interesting and more relevant for today 20 years later households have accumulated human capital there's tons of evidence many people here have written papers about that and so we do know that people have better health more years of schooling less morbidity etc better nutrition but what we also know is that despite the fact that many of these poor people have more human capital they're not getting better jobs so the intent temporal elimination of poverty by this mechanism of investing in human capital the human capital has been accumulated but the better jobs are not out there and the reason made a major mistake broadly speaking for Latin America by betting too much on these programs and not doing enough to tackle the central problems in the labor market that segment our labor markets into formal informal segments and keep people in low productivity jobs which makes it very difficult to go ahead thinking about inequality about the future if you really want to tackle inequality from the bottom up you have to think about mechanisms to raise the incomes of people at the lower part of the distribution not only through transfers but through more productive jobs and that requires tackling the fundamental problems that we have in formality in formality and that requires a complete redesign of social protection systems and that passes through taxation and that's the center core that would make our societies less unequal than what they're today stop here taxation is tough, we'll be getting into that and I'm sure the minister can shed some light on it I believe you've been debating some of that tax reform here in Colombia so what I'd like to hear is just how tough is it to get those social safety nets in play as you say Santiago your incredible progressive policy was emulated across South America and was incredibly successful it addressed some of the issues around extreme poverty but it didn't address the issue of social safety nets so give us a sense of just how difficult as a development economist Marcella how tough it is to get something like that in play and of course the tensions that creates when it comes to then trying to get an economy to grow so thank you and let me go back a little bit to what Santiago is saying which I think is definitely very linked to the question you're raising to think of the complement between those good jobs where incomes are generated and then the need for social protection that comes on top of that and refer a little bit to what I am faring is in the comment by Santiago which is there is some relationship between the attempt to create strong safety nets the difficulties that we face in the labour market and the consequent difficulties to create good jobs one particularity of the region is that we do have social security systems that are aimed at providing high protection to workers they are very rich in that sense they provide for workers health, pension some other coverages including sometimes a recreational features the key thing is that when they provide that for workers it is a very peculiar type of worker that is protected and that is the worker who is in the formal sector who has a formal job that job is paying for the social protections through contributions and in fact this person does have some protection while he or she is in that formal job but the complement to that is that because the job is paying in the end for some of these features very costly for instance for an employer in the context of low productivity in general so when the average worker that you have has low productivity that means that for the employer the amount of income that this person is going to generate for the business may not cover those costs and that seems to be several studies part of the reasons why it is so difficult to generate this job so in the end what you have is the system that is geared up to provide very good protection some people do get that very good protection but then a lot of people is left out that of course is generates gaps generates a let me call it segmentation of people who are say in the middle class and then people who are really vulnerable and poor and again there may be an answer there may be an answer now going back to your question of how to better do that in taxation in how to really assign these things so that we can protect workers that we can provide that social protection that is needed but that the cost is not necessarily put upon the generation of the job so let's hear from the government perspective now we've got the minister and obviously Anil there also works within the ministry of finance and economy so give us a sense of the kind of social protections that are in place right now and what steps are you taking to try to improve them so that they're targeted to the poorest let me start by saying I don't like the term social safety net what's the term you would use I like social protection or social security perhaps because I have always been a social democrat that's right same expression it's a debate I have quite a bit in the US because the term safety net is used extensively in the US I have always complained that's not a good concept anyway social protection, social security let me say in that regard that the problems of the labor market are important but first of all let's say employment is at the end the most important instrument for poverty reduction and a good mix of employment generation the best way to improve income distribution so now on the one hand you have let's say in the social policy area we have first of all the instruments that you aim to become universal I have always been a good defender of universal systems right and targeted system a universal basic income is that something you're talking about no right, so it's universal systems I mean in education in health in housing access to utilities water sewage electricity all of those things you have to aim at universal systems you will never have and the more universal the system is the more redistributive it is now on the other hand it is quite clear that because of the issue of reformatting labor markets the traditional instrument that we have had in Colombia and in Latin America and probably in many other developing countries they say the contributory systems of social security of course mean that many families and people are left out so for those in fact you have to have a pilot system of specific policy for the poorest in the country which can be in kind or can be money payments of different sort in the case of Colombia we have developed many forms of money payment there are two problems I guess of that of those systems they are too fragmented so it is quite unclear and sometimes I mean sometimes they duplicate and sometimes they leave some people out of the system so one of the for example this government we want to have probably just one system with characteristics of the household that can be depending let's say on small children young children or older people and see how the system is but it's one system with characteristics of the household anyway so that has to be financed as well as universal systems in the case of for education, health poor housing etc they have to pay by budgets by the general budget so then the essential issue is first of all how much money you raise and second and of course how the system of payments including by the way the issue which is very important in Colombia which is how much you do it nationally or regionally or locally in terms of the government that is responsible for the provision of specific service which is of course a complex topic and we don't have time in this discussion sadly to get to it now Santiago you were nodding your head in agreement I believe when the minister said that of course a lot of systems are in place but they're very fragmented so this is the issue isn't it to have a cohesive simple system that is able to address a lot of the situation I look at the time and I know skip forward and get to the fiscal capacity so how do we fund these systems how do we fund these great and of course I'm looking to you again because you are facing this problem right now you've had social unrest in the last year because of the controversial tax reforms that are coming into play and you are currently working on that situation now I should have made because I was in Congress approving the tax reform and we were successful but you embody the challenges there are in terms of getting this stuff put in place in terms of policy so give us a sense of the challenges top negotiations in the case of Colombia now in the fiscal area we really have two problems because the first one in a sense is somehow the inheritance of the COVID-19 crisis and other problems for example the subsidies on gasoline prices for example in which the fiscal deficit is still very high so we have to correct the fiscal deficit we have in Colombia a fiscal rule the legal fiscal rule that we have to follow so that's one challenge it's a big challenge actually for example this year the central government deficit including the subsidies for fuel is 7.1% of GDP according to the rules the fiscal rule we have to get to 4% so it's 3% of the points in terms of adjustment so it's not an easy task but on top of that there's social demands which were reflected quite clearly in the social protest last year and actually years before also but also in the elections I mean the president was elected because of the social objectives so the tax reform that we are going through Congress is a tax reform that includes first of all a much more restrictive personal income tax system basically by limiting the benefits that people of a certain level generate that's one element eliminating some elements of the of a sexual subsidies for for self-affirms so that's also because there are many fragmented system of subsidies to different sectors that we are trying to simplify and get very few subsidies in place basically for social environmental objectives and then and then we have a windfall tax on oil and coal which is actually very important in terms of revenues so that's the international trend now that Colombia is following, I mean the Europeans just go through European tax, let's say on oil companies to finance the problem and let me say perhaps finally I mean there are many other elements but strong rules against tax evasion tax evasion is very high in Colombia and by strengthening the tax administration through basically through different access to different information systems they say which is possible today and what rules on what can be deducted and how they can capture those who are that's a very important point serious challenges aren't they who would want to pick up on that because I know I can see Santiago nodding his head, Nilde as well obviously within governments and Mozambique you're dealing with similar issues but again from a different perspective from an African perspective with the same problems it's difficult to put in place good social programs without fiscal space so we have to find space in some way and in the context of Africa which it's the same in Mozambique the most challenge is to bring people that are in the informal sectors to the formal sector so that they can pay taxes and it's a challenge because we have a large informal sectors and we now in Mozambique we are working in some tax reforms specific on VAT but it's difficult because even the formal sectors they are facing too much challenge when we have to for example eliminate some exceptions that we have on the VAT they are saying that they are not prepared to pay taxes but in the same time we need to bring new exemption for the sectors like agriculture which is the one of the most largest sectors in terms of employment in Africa specifically in Mozambique so it's difficult for the government but we have to work in the way that we can increase our revenue bringing more people to formal sectors to pay taxes and now we are on this way because it's the only way that we can improve the social protection the social programs for example when we had to deal with the cyclones we have to ask to our partners to help us with the programs with cash transfers and in the same time with pandemic so we have to in some way to find solutions and I think that the solution is coming from this side tax reforms, increasing revenues bringing people that time to the formal sector more people paying taxes this is the way and that's what we're trying to get at is solutions here I don't think we'll be able to do it in the hour and a half that we have but I'm really interested to hear your perspective because this is something you've talked about this tension between formal and informal and just the issue of trying to get some kind of tax for these groups and how this can benefit all the social systems that we're trying to talk about here it's the curse of the microphone with him yes they like me now? now they like you, yes so I was not here yesterday morning for Chico Ferreira's lecture but I don't know whether he mentioned this or not but in some of the research that he's done together with some other people, Nora Lustig they show the following which is really interesting you take the average OECD country and there income inequality gives you a genie roughly of about .48 before taxes and transfers but then once you have taxes and transfers you get a genie of about .33 or something like that so what that says is that taxes permanently really matter in terms of lower inequality now if you do the same calculation you get the genie coefficient in Latin America slightly higher before taxes and transfers like .51 or so and then you go through taxes and transfers and you go down to .49 in other words almost no change .02 in the genie coefficient as a result of taxes and transfers what that really says is that your tax and transfer systems from the point of view of inequality is extremely inefficient there are many reasons behind them part of the reasons is the segmentation of insurance between formal and informal sectors which generates by itself a lot of inequality I don't have time to go into that one but there's also a component that I would like to share with you I'm going to go back to what Antonio was doing here having to do with the structure of taxation another interesting piece of data in the average OECD country the difference between countries in Europe, Canada, U.S. and Latin America in personal income taxes as a share of GDP is five points of GDP and they get back social protection in Latin America we sort of pay taxes and we sort of get back social protection so we're in a really bad equilibrium in a really bad equilibrium because and this is something Marcella has researched a lot that equilibrium also implies a low productivity distribution of firms it's a terrible equilibrium and the real trick is to convince society that we're all losing where we are we're all losing but there's no way of getting out of this equilibrium without paying more taxes and that's where the challenge is of course not only raising taxes you've got to do all these reforms combat corruption and all that but you've got to start somewhere and in the region the room for starting with a bigger tactic particularly personal income tax trying to do in Colombia is probably the right place to start okay good to know that's excellent Marcella so let me pick up where is Santiago left so definitely raising our abilities to raise taxes is fundamental and easy to talk from my position not from yours guys but then the other challenge that arises there is that we're able to raise more money and at the same time foster the productive capabilities that will bring down the 0.51 to start with and be able to create more income from jobs before having to redistribute and protect people afterwards and I think that's the other great tension the other interesting feature of economies such as the Latin Americans is that the little taxes they're able to raise they raise them from businesses rather than people which is sort of the other way around in the richer economies and that has a good reason for it we have very weak capabilities to raise money to start with for the government and it is easier to raise it from the businesses which are easier to follow where it is easier to enforce things but then the other challenge is to raise money but be able to raise it in a way that does foster those capabilities and that means making it easier for the business sector to grow and to generate those jobs precisely for the people in the lower bottom of the let me call it human talent and productivity distribution and then not only how you raise that money but also how you spend it so if we raise it and we spend that for instance in subsidies that are unconditional such as the ones that we saw prominently during the pandemic all over the world then you also have great perils so the other question is how do you spend that money in a way that is complementary to the generation of incomes by people and not supplementing not substituting that generation of income big questions indeed and very good questions but I'm going to move on a bit because I'm taking a look at the clock there what I'm going to talk about next is really interesting because in the last two days many of you gave very fascinating interesting presentations I'm sure many of you have been paying attention to them these are really innovative ideas they are very academic ideas aren't they on ideas on reducing poverty and reducing inequality but really what is the main challenges in taking these academic ideas which are great and making them into policy because this is something that we don't see enough of we're not seeing governments take into account some innovative policy ideas that perhaps are slightly risky Progressor was risky when you first suggested it so give us an idea of that challenge that policymakers have to face when they come up with coming up with these great ideas taking into account the work that everyone here is doing what is the challenge in implementing these ideas is it fiscal, political, social and how do we overcome them I'd love to hear from any of you with some perspective on that and I know Santiago does have some perspective on that but let's hear from the minister No, not about you The minister first Well the challenge is first of all political Yes but it's also because of course of the influence of private interests into the political life to be clear about that and that's the big, big challenge also sometimes there are complex ideas that are sometimes the agenda, I mean here for example Santiago has been one of the big champions of not actually in Colombia in general also because he has also been a researcher in Colombia if you finance some social spending with contributions associated to employment the formal workers in Colombia you have to pay you know, conditions to pension conditions to health you know, other contributions and to what extent that generates informality or reduce formal workers that's one that's one big issue that is always it's an academic topic and a big discussion about how effective but also how difficult it is to finance it with public with the public in the central budget central government budget because if you don't have contribution for example, let's say generally education doesn't have contributions very little from the families so everything is more or less the public education is fully financed by budgets in health you have a mixed system with pensions but then you have the problem that access is limited because of the which is the topic of discussion to what extent but if you decide not to have social security contribution then the central government has to back and it's quite expensive it's a lot of resources, let's say that and you can say for example also pensions the pension system you have the same problem but it's tougher because in Colombia about only one fourth of the workers get any pension so the big issue is how you complement that with the special program for the older people who don't have a pension for example we said income support so it's very complex how you mix the two issues by the way let me mention two issues that I think are important for the discussion the first one I forgot when I talked before that we also have a wealth tax and it has not been a continuous wealth tax but we are proposing a continuous wealth tax which is what Colombia had actually from 1936 to 1989 and so what happened after 1989 to get rid of the wealth tax in most countries of the world wealth taxes were eliminated including Colombia but the wealth tax is coming back in many countries and Colombia actually has been used this century in several years by different governments that have a permanent wealth tax that's one point but the other is what we call for the small business let's say we have the program for the popular economy so how you support micro and small businesses which are let's say the informal part of the economy and how you support them so they get more productivity more income etc etc so that's a this call but it has a long tradition in Colombia in different forms but it's not too strong and doesn't reach let's say many small businesses so that's one program which includes access to credit which for example we have to manage because the Minister of Finance manages a system of development banks that we have in Colombia the second is technology access to technology and training which today also is the use of digital technologies which you have to use in all businesses today particularly when you have payment systems that includes digital systems and then commercialization how you support the selling the products and in my way of thinking let's say supporting cooperatives of different services of cooperation is essential particularly for that for the commercialization I'm going to jump in there because I just think everyone here in this room has some idea on how to reduce inequality and I know there's papers and projections over the last two days and Santiago I know you have a personal experience yourself of trying to get Progressa off the ground so how difficult it is and as you say correctly Minister it is political it's a political challenge isn't it you need the political capital to back up some of these policies to really put them into play so give us a sense of the struggle that you went through when you first introduced Progressa to your president at the time in Mexico in the 1990s and just how you overcame some of those challenges the answer is fairly easy the president of Mexico was a very smart man so I basically had to convince him and he understood the rest of the cabinet thought this was nuts most people that we discussed this said this was nuts but the president understood and he was willing to take risks these are not context that you face very often particularly this is a political context in which the party in power at the time had sufficient power in Congress to actually carry the day that's more difficult today so I want to connect that to the earlier point that you made which is we've generated a huge amount of knowledge over the last two decades many of the people in this room have contributed to that we know a lot about the impact of individual policies on individual outcomes we do that very carefully with very a lot of technique a lot of good econometrics we have papers from all of Latin America and probably you know Kunal will know the literature from other regions of the world from all over the world so we know a lot about individual trees what we need to do now is to think about forests if you are a researcher but you're talking to a policy maker if you come to the policy maker and you say look I have this wonderful paper that shows that the impact of this of X on Y is W and the policy maker says yeah that's great however there's also X, Y, Z all these other policies at the same time tell me about what about the rest of the story that I can't tell you what I can tell you is that X on Y is Z but how do I put the rest of the look trees don't grow on forests by magic it's important to understand the tree and therefore it's very important to understand the mechanism and the econometrics behind the identification of what you're doing but it's also extremely important to place the individual tree in the forest and to look at the forest and to come to your question what the profession needs to do now if they want to influence more policy makers is to develop a language by which they have a view of the forest and they convey to the policy makers look this is sort of the forest we don't know the exact details of everything it'll take us at least 25 more years of research to do that but what we know right now this is broadly what I think makes sense that said the second challenge would then be to communicate to the general public the sort of point that Jose Antonio was making but first you got to communicate from the academic community into the policy making community to let them know that what you're doing and your research can actually be used in a real world context and I think that's sort of where we're at and Kunal organized a conference a year from today about looking at forest and not looking at individual trees and how we think about the general equilibrium of all these systems in a more systemic way even though the profession has been moving away from that because of all the, you know, identification which I sympathize, agree with but it's not enough and I think everyone here can probably take some lessons from you Santiago in the kind of language needed to communicate these ideas to policy makers to convince them you were very lucky that you convinced your president but you know obviously these are issues that Enilde will probably have to struggle with in Mozambique and everyone does when you're a policy maker so give us a sense of what you're having to deal with because you are actually faced with rich gas deposit finds in Mozambique and the idea of then trying to get that revenue redistributed the struggle that you're having trying to find the right models to find that revenue being redistributed to the general population that's incredibly hard isn't it this is a good example of a mark to the government but this is a good example of how we have to discuss and to convince the politician that this is the right way because it's really difficult for example now we are working in the sovereign world found low trying to describe how we will be using these resources in the benefit of the population and the next generation but when we start to discuss with the politician in a high level they have an opinion so it's really difficult it's just to say that it's a challenge but getting in the point of the huge amount of resource and the revenue that will coming from these LNG that we have in Mozambique what we expect is to use these resources to push the inclusive grow in order that we can transform our economy it stopped working it's probably a battery here try this one we haven't tried that one yet does that work? yes yes the idea is to work in the social transformation first we have to deal with the investment of human capital with it's a huge problem in our countries in Africa in Mozambique it's the same so we think that we can use this resource to invest in human capital for poor people to increase the access of education health to design better social programs that will help us with more employment so we have a kind of a roadmap a plan but we don't know if it will work we are now trying to get some experience of the countries that have this kind of resource but in fact it's a challenge but we as a country we all agree that we have to use this money to reduce the inequalities to invest in the country so that we have inclusive grow a proper goal so we have a common sense in this now I'm going to try to open up the session to the audience now you've all been listening very interestingly and I could see there's a real sense of attention let's have these microphones roam around and get some questions yes question in the front and there's another one there so let's hear from it's Rachel isn't it you presented this morning so yes very excited to hear from you it's one of the ones that don't work oh here it goes yes we hear you and so I wanted to make one quick comment and ask a question quick comment is to your question this world that in some sense looks worse because we have pandemics and we have climate change coming upon us is it going to make getting rid of inequality harder and you could say yes but a more optimistic view is that these are global problems that actually depend critically upon reducing worldwide inter-country inequality because you can't have countries cutting down trees including lakes or overfishing in oceans without that affecting all of us so you might think that's going to be a reason you would see financial incentives transfers towards poorer countries and for that same very same reason when it comes to health you're going to keep on having mutations as long as people cannot get vaccinated they don't have the roads for the vaccines etc. so that part is going to be more optimistic or it might make you think we're going to hell in a hand basket and then the question for the two of you Santiago you said very convincingly look we saw intergenerational improvements because of conditional cash transfer programs and others on health and education good things happen but then we didn't see that carry over to higher income for these individuals later on and you say they need good jobs so they agree we need more jobs that's going to be creating growth that's a challenge for the economy and what I still don't understand is why don't we have the good firms and the good jobs given that we have more educated people healthier people what's the big roadblock there fantastic question and a fantastic point that you made as well but let's take the next question I think there was a gentleman there thank you this is David Castel so one key variable here is productivity so the point here is how to increase productivity and according to basic economic theory two ways is basically technological change and then structural change so my point here is why this is not happening in Latin American countries productivity levels are still very low and this may relate to moving up in the value chain in Latin American countries the state specialized in commodities so how to move up in sort of agricultural products to more sophisticated sort of again in the value chain or in the mineral sector in the textile sector again so one thing is redistribution from top to the bottom but as you guys highlighted it's also creating income at the bottom and the key here is to increase productivity so how does this work in Latin America get to the next step so let's get another question back there thank you very much Ayabonga from South Africa I found the discussion very fascinating Santiago when the discussion started you spoke about pre-market distribution outcomes and I guess post-market distribution as a way to confront and reduce inequality and I've got one question and it's something I certainly have not heard which is around the redistribution of productive assets and in particular land reforms I mean if we look at the examples of India in China as countries that have narrowed the gap from an equality perspective if we compare across countries one of the distinctive features of both countries in the post-colonial moment has been the institution of land reforms and I'm quite interested to hear from a finance minister Jose Antonio what your view would be on the role of the redistribution of productive assets like land in a policy package especially in light of I guess the resumption of the peace talks over the last few days or so okay great let's stop there with the first three questions so we can remember them so first one was all about why haven't we got there yet in terms of the jobs and companies to produce that incredible employment second one was how does Latin America enter digital, structural etc etc and the last one land reform so let's take it I think the first question was to Marcella and yourself go on I would actually say the first two questions are basically the same question why don't we have better productivity and of course that's the question of a very large literature that has created some more questions than answers and it does have some of those answers and here's my list of priorities thinking of Latin America though I see the puzzle that Santiago is placing on us I also see that it is very clearly the case that in terms of human capital the quality of education that people have on average and as a distribution in Latin America we are starting from a distribution of human talent that is still that still displays a very large gap with respect to the distribution that people are starting with in this very advanced economies if we try to put a name and a face to this informality problem then you can go out to the street and see the person who is selling you know a package of something in the street or the person who sells you something in a beach that person is clearly endowed with very poor education to start with and capabilities for the productive sector so I think that's the first answer to that by the way that's part of what technological advancement may mean you're starting from people who are better able to use technology so I think that's point one then there is a second point that the firms do if you think of firms the way I like to think about them these are organizations that bring people together to produce things so one of the symptoms of underdevelopment that we have been talking about during this conference is the fact that the firms that we have in Latin America are bringing very few people that are very poor capabilities to start with together more people why don't they raise in terms of scale so part of the answer is place where Santiago started a labor market that makes it very difficult to really hire these people and put them together so I would say even though there are very deep differences across the countries in the regions in the specific labor market institution the overall result is that the labor market as a whole still is very advanced the formation of these organizations that bring people together so I would say that's a second factor that factor in itself also implies that growing as a firm will be difficult will be costly and therefore will not will not be as profitable so it also becomes a disincentive to invest in the other technologies that will be complementary to bringing people together so I would say that's a third reason and that I think that set of reasons is very coincidental with the fact that we not only not have that many firms we don't have that great firms but the types of firms that we're mostly missing is the firms that transit from being these tiny things to being small businesses rather than micro than being middle sized middle sized firms so I would say that's a set of things that we need to address to start with and of course then there are the other more traditional problems that even advanced economies face in terms of fostering competition etc now the other issue is the structural composition of the economy there is obviously a challenge that these economies have faced I'm sure Jose Antonio would be happy to talk about that and disagree with me in many situations of what I say about this but of course one of the big problems that people have pointed out is we never really developed a manufacturing sector that was that was strong I'd love to have here a picture that I'd like to see from my most recent research what's striking is we didn't lack the manufacturing sector so much in terms of value added instead in terms of job production so the gap in terms of what the share of the overall employment that manufacturing generated in Latin America as a whole compared to the US the UK all other European economies the Asian economies that are richer today is huge then if you go look at the gap in the share not in employment but the value added as a percentage of the total that's not so much in the peak but the value added in manufacturing as a percentage of GDP in the richer economies was around 27% we were definitely below that even at the peak but the number is like 24 when you look at employment you go from around 25 in the richer economies to 15 some of us 13 so again I would go back to the labor market I think we do have a huge thing to talk about there and I worry that in the discussion of going of the missing manufacturing we're going to keep trying to jump into the third revolution when the world is in the fifth revolution so I think that's a great danger in this discussion yes and we are certainly running out of time to really tackle it all Santiago your remarks on that no I think Raquel's question is extremely pertinent and a really relevant question just to compliment most of what Marcella said the issues that we don't it's not that we don't have enough firms in fact we have way too many firms the issues that we don't have enough productive firms and roughly numbers the US GDP is at least 10 times the GDP of Mexico Mexico has half the number of firms that the US has so we have a huge number of firms so why is it that in Mexico the more productive firms don't get out of the market the unproductive firms we all learned from Schumpeter that there's this creative destruction process in which productive firms get big they innovate, they do all these good things and then the bad firms get out and then the new firms come in and they create good jobs and productivity goes up and then America does not work and actually I've done fairly careful firm dynamic data with panels and what I show is that you don't have the productive firms growing unproductive firms grow they for a long time why? a lot has to do with what Marcella said huge problems in the labor market not only that huge problems also in the structure of taxation all these special regimes for small firms so that is where the deep issues are that's explain why we can't create productive jobs even though we are having more human capital and we're doing all these other things very very quickly on the value chains I don't disagree but I also want to put this in perspective 30 years ago Mexico had almost no manufacturing exports Mexico today exports about $400 billion it's about 35% of its GDP we export more manufacturers than all of Latin America can put together and we export very sophisticated stuff aeronautical parts automotive parts, electronics 30 years ago the informality rate in Mexico was 59% today is 57% exports went from 5% to 55% so all these things about value change and increasing, moving up to about yes, yes and for it it is not going to solve the problems in the labor market because the problems in the labor market are in the areas that Marcella was talking about this vast number of firms that create very low productivity jobs thank you and of course that question for the land reforms let me say that one peculiarity of Colombia is that there are several agricultural ministers who become finance ministers very funny I don't know I am one of those so you will have some knowledge of land reform then I was a agricultural minister and actually the current agricultural land reform the land reform law of Colombia was passed when I was agricultural minister I am the author Colombia has had three ways of land reforms one in the 1930s and early 40s one in the 1960s and then this began and was not pursued too much later governments still the law but in the peace agreement with the major guerrilla of Colombia five years ago the topic number one is integrated rural development and one of the elements is land reform I mean in our view the previous government did very little in that regard so one of the tasks of this government is actually to undertake a significant land reform and that includes let's say two issues actually redistribution of land actually not through expropriation actually through use of public lands actually lands that have been expropriated from illicit activities let's say drug trafficking paramilitary groups which are held by one institution in the government and and then purchasing land and public sector lands actually because there are many rural areas so that's one element too so to do a significant in redistribution of land Colombia has actually several parts of the country a tradition of small holders so it's a mix of small hoarder and large large land holding activities so it's a mix of those so it's to support that which means that aside from the land reform itself we have to have the support to a small holder which is part of the the thing we call the popular economy so how you support a small holder culture in a significant way the three ways I mentioned credit technology access to technology or knowledge let's say and commercialization so how you support them in the three areas in a significant way so we do have institutions that were actually put in place actually five years ago when the peace agreement was negotiated I was asked by the government at the time to head this rural mission commission which is one of the frameworks for the current activities that were so it's actually again a significant support by the way this issue of using associations as a major topic that has to be supported in a significant way in order to support the small holders so it's both land and support to the economic activities excellent okay there were more questions now I saw some hands up this side just now yes gentleman there and another gentleman there I have a question regarding Santiago's comments on the role of academia in implementing all the knowledge that we as a field produce and I wanted to ask you what do you see the role of our field going forward do you see it as a field that is called to have more people interacting with politicians and making these knowledge applied to the field do we see the field as something that we make like literature reviews in which we calculate the marginal value of public funds compare them together and see what are the most efficient policies that the government should implement but without getting involved in the politician discussions or do we see do you see this as something that should be done in every paper and have like a kind of like implementation revolution in which a responsibility of the researchers should be also to have some type of discussion about the potential of implementation of all the policies that are being started okay interesting question and then follow up yes but I think there was a gentleman just there first and then we'll get a question from yes the gentleman in the third row fourth row rather how to improve productivity in regions such as Chocobajira and Cauca, the Amazon which are regions that are practically primary and extractivist that are still dominated by illicit economies then how to improve that part maybe yesterday in a chat we were told a proposal that went here the departments or regions with better fiscal performance could transfer resources to regions that obviously do not have those income capabilities I think that was a question that Marcella raised but then also later on it went to the international domain Marcella mentioned that one issue in Latin America and the same in other countries is that businesses pay taxes but these are domestic firms they pay taxes and then we have in the other side of the question multinationals whereby governments are in a position so here we have two wars one where the domestic firms pay taxes and then foreign firms that needed for an income for an investment whether domestic or through big public private projects coming to the country based on corporate income times holidays or incentives so we have here at Wality how policy makers can deal with this policy the issue of investment and inequality thank you so the first and the last question that's somewhat related just how do we make some of these academic policies the work the hard work that everyone in this room is doing in terms of research how do we make him into policy and be able to communicate that so thank you for the question I mean your question is very complex and sort of has a lot looking forward I think there's still a lot of room for research along the lines of what we've been doing for the last two decades trying to understand how certain things work I don't know if you were in Raquel's lecture this morning Raquel's lecture was excellent it sort of gives you a deep sense of why certain phenomena that we observe why do they occur and sort of there's an economic interpretation of that and then you learn and it helps you to think that kind of research is fundamental so it's not either or it's we need to widen and say I've learned a lot from this there are many other facts here next let me do some research in which I try to put all these facts together and try to see how in the particular context of a country they translate into policymaking I emphasize in the particular context of the country because that really matters that really really matters and in my view we need to pay more attention about the institutional context of individual countries when we try to think about policymaking in countries so that's sort of broad research the last one is you mention about talking to politicians I think it's essential I mean if you want to influence policy you need to talk to the people who make policy and you have to understand their constraints you have to understand where they're coming from and you have to understand how the issue that you're trying to put can be framed in such a way that from the point of view of the policymaker it makes sense and there I think economists need to understand a little bit more the political economy of things and political dynamics and sort of get their hands dirty to be able to be more useful and more constructive thank you so let me take first this last question where I think you're raising a crucial issue and I think it's a good example also of the forest versus trees stuff that Santé was talking about the justification for holidays specific benefits for some very large investors multinationals especially economic zones if you read through the literature is generally well these countries not competitive in terms of its taxes for enterprises therefore let's give benefits to some enterprises so we can grab some of that investment so the solution rather than going to the first diagnosis and looking at the overall system is to try to focus on some specific investors and give those benefits and that's very extremely prevalent and we have to say that this country is heightened in that domain the answer may be maybe there is a way to reconcile those two things maybe one way it's let's remember we have an overall business sector that we need to foster that we have this predominance of tiny firms that hopefully will become small firms someday that's what we don't have we have this plethora that Santé was talking about way too many firms but many of them respond to the conception of a firm so why don't we think that rather than giving some benefits and holidays and stuff to some specific sectors firms etc why don't we create a system that as a whole is much more friendly to these creations of jobs and things that we were talking about before so if we were to talk about these countries specifically I would say the ability to do what you're saying would rest in having better tax treatment for everybody that would be a lower corporate income tax rate less benefits for others and then at the same time once you have that then you have the you open the space for things such as the discussion of assuring a minimal effective payment of taxes by the very largest corporations which we all is very clear now have the ability to play countries against each other we have run out of time but I think the minister the second question was aimed at you the Spanish the Spanish question was about how to you know the regional inequalities from rich regions to poor regions and how you can support the poor regions and to what extent you should make transfers from the rich to the poor and let me let me start actually by stating one thing that is very important when you are in government and in a sense it's not always well researched which is how effective your system of implementation of action of delivery is not how do you create public sector institutions that actually do the job and that's also relevant for this issue because how you strengthen local governments or regional governments that are weak and therefore cannot deliver is one of the major challenges of financing but actually how you develop those institutions and actually those institutions also help to develop private sector activities either small holding or large holding activities in those regions so it's a very important issue let me say that that is basically state building or institution building effort that has to be done and how it has to be a long time so it's a state it's an issue for states not for governments all governments have to build up and continue to build the system that have been created in education in health in every area and I think that development of institutions is very important and now major responsibility is how you develop that at the local level in backward regions so I think that's one element which is very important institution building support which can come from national governments but many times it's much better to use local or regional governments to support even across one region that is successful to support region that has not been successful that's one more. In terms of financing the system that is used in Colombia for distribution is actually national taxes that are given to local governments or to regional governments and there is a very clear system by which you have to guarantee that the system is resistive so it doesn't look as a transfer from region to region but in fact it is because the most tax revenues for example in Colombia are from Bogota but Bogota gets a very small transfer from national government and it has a local capacity to do local taxes so the national governments are really very serious which are with taxes in Bogota or Medellin or Cali or Barakilla are transferred to the localities that have much lower capacity actually it's quite a good distributed system but it's basically done through national taxes. Well we have run out of time I know you've all got great questions out there I do have one solution to what you just said Minister around building good public institutions I think you need to hire people from your old school who obviously have done great research they know what they're doing and they have tried to look at issues how we can make the world more equal which is what this subject is all about now forgive me I'm going to ask a final question if there's nothing more but I'd beseech all of you just to give me a 10 second answer if you can because we have run out of time I know we are testing the patience of our audience so I'm going to return to my opening question it's a mystic we can make the world more equal is this an achievable ambition in our lifetimes so maybe just a yes and no answer if you can let's start with you Nilde yes it's a kind of difficult question I don't know I think we're talking in our lifetimes let's say 50 years in the next 50 years yes maybe in the next 25 years okay so you're much more optimistic than I am but it's still a couple there are two dimensions because the international dimension and the national dimension let's say let's say in the international dimensions there are institutions but they're very weak and the funding that they transfer are very small I mean when you think how much is official development assistance the 0.7% target that was defining the UN half a century ago is only followed by four or five countries so that's one and for example now for climate change there was a target that has been also not met so that's one issue now you have the system that has been improving I think in terms of size which is the system of multilateral development banks in which they have been growing the regional development banks faster than the world bank but the world bank also also growing and there is that system actually can be very supportive for development and it is in many cases particularly during crisis for example during the COVID-19 crisis it was very critical at the local level it's a question of national policies and I think I am optimistic of course I am part of a goal to do it so I hope we can make progress in that regard excellent Maricela thank you possible definitely if we play it right but there are very many challenges to playing it right one convincing the world that there needs to be the kind of redistribution across countries that Raquel was mentioning rather than the raise to the bottom that you were also mentioning but also if we are able to convince or if people get convinced that this really is a priority and that more pockets would need to be touched than people think if we are really able to prioritize the poorest and being able to move everybody to a more middle back I think that's a possibility but the challenges are definitely great the social movements in Latin America are only approved to that so your answer is possible Santiago if you are not optimistic you have got to commit suicide and I am not planning to commit suicide excellent you are amazing panelists and thank you all for such great questions that was fantastic


Hello, Oslaid Sync here, and today I am excited to share with you my new patch and sample pack, which is imaginatively named Drums and Percussion for the Electron Digitone. The pack features 48 brand new drum and percussion patches for the Electron Digitone, and for those of you who are not lucky enough to own a Digitone, I've also taken samples of every single patch as well. As with all of my stuff, the pack will be available on Gumroad, check the video description for a link, and it's priced at pay what you want, which includes free. So if you can't afford to pay or just fancy some free drum sounds, then please just grab them and enjoy them with my blessing. But if you feel like you can throw a couple of quid my way, it is so very appreciated and all goes towards stuff for the channel. There was no particular theme beyond drums and percussion for this pack, so I just followed my bliss while making the patches. So there are hard sounds, soft sounds, electronic sounds, acoustic sounds, tuned percussion and noisy friends too. The one guiding principle I had was that the sound should react in a satisfying way to velocity, so make sure you explore parameter locking velocity to get everything feeling just right. If you're playing with the samples, then I've included two or three velocity variations for each sound in the pack, so you can benefit from this too. I'll follow up in the next few weeks with another video discussing some of the techniques I used in this pack, but in the meantime, let me know in the comments what you'd like to see covered in that video and which patches spoke to you the most. Oh and if you liked the pack, feel free to hit the thumbs up button and leave it a like. Thanks as always for joining me, here are some demos covering all of the sounds in the pack.


Pow! What's up everybody? Once again it's Bram and Shawn and today I'm back another clip with the conversation I had with Sir Love and the primary topic of this conversation is one of the big differences between artists who have longevity and those that don't. And we even do a little bit of exploring on the type of artist you'll probably see here going forward into the future. So let's go ahead and hop into that conversation. I'll see you at the end. This in a sense just to be short and less eloquent with it music bubble that could potentially be happening. I think we're going to see hit records or we're going to see hit artists. And there's going to be a separation between the two. It's going to be people that make trendy records and it's going to be people that make timeless records because right now in today's world you're going toe to toe with the greats. Right now I have the choice of listening to you with Tupac, you with Biggie Smalls, you with Michael Jackson, you with Elvis Presley, you with Madonna, you know whoever I'm going to bring up Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Beyoncé. You know so you know there's going to be certain artists that you listen to for a season. There's going to be other artists that you listen to for a lifetime and that's going to change the trajectory of how artists survive in this game. I think you're going to see the hit artists take longer to reach that level of success and I think you're going to see trendy artists going to come in quick and leave quick. There's going to be a few trendy artists that are going to be able to make a transition into adding value. It's very hard. The difference between trendy and in my opinion the long-term artists are going to be the ability to be current enough to be trendy in reference to your style, your delivery, your flow, your beats, your content but also to have content that means something to where I would want to hear this same message five years from now. Right and the way I think about that from a marketing standpoint is there's a difference between marketing which usually lends towards awareness and then actual value which is your brand. And if you can't create value and create a brand then you're in trouble. As a matter of fact, oh I think Coach K rat-rat-rat-rat our podcast interview. He was really heavy on talking about Yachty and that brand. Yachty is a cash cow because he is a brand and he even talked about if you can't create a brand around the artist from a manager standpoint you're doing something wrong or the artist even if they have a hot track but I can't create a brand around that artist there's nothing there then he wouldn't look into it as something worth investing in. That's because your longevity is really brand-based not music-based. A hundred percent agree if you look at people like Snoop Dogg in the game, Snoop Dogg if you look at him from a record sales perspective in the time period you were selling those records he's not the greatest of all time he's not in that conversation I don't think when it comes to sales but when it comes to brand and all the different areas that this guy reached out to and the impact he's had in the community whether that's been his you know girls going wild series that's been the movies about him that's been the television show he had that's been the the football coaching thing that's been all the movies that he's been in that's been I can keep going you can talk about Snoop for a long time because it's brand elevated LL Kujae brand elevated Queen Latifah brand elevated Will Smith either all guys that went to film but then you can also talk about you know other people that have established a history of just making great records Gucci man for example is the person that's just been able to supply you with hit records over and over and over and over over the course of time and because of that he's been able to sustain himself in the game if you look at Jay he branded himself as a boss early on reasonable doubt he was a boss on the streets now today he's still a boss but I'm an executive boss and he stayed with the brand kept him you know even though he dropped albums like Kingdom come you know you know he was still able to bounce back you know he retired came back like bosses do so and then there's other artists that were just really really great and just didn't have you know that same longevity uh I don't want to call any of these guys out because I think that's f'd up but yeah there's a lot of talented artists that we were going man what happened to him why didn't they you know but you know I think uh branding separates you from Trendy exactly it gives you that ability to survive even when it's not hot out there musically uh so one thing that I really want well actually two things first one thing we talked about where the music industry is going how things are looking positive especially for the cash to be available then we talked about branding right and the importance of creating value to separate that from the music so one thing I want you to take out of the branding portion of it is think about it this way branding is really intellectual property uh if you guys seen the other video I've done with sir we uh just I don't know which order I'll show these things but did another video with sir where we're basically talking about how you need to trade market all your brand and own your brand your name all that kind of stuff he mentioned Snoop Dogg that's a perfect example of intellectual property Snoop Dogg's character has basically been licensed out in the exact same way that a Marvel superhero has is the exact same thing and all and Lil Yachty is going to be the same way I could guarantee you because he's had such a very a strong character and sense of character with Khalifa there's going to be a lot of brands and for hip hop and as a matter of fact that will be a lot of people's nostalgia in the same way Marvel comics have came up and we were able to create these worlds and go into these worlds you're going to see some more movies of these artists in the future in 10 years when the people who grew up on the intellectual property your brand is your intellectual property that's what you need to spend a lot of time creating and let me tell you guys something about a brand this is a great way to know that you have a good brand if you can dress up like said person on Halloween they have a good brand yep that's a perfect simple way to think about it if if if you are building your brand and someone can't say I'm going to dress like you and it's a distinctive look and 10 other people would know exactly you know how to dress like you then you have an established brand there's not a physical style there's not a physical swag there's not a term there's not a there's nothing that's separating you from uh from everybody yep that's uh that's so well said the that the visual and I even say to a lot of artists this is a slightly off but it's the same thing in a sense of having your own perspective and way of saying things there's certain things if I say something a certain way you're going to be like oh you sound you're acting like certain artists for shizzle my nizzle obviously like new dog is like the the holy grail and comes when it comes to branding and how that his whole situation has worked out so it's how you present and deliver like literally but also the actual visual aspect like he said dress like that artist so once again I mean you guys already know right I love brand brand man shine obviously so uh but keep all those things in mind figure out what that means for you everybody has their own situation that some people you might just want to have a hit right that I guarantee you in the future some people are just are going to have like songs that are popping getting millions but it'll be normal to just maybe be a school teacher and have a hit song but yeah there but you don't even think about pursuing a career it's just a song that's popping because we're going to be used to this quote unquote viral culture that has seemed so new to us so so are you guys some final words final words I definitely say I agree with what you just said in reference to you're going to see a more dynamic approach to you know teachers and things of nature making records because records are no longer going to be about what's good what's bad we're not going to be teaching them in the same way in the future I think music is going to be about what's funny what what makes me feel good what makes me laugh makes me smile music has always been about emotion and I think that emotion is going to leave prior to there were entities in place such as labels who were gatekeepers and decided which emotions you were allowed to feel and in the future you know if a person wants to make a funny comedy record and it goes on to sell millions and they make a comedy album and it's all it's all funny that's the perfect perfect example so and a lot of artists and especially old heads might be like the value of music the value of music in some senses music will be consumed in the same way that memes have been consumed right you might say oh that was a good meme that was a good meme and they have their little run but you don't have any additional expectations of it you hear a good a song it's funny it's whatever you hear it you love it y'all laugh hardy hard move on keep moving and everybody they don't even expect a career or anything else to come out of it and that's just going to be an interesting reality kermit kermit got a nice little nice little career going on what i mean right now kermit got a little career kermit kermit keeps reinventing himself kermit he was super teed now you're in the mirrors so somebody's got hoodies on man kermit got gangsta that's crazy see that's i'd be right there man see they gonna probably figure out a way to get money out of memes um actually there was a situation where somebody stopped other people from using them in memes which is a whole another thing arthur arthur no i think it happened with arthur okay because they got really upset that they were using because it was all sexual and it's supposed to be kitchen okay yeah see so yeah the ability to track it's it's gonna get crazy man um we can go off and talk about this these uh things forever we'll just have to get sir back on the channel because i definitely always have a good time chopping it up with sir um hey you guys make sure you follow phase six sir love or check out phase six dot com i probably said what you're going to say but you got something else that you want to say phase gi man i talk about the music the business the money the paperwork and things that he motivates you as well yeah there's some there's definitely some motivational content on there if you guys are trying to figure out how to how to stay true and stay focused on this game man it's all about success i think uh there are not enough resources online such as this channel right here so i encourage you guys once again to binge watch this content go to phase vi binge watch that content go to brand man shawna's website go to my website see all the extra stuff we're really committed uh to helping people like yourself in this game get w's man w's i love seeing young people win old people everybody i just want to see everybody win man so uh that's it man go ahead and close them out bro all right man if y'all like this video which y'all better hit that like button share it if you like it as well and if you're not subscribed you know what to do hit that subscribe button


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